Carlsen, Erigaisi To Meet Again As Aimchess Rapid Moves To Knockout
The quarterfinals of the Aimchess Rapid tournament will see another clash between GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Arjun Erigaisi, who also played each other in the final of the Julius Baer Generation Cup last month. GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda finished in first place in the preliminaries, ahead of GM Gukesh D.
The games of the Aimchess Rapid preliminaries can be found here as part of our live events platform.
With a packed field around the eighth place, anything could happen on the final day. In the end, there was only one change compared to the standings after day three: GM Vidit Gujrathi, who was in 10th place after round 12, scored 2.5/3 and took over the eighth spot from GM Anish Giri.
The Dutch GM drew twice (including a game with Carlsen) but then got beaten and eliminated by Erigaisi in a razor-sharp final game. It was a tough loss for Giri, who only needed a draw (which would have been enough for Erigaisi as well), who now plays Carlsen in the quarterfinals.
Vidit won on demand in the final round against GM David Anton, who initially outplayed him from the black side of a King's Indian Attack. However, with his 20th move, Vidit successfully started to confuse his opponent and for the remainder of the game, the Indian GM played quite well.
"It's good to know how it feels," said Vidit, who qualified for a Meltwater knockout for the first time. "I'm thrilled that I'm in the quarter-finals. Actually, it was completely unexpected. In fact, I had already made some plans for tomorrow that were not related to chess, so thanks to Arjun for giving me this chance!"
A game that shouldn't be missed is the following. GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov beat GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in "Mamedyarov style" as this time it was the Azerbaijani grandmaster having to deal with a lot of sacrifices from his opponent:
The tournament continues on Tuesday with the knockout matches Duda-Vidit, Gukesh-Rapport, Mamedyarov-Abdusattorov, and Carlsen-Erigaisi.
Aimchess Rapid Preliminaries | Final Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Pts |
| 1 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | 2754 | 28 | |
| 2 | Gukesh D | 2606 | 27 | |
| 3 | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | 2712 | 27 | |
| 4 | Erigaisi Arjun | 2720 | 27 | |
| 5 | Carlsen, Magnus | 2902 | 26 | |
| 6 | Abdusattorov, Nodirbek | 2678 | 23 | |
| 7 | Rapport, Richard | 2735 | 22 | |
| 8 | Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi | 2691 | 21 | |
| 9 | Giri, Anish | 2737 | 20 | |
| 10 | Keymer, Vincent | 2740 | 19 | |
| 11 | Anton Guijarro, David | 2706 | 16 | |
| 12 | Naroditsky, Daniel | 2617 | 16 | |
| 13 | Harikrishna, Pentala | 2679 | 14 | |
| 14 | Hansen, Eric | 2618 | 13 | |
| 15 | Aditya Mittal | 2569 | 12 | |
| 16 | Grandelius, Nils | 2632 | 10 |
All games rounds 13-15
The Aimchess Rapid, the seventh event in the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, takes place October 14-20, 2022 on chess24. The preliminaries consisted of a round-robin among 16 players, from which the top eight advanced to the knockout stage. There, they play a match of four rapid games (15+10) in each round and if necessary, a blitz + armageddon tiebreak. The prize fund is $150,000.
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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