Andreikin Last Player Standing After Dramatic Finish

GM Dmitry Andreikin won a wild Titled Tuesday outright on January 27 with a score of 9.5/11. Andreikin, who wasn’t in the picture atop the standings for much of the tournament, worked his way up and then became the only one of six players who entered the last round tied for first to reach that 9.5-point threshold. Seven players ended up tied for second place, the best tiebreaks among them going to GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda after his win over GM Fabiano Caruana in the last round.

For Andreikin, who has actually won more Titled Tuesdays all-time than anyone not named GM Hikaru Nakamura or GM Magnus Carlsen, it was his first win of the year and brought him into the top 10 in the current split.

Broadcast

If you missed the Take Take Take broadcast with GM David Howell, WFM Maud Rodsmoen, and GM Jon Ludvig Hammer, you can catch it below!

CCT Standings

Titled Tuesday’s role in the Champions Chess Tour (CCT) continues, with the second of three splits about two-thirds done. The updated top 10 for the Winter Split is as follows:

Full Standings | Titled Tuesday Info | CCT Info | CCT Standings

Tournament Recap

The tournament started off with a bang when NM Jacorey Bynum, an 18-year-old national master from Florida, stunned Carlsen in the first round by finding a queen sacrifice for checkmate. (Surprisingly, Carlsen had allowed the same pattern just six months before, but survived when his opponent missed it.) Bynum did not miss it, and got the upset win. Carlsen, whose voice on stream was in almost as bad shape as his position, smiled sheepishly and quickly applauded, before allowing Bynum to play mate on the board after commenting, “You gotta be vigilant. At least more than this.”

By the end of six rounds, three players still had a chance to score 100%: Caruana, GM Martyn Kravtsiv, and GM Rudik Makarian. None of them made it to 7/7, with Caruana drawing in a dicey spot against Kravtsiv, and Makarian running out of time in a drawn position against GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac.

With four players now on 6.5 points and another 14 players on six, none of whom were Carlsen or Nakamura, it was a wide-open tournament. At first, Kravtsiv began to split from the pack, after he was the only of the four co-leaders to win in both of the next two rounds. In his second of those games, against IM Mukhammadzokhid Suyarov, Kravtsiv sacrificed a bishop to decisively break open Suyarov’s king.

Unfortunately for Kravtsiv, he began to fade at that point, and the first beneficiary was the ultimate winner Andreikin. The top boards in the 10th round saw some unusual scores matching up: Andreikin entered the round with just 7.5 points, while the two players in between them, Caruana and GM Alexey Sarana on eight points each, played each other. Andreikin’s win kept the tournament in range of several players after Caruana and Sarana drew.

In addition to Caruana, Sarana, Kravtsiv, and Andreikin, two more players joined the tie for first with just one round left: GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi and Sam Sevian, with wins over Nakamura and GM Shamsiddin Vokhidov, respectively. Further complicating matters, the last round did not provide three clean matchups among co-leaders. Sevian played Andreikin and Nepomniachtchi faced Sarana, but Caruana battled Duda while Kravtsiv opposed GM Jeffery Xiong. It was once again anyone’s tournament.

Three of those four games were decisive, but only one of the winners came from the 8.5-point crowd. Adding more drama, Andreikin’s was the last game to conclude. Nepomniachtchi, who had sacrificed an exchange for an edge over Sarana, ended up falling into a bad endgame before holding a draw. It was the first of the four games to conclude, a result which effectively eliminated both him and Sarana from first place contention.

Soon after, Kravtsiv would be knocked from contention when Xiong won their game. By that point, Caruana, who had built and sustained a big positional edge on Duda out of the opening, had lost that edge and then some. Duda converted, obtaining a win that felt much longer than its 37 moves.

That suddenly left the winner of the Sevian-Andreikin game all alone in first place, and one player held all the cards. (If chess were cards.) Up on the clock in an easily-winning rook endgame, Andreikin finished the job once Sevian’s flag fell after 101 moves—three times as many as Caruana-Duda, pointing up just how intense that game had been.

Out of 439 players, Andreikin was the only one not to lose a game, a fact which rendered his weak tiebreak score irrelevant. Duda had better ones, including the best tiebreaks in the group on nine (and Kravtsiv had the best overall tiebreaks by far, but only scored 8.5 tournament points for ninth place).

Nepomniachtchi, Xiong, and Sarana all managed to finish in the top six on tiebreaks, but leapfrogging the latter three out of nowhere to finish third was GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Vachier-Lagrave had lost in rounds five and six, including to Kravtsiv, but won every other game, including his very accurate win over GM Alexander Grischuk in the last round.

Finally, the women’s prize went to IM Le Thao Nguyen Pham on seven points. (And Bynum, if you’re wondering, ended up scoring 3/6 before leaving the tournament.)

(Full final standings.)