Charity Cup Day 4: Praggnanandhaa Eliminated Despite Brilliancy
GM David Navara just made it into the knockout phase of the Charity Cup as the Czech GM had the better tiebreak over GM Richard Rapport and GM Praggnanandhaa R., who won a brilliant game in the penultimate round. GM Le Quang Liem finished first in the preliminaries, three points ahead of GM Magnus Carlsen.
How to watch?
The games of the Charity Cup preliminaries can be found here as part of our live events platform. The rounds start daily at 9 a.m. PT / 18:00 CET.
Two players who were still in the bottom half after three days managed to join the top eight anyway. Besides Navara, who won two games and lost one on the final day (which involved three wins for the black pieces!), GM David Anton also did well—actually, even better. The Spanish GM won all three of his games and ended up finishing in fourth place.
Crucial was Anton's win in the final round, at the same time a heart-breaking loss for teenage Praggnanandhaa, who spoiled a winning advantage and was eliminated from the tournament on tiebreak. Admittedly, this middlegame was tough to play:
The round before, Pragg had impressed the viewers with his brilliant 25.Rxa7 that helped the Indian grandmaster to beat GM Jorden van Foreest:
Navara desperately needed a win in that final round, and a Benoni vs. Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun did the trick for him. It was also an instructive game with the theme of opposite-colored bishop middlegames:
Charity Cup Preliminaries | Final Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rating | Perf | Pts |
| 1 | Le, Quang Liem | 2723 | 2897 | 32 | |
| 2 | Carlsen, Magnus | 2854 | 2830 | 29 | |
| 3 | Van Foreest, Jorden | 2714 | 2811 | 27 | |
| 4 | Anton, David | 2694 | 2762 | 24 | |
| 5 | Duda, Jan-Krzysztof | 2720 | 2737 | 23 | |
| 6 | Ding, Liren | 2752 | 2736 | 23 | |
| 7 | Niemann, Hans | 2624 | 2720 | 22 | |
| 8 | Navara, David | 2700 | 2715 | 21 | |
| 9 | Rapport, Richard | 2762 | 2712 | 21 | |
| 10 | Praggnanandhaa, R. | 2664 | 2717 | 21 | |
| 11 | Vidit, Gujrathi | 2723 | 2714 | 20 | |
| 12 | Hansen, Eric | 2669 | 2624 | 16 | |
| 13 | Harikrishna, Pentala | 2716 | 2668 | 16 | |
| 14 | Jones, Gawain | 2672 | 2519 | 10 | |
| 15 | Ju, Wenjun | 2560 | 2526 | 10 | |
| 16 | Lei, Tingjie | 2535 | 2245 | 2 |
This leads to the following pairings for the knockout bracket. Games start on Wednesday at 9 a.m. PT / 18:00 CET.
All Games Day 4
The 2022 Champions Chess Tour's Charity Cup Masters runs March 19-27 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15+10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a knockout that consists of one four-game rapid match during the quarterfinals and semifinals and two four-game rapid matches during the final. Play advance to blitz (5+3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black has four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match ends in a tie. The total prize fund of the event is $150,000, with $750 for each win and $250 for each draw in the preliminaries.
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