Bengaluru: Magnus Carlsen returned to the tournament in jeans and played Hans Niemann, Vassily Ivanchuk audibly sobbed after a loss, 46th seed Aravindh Chithambaram defeated world No.3 Hikaru Nakamura and Daniil Dubov forfeited his game because he reportedly overslept – the penultimate day of the World Rapid and Blitz tournament (blitz section) wasn’t short of drama.
It was also a day that saw Indian GM Vaishali Rameshbabu dominate the women’s standings – with a stellar count of eight wins and three draws – after 11 rounds – to make the knockouts. She will face Zhu Jiner, who qualified for the knockouts in eighth place, in the quarter-finals. The 23-year-old was the only Indian to make the knockouts across the open and women’s sections. She did so with a round to spare and is a full point ahead of the rest of the field.
“It was completely unexpected…I don’t think I’m a great blitz player, honestly. There are many more strong players who are here. I think today I was just lucky in many games and it just worked,” said Vaishali, who finished Stage 1 of the blitz with a score of 9.5/11. Eight players each in the open and women’s sections made it through to the knockouts, which will consist of four-game matches in the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final.
After walking away from the tournament midway over being pulled up for wearing jeans, world No.1 Carlsen returned to play the blitz event after Fide president Arkady Dvorkovich intervened and eased the dress code. Carlsen showed up in jeans for Day 1 of the blitz event and has reportedly got a jeans business deal out of the whole denim fiasco. G-Star has reportedly signed the Norwegian former world champion and he is expected to appear in their ads from 2025.
Several other players too showed up in jeans for their games on Monday and fellow Norwegian Aryan Tari even went jeans shopping with Carlsen on the tournament rest day on Sunday. Carlsen won his first rounds and laughed out loud after he messed up a winning pawn endgame and unwittingly fell for a stalemate trick in his round 3 game against GM Benjamin Bok. Carlsen will interestingly face Niemann again in the quarterfinals.
Ten players ended up on 9.5 points in the Swiss standings with two – Daniel Naroditsky and Dubov – being eliminated in tiebreaks.
Dubov didn’t turn up for his Round 10 game against Niemann, handing the American GM a win by forfeit. “I went to my hotel room to quickly prepare, then I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was too late. I didn’t make it. I want to continue the tournament. It was bad luck,” Dubov told NRK. He won his remaining three games of the day.
Players who qualified for the knockouts:
Open: Ian Nepomniachtchi 9.5/13, Fabiano Caruana 9.5/13, Magnus Carlsen 9.5/13, Wesley So 9.5/13, Alireza Firouzja 9.5/13, Hans Niemann 9.5/13, Jan-Krzysztof Duda 9.5/13, Volodar Murzin 9.5/13
Women: Vaishali Rameshbabu 9.5/11, Lei Tingjie 8.5/11, Kateryna Lagno 8/11, Valentina Gunina 8/11, Ju Wenjun 8/11, Carissa Yip 8/11, Bibisara Assaubayeva 8/11, Zhu Jiner 8/11.
