Aronian wins Goldmoney Asian Rapid

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and Women’s No.1 Hou Yifan were among the 16-player field for the Goldmoney Asian Rapid, The Indian Players who took part in the event were Vidit Gujrathi, Gukesh D, Adhiban Baskaran and Arjun Erigaisi. This was the 7th event of the $1.6 million Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, which runs from June 26 to July 4 on chess24. The 3-day preliminary stage saw the players face each other once before the bottom 8 were eliminated while the top 8 advance to a knockout consisting of 2-day matches.

The time control was 15 minutes for all moves, with a 10-second increment (Rapid) per move from move 1. The knockout match-ups consisted of 4-game matches on the first two days. If the match score was 1:1, two 5+3 (blitz) games were then played followed, if needed, by Armageddon, where White has 5 minutes to Black’s 4 but a draw counts as a win for Black.

The standings after the preliminary stages were as follows:

After the Preliminary Stages, 4 players were tied at 8 points and only 3 of them could qualify. Alireza Firouzja lost the tiebreak on head-to-head against the other 3 players. In a surprise turn of events, 17-year-old Arjun Erigaisi who was playing his first tournament in the Champions Chess tour made the cut whereas Super Grandmasters such as Vidit Gujrathi, Peter Svidler, Daniil Dubov and Alireza Firouzja were eliminated. In the first quarter final, young Erigaisi held Aronian at bay on both match days forcing the game into blitz. The dream run came to an end when he blundered in a drawn position and Aronian easily took advantage and moved to the next round. In the second Carlsen beat So on the first matchday but So fought back the next day forcing the game into blitz. Carlsen, however, beat So in the blitz round to progress. The third quarterfinal was relatively simple since Artemiev crushed Giri on both matchdays and cruised to the semi-finals. In the fourth quarterfinal, Liren and Duda drew on the first matchday but Liren managed to beat his counterpart on the second day and advance to the semi-finals. In the semi-finals, Aronian was up against the world champion Carlsen whereas Liren was facing Artemiev. Even though the players were closely matched, Liren and Carlsen were favourites to meet in the final. On the first matchday of the semi-finals, Liren beat Artemiev and Carlsen beat Aronian to take the lead in the mini match. However, both Artemiev and Aronian fought back against their opponents on the next day to force blitz. In the blitz section, Aronian surprisingly beat the world champion and Artemiev beat Liren to advance to the finals. Both the favourites to reach the final met in the third-place game where Carlsen beat Liren on the first matchday but Liren bounced back to take the tie into blitz. However, Carlsen easily beat Liren in the blitz section to claim the third place.

I wish I could say that the final was as exciting as the rest of the tournament, but Aronian beat Artemiev rather easily on both matchdays to be crowned champion. Aronian dominated the tournament from beginning to end as he had won both the round robin stage and the knockouts. It is safe to say that it was a well-deserved victory for the Armenian Lion.