Firouzja Beats Carlsen Twice In Grand Final, Wins 2024 Chess.com Classic

GM Alireza Firouzja is the second player to defeat GM Magnus Carlsen two times in a Grand Final of the Champions Chess Tour, a feat that only GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave achieved previously. On Wednesday, the French number-one won the Chess.com Classic 2024 to earn $30,000, 100 tour points, a spot in the in-person live Finals, and a deserved page in chess history.

Carlsen was, without exaggeration, one move away from winning his eighth consecutive tournament, but a blunder in game four dramatically altered the course of the match. Firouzja won two games on demand and then the armageddon in the second match to complete the turnaround.

Division I Bracket

• Division I Grand Final: Firouzja Defies All Odds
• Division I Grand Final Reset: Firouzja Takes Over

Division I Grand Final: Firouzja Defies All Odds

Firouzja burst into the headlines in 2020 when, at the age of 16, he defeated Carlsen in Chess24's Banter Blitz Cup Final. A year later, he became the youngest player to break 2800 in classical rating, and Carlsen wanted to play a world championship match with him.

But the Gen-Z talent has struggled in recent memory, especially in his attempts to qualify for the world championship through the last two Candidates Tournaments. In the 2022 edition, he (in)famously played bullet chess all night and finished a half-point above last place, and in the 2024 edition he finished second to last.

Was the 20-year-old prodigy stagnating at his young age, or was it a temporary dip in the arc to greatness?

Grand Final Match Score

In the 2024 Chessable Masters, this year's first CCT event, Firouzja played another Grand Final against Carlsen. He won the first match but faltered in the second. To defeat Carlsen in chess these days is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest, so how exactly does one climb it twice?

A few days ago, our statistical model predicted a 93 percent chance for a Carlsen victory. Vachier-Lagrave, in his interview, rated his countryman's chances of winning "from 10-15 percent." With Carlsen leading their lifetime score by double Firouzja's, the latter did the near-impossible.

Frankly, he needed a bit of luck in the first match. After winning game three, Carlsen was about to clinch with another victory in game four when suddenly the wheels came spinning off. Let's start from the beginning.

Carlsen, who came late and started game one with a three-minute time penalty, was in trouble in the first two games. In game one, Firouzja had a slight chance when his opponent sacrificed a knight for two pawns, but no clear win was missed.

Firouzja's misses in game two, which also ended in a draw, were more serious. It really came down to a hectic time scramble, and rather than present a game analysis with question marks on every move at some point, the following clip captures the decisive moment accurately:

Firouzja blunders a queen with a pre-move, then wins the queen back, then has a winning position, and finally it's a draw!

"It has been two peaceful outcomes, but the most non-peaceful games of chess that I have ever seen in my life!" says Tania.#ChessChamps pic.twitter.com/RuAZw7GEf6

— chess24 (@chess24com) May 15, 2024

Game three could have decided it all, in Carlsen's favor. In a Catalan Opening, the Norwegian GM played what Naroditsky called "a positional masterpiece" that culminated with a sick maneuver to trap the black queen. 29...Nxh5? 30.Bb8!! was the most important move of the game, which GM Daniel Naroditsky called "one of the craziest moves I've seen maybe ever," and IM Tania Sachdev called it "a move from another planet!"

... a move from another planet!

—Tania Sachdev 

After Carlsen won, game four was utterly critical in deciding the match. Naroditsky summed it up at the end of the broadcast: "We were one move away from congratulating Magnus Carlsen on an eighth consecutive tournament victory, had he swapped rooks in that double-rook endgame."

We were one move away from congratulating Magnus Carlsen on an 8th consecutive tournament victory.

—Daniel Naroditsky

39...Rcc2?? transformed a winning position into a losing one! Firouzja instantly found the only winning move:

It was a painful loss and the world number-one, rightfully upset, gave vent to his colorful vocabulary in the emotional clip below:

Alireza wins on demand, and Magnus is FURIOUS!!!

WE'RE GOING INTO AN ARMAGEDDON!!! TUNE IN #ChessChamps 👇👇👇 pic.twitter.com/cdvbjasmq0

— Chess.com (@chesscom) May 15, 2024

"I was lucky that he got so tilted after the game four," Firouzja later said. "I knew that after that he couldn't come back." What we saw next was vintage Firouzja, who even admitted that he hadn't prepared any openings. "I'm just too tired of preparing my openings for him, so I just played my stuff."

