The 21st European Individual Women Chess Championship, which started on 9th August was concluded on the 20th. With 11 rounds played, or just a little less than 640 games, this event treated us with a lot of thrills, brilliant games, and upsets. You can find all the games here.
[Title image credit - Vlad Ghita]
In this blog post you will see the most discussion of the #193rd ranked player that you will ever see in one of these reports. But first! Let's discuss the winner.
Duda wins the World Cup, as Karjakin comes second and Carlsen wins the play-off for third
After a month of playing, over 200 participants have been whittled down until only four remained. And, having played their final rounds, the podium places of the top 3 are now known: Winner: GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda Runner-up: GM Sergey Karjakin Third: GM Magnus Carlsen
Perhaps you missed some of the tactics from the hundreds of games played over the last month? Try your hand at this study which makes puzzles from some of the games played - go through the chapters in the top left to try different ones!
Women's winner is known as Carlsen is knocked out of the Open final
Much like busses, you wait for one surprise and then two come at once. In the Open World Cup, World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen was knocked out in the rapid tiebreaks by Jan-Kryzsztof Duda.
[Title image credit - Anastasiia Korolkova / FIDE] Meanwhile, in the Women’s World Cup, favourite and top-seeded player GM Aleksandra Goryachkina was defeated by veteran and experienced compatriot, GM Alexandra Kosteniuk - making Kosteniuk the winner of the Women’s World Cup.
Semifinalists and finalists known as tournament approaches end
With another three days of games and tiebreaks played in the Open World Cup and Women’s World Cup, the number of players has once again been whittled down.
[Title image credit - Eric Rosen / FIDE]
Excitement in the tiebreaks as Carlsen narrowly holds on
After a tense and edgy round in both the World Cup and Women’s World Cup, the quarter-finalists and semi-finalists are now known: World Cup (Quarter-finals): Magnus Carlsen (2847) v. Etienne Bacrot (2678) Jan-Krzysztof Duda (2738) v. Santosh Gujrathi Vidit (2726) Vladimir Fedoseev (2696) v. Amin Tabatabaei (2613) Sergey Karjakin (2757) v. Sam Shankland (2709)
Women’s World Cup (Semi-finals): Aleksandra Goryachkina (2596) v. Anna Muzychuk (2527) Alexandra Kosteniuk (2472) v. Zhongyi Tan (2511)
With 32 players left in the Open World Cup, and 16 players in the Women’s edition, there’s everything to play for - especially as many of the world’s strongest players were eliminated in round 3.
[title image: Anastasiia Korolkova / FIDE]
Round 3 of the FIDE World Cup finished yesterday with a series of surprises, upsets and interesting games.
The current World Champion - GM Magnus Carlsen (2847) - beat his Norwegian countryman GM Aryan Tari (2639) to get through to round 4. However, Carlsen appeared to have an uphill struggle in the first game against Tari despite eventually winning. As Carlsen confessed to Lichess (represented by IM Laura Unuk) in a post-game interview, he is still “playing himself into form”. https://youtu.be/FH0Rz6aQZ8U
[Title image: Anastasiia Korolkova / FIDE] Meanwhile, American GM Fabiano Caruana (2806) (who entered the event as the second best player in the world) was knocked out by Kazakh GM Rinat Jumabayev (2637).
The developers of the popular chess engine Stockfish formally filed a lawsuit against ChessBase GmbH this week. Due to repeated violations of Stockfish’s software license, the Stockfish devs have ultimately revoked ChessBase’s right to distribute Stockfish and derivative software. ChessBase has ignored orders to cease and desist and continues to sell software containing code that they have no right to distribute.