GM Aleksei Sarana won his first Titled Arena on Saturday, finishing a comfortable 14 points ahead of the field. Second Place was taken by IM Minh Le, a Titled Arena mainstay. Third place was GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov. Of note was the differing Berserk strategies employed. Sarana didn’t berserk once in 48 games, including one where he had a 750 point rating advantage. On the other side of the spectrum was Le who berserked every game he played.
Ian Nepomniachtchi secured a World Championship match with Magnus Carlsen in November on Monday with a draw against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. His closest competitor Anish Giri lost versus Alexander Grischuk to fall a full point behind going into the last round. Nepomniachtchi has already clinched the tiebreaker with Giri, therefore tomorrow's games can have no effect on the winner. (Photo: Lennart Ootes, FIDE)
Announcing our schedule for upcoming Titled Arenas!
We're pleased to announce a schedule for our upcoming Titled Arenas!
All events will be preceded by a warm-up arena open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated games in the relevant time control and variant.
Ian Nepomniachtchi won again on Saturday and is now only 2 rounds away from securing a World Championship match with Magnus Carlsen. His closest rival, Anish Giri, also won to keep pace a half point back. Unfortunately for him, Giri would lose a potential tie-breaker with Nepomniachtchi based on head to head score. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave also won today to give himself an outside chance of winning the tournament.
Anish Giri beat Ding Liren today to pull within a half-point of leader Ian Nepomniachtchi after Round 11 of the Candidates tournament on Friday. Meanwhile, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave lost to Alexander Grischuk to fall out of second place. Vachier-Lagrave was leading this event when it restarted a few days ago and has scored 1/4 since.
GM and former world #6 player GM Jon Speelman went over the games for us.
Most “free” websites subsist by selling ads or selling user data. Others do it by putting all the good stuff behind paywalls. Lichess doesn’t do any of that and never will. Almost 6 years ago, Lichess founder Thibault explained why Lichess is free - and what that means. A lot can change in 6 years but this is one thing that hasn't and never will.
Ian Nepomniachtchi won his game vs Kirill Alekseenko on Wednesday to extend his lead to a full point over the trio of Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Anish Giri with only 4 rounds left to play. (Photo: Lennart Ootes, FIDE)
Anish Giri won the only decisive game today to join Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Fabiano Caruana in a tie for second a half-point behind leader Ian Nepomniachtchi. It's almost certain that with only 5 rounds left that the eventual winner will be one of those 4. (Photo: Lennart Ootes, FIDE)
After taking an unscheduled rest year because of the global pandemic, round 8 of the Candidates tournament resumed on Monday, and we got one step closer to finding the next challenger to Magnus Carlsen’s World Championship. NM Aakaash Meduri went over the games for us including a spectacular game between Fabiano Caruana and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. (Photo: Lennart Ootes, FIDE)
The title is a quote from GM Magnus Carlsen during a livestream of his victory in the April 2021 Lichess Bullet Titled Arena. Carlsen used a more traditional opening strategy than in his last Titled Arena and had a better result. The event was close fought right up until the end, with 3 players, including Carlsen, GM Andrew Tang, and IM Toivo Keinänen taking the lead at least briefly in the last 30 minutes. Tang and Keinänen finished in 2nd and 3rd respectively.