I'm just too tired of preparing my openings for him, so I just played my stuff.

—Alireza Firouzja

Carlsen had the white pieces in the armageddon, and he started with an interesting idea in the Catalan Opening. 15.Nc3 signaled an exchange sacrifice, which the computer approves of, but it gives White no advantage. Firouzja, needing a draw to win the first match, managed to consolidate with the material advantage and was never worse—he ultimately won the game and, with that, match one.

Grand Final Reset: Firouzja Takes Over

Reset Match Score

Firouzja had the wind in his sails, but the match could have gone either way until the very last game. The first two games were draws, but it's fair to say that Firouzja was on the better end of both. In the first game, he was up a pawn—and then two pawns—before he let it slip. In the second, Carlsen defended well and found a nice knight-reroute to salvage the half-point.

With the white pieces in a must-win armageddon game, Firouzja triumphed in what we can safely call a one-sided game. Carlsen was in trouble after 16.e5 Nd5?, and then after 19.Nd6! Red8?! he was, as GM Rafael Leitao writes, "lost with no real chance to save the game."

Leitao calls it "A surprisingly smooth win for Firouzja on a day where he made the impossible happen." You can check out the full-game analysis below.

It's a disappointing loss for Carlsen, who could have bagged his eighth consecutive tournament victory—matching a record he set in 2019. Now the counter starts over. He told Norwegian TV 2: "It was absolutely not my day, but it's so frustrating that I was one move away from winning the fourth game."

... it's so frustrating that I was one move away from winning the fourth game.

—Magnus Carlsen

Asked whether the blunder in the first match affected the second, Carlsen responded: "No, I played like an a** from the beginning."

It's a reassuring victory for Firouzja, who less than a month after a poor Candidates performance showed the world that, on a good day, he can defeat anyone on earth. What's next? "It's very good preparation for Norway Chess that is coming. It's a good feeling always to win a tournament." You can listen to the full interview, which was also quoted earlier in the article, below:

Firouzja wins a CCT event for the first time and, with it, takes the highest prize. Carlsen still receives $20,000 and 80 tour points, a result that most players would happily accept, but it is less than the former world champion would have expected.

pic.twitter.com/jocGGcDqDB

— Alireza Firouzja (@AlirezaFirouzja) May 15, 2024

Diamonds are forever

— Alireza Firouzja (@AlirezaFirouzja) May 15, 2024

Division I Prize Distribution

There are two more events in the CCT before the end-of-year live Finals, and you can see the leaderboard below. Since Carlsen and Firouzja have already qualified for the Finals, GM Vincent Keymer currently leads by tour points.

CCT Tour Standings After Event 2

Divisions II and III concluded on Tuesday and you can read about the Grand Finals in those divisions here. In the next event, we will see the following players in Division I:

• Firouzja (Div I winner)
• Carlsen (Div I runner-up)
• Vachier-Lagrave (Div II winner)

The following players will also receive a round-one bye for the Division I Placement stage, without needing to pass the Play-in. 

• Keymer (Div I third place)
• GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Div I fourth place)
• GM Wesley So (Div II runner-up)
• GM Dmitry Andreikin (Div III winner)

The third CCT event is scheduled for July 17-24. 

The 2024 Chess.com Classic is the second of the Champions Chess Tour's four events and determines one of the players who'll make it to the in-person CCT Finals. The event starts on May 8 at 12:30 p.m. ET/18:30 CEST/10 p.m. IST and features a $300,000 prize fund.

Previous coverage:

• • Day 7: Vachier-Lagrave Wins Division II, Andreikin Takes Division III
  • Day 6: Firouzja Sets Up Grand Final Vs. Carlsen After Eliminating Duda, Keymer
  • Day 5: Carlsen Beats Keymer, Wins 16th CCT Winners Final In Division I
  • Day 4: Carlsen Evokes Magnus Magic, Keymer Gets Revenge
  • Day 3: Carlsen, Keymer, Duda Win After Doubling Up Tournaments In Poland
  • Day 2: Vachier-Lagrave, Caruana, Wesley So Kicked Out Of Division I By Ivic, Sarana
  • Day 1: Caruana Wins In Final Round To Take Sole 1st In Chess.com Classic Play-in
  • Champions Chess Tour Returns With 2024 Chess.com Classic