Carlsen Wins Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland With 10-Game Winning Streak
World number-one Magnus Carlsen posted an incredible 10-game winning streak to overhaul GM Wei Yi and win the 2024 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland despite starting the day 2.5 points behind. Carlsen caught Wei by beating him in the fourth round of the day. His rival didn't crack, but couldn't keep up the pace as he had to settle for second place, a full six points ahead of third-placed GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda.
In the end, the winning margin was half a point.
Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland Final Standings
Making up a 2.5-point gap in nine rounds is a huge challenge, but Carlsen revealed he felt good as the day began — and that he'd been there before:
"I knew if I had a good day I had a chance and I could feel from the second game on that I was a lot calmer than I was yesterday. So I thought that I was in with a shot. I also knew that I’ve done this before, in the World Blitz in 2017. I came in 2.5 points behind Karjakin and I erased that in four games, beating him in the fourth game, so funnily it was exactly the same this time. I felt very calm today."
I felt very calm today.
—Magnus Carlsen
Carlsen got off to a good start, just as he had the day before, by beating GM Kirill Shevchenko convincingly, but Wei also overcame GM Gukesh Dommaraju with ease. It was the second round that hinted that this might be Carlsen's day and also that Wei wouldn't give up without a fight.
GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu had beaten Carlsen in their clash with opposite colors on the first day of blitz, but this time the world number-one spotted the sharp 25.a4!.
Currently Magnus is borderline winning and Wei Yi borderline losing! #GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/Zf59gy0uup
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 12, 2024
It's a hard move to ignore, since the b5-pawn is attacked twice, but that was better than 25...bxa4? which ran into 26.Bc4! and suddenly Black was busted.
With Wei completely lost it looked as though the gap at the top would be reduced to 1.5 points, but then Keymer played the disastrous 70.c4?? and allowed an amazing desperado queen sac to force stalemate and save half a point.
Carlsen had stopped watching by that point. He commented on his rival's heroics: "I was watching in the playing hall, then I thought the game is over, then I go to the lounge and he’s even saved this one, so that was pretty sick!"
The gap had still closed, if only to two points, and the Norwegian grandmaster didn't allow himself to get downhearted, since there was more revenge to be exacted. This time it was against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who had pulled off a swindle for the ages to win the day before. Carlsen wouldn't make the same mistake twice and he dominated the game, playing fast and practically so that even when he missed some wins or better options it didn't alter the course of the game.
This was the breakthrough, since finally Wei did fall to defeat, in a wild game against Duda. 36.Rxe6? was the final mistake.
It's notable that Duda followed that win with five victories in his next six games, taking him up to a deserved third place.
That result meant that the clash we were all waiting for, Carlsen-Wei, had added spice, since the gap was now a single point and finally the former world champion had everything in his own hands. Unsurprisingly, he didn't let go, despite queens coming off as early as move seven. Carlsen grabbed the open a-file, then started playing on both sides of the board, and finally sealed the deal when his opponent missed a fork in an already dire position.
The final stages as Magnus Carlsen wins the showdown against Wei Yi! #GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/iKtupu0tPQ
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 12, 2024
That's our Game of the Day, with analysis by GM Rafael Leitao below:
Carlsen was flying and went on to win the next two games as well (with some help from Duda not eliminating a key pawn on move 58), so that he'd matched the incredible feat from a year ago in Zagreb of beating all the players in a Grand Chess Tour event in a row.
Now @MagnusCarlsen has done it again, beating all 9 rivals in a #GrandChessTour event in a row... and the day's not over! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/IGY7lW5quT
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 12, 2024
What was remarkable, however, is that Wei also won those two rounds, so that the players were still locked together in first place. Losing the lead might even have taken some of the psychological burden off Wei's shoulders, with Carlsen commenting:
"I think what sort of saved me was that we stopped yesterday after nine rounds. If we’d continued the tournament yesterday, [Wei] would have probably won by a significant margin, but it’s hard, it’s really hard to have such a big lead overnight. You sort of easily get into a defensive mindset, and it’s not like he did poorly today, he still scored plus one, but he didn’t seem as crisp as he was yesterday, so that also gave me a little bit of hope."
It's really hard to have such a big lead overnight.
—Magnus Carlsen
The key round to decide the outcome of the tournament was the seventh of the day, when both leaders were engaged in huge battles. Wei fell just short, being held to an epic 155-move draw by Shevchenko—Wei had in fact been winning for one move as late as move 116.
Even that draw might have been enough to take the sole lead again, since Carlsen's game against Gukesh was one of the few times all day that he got into some real trouble. The watching GM Garry Kasparov was stopped mid-sentence by the brilliant 15.Rxg6! from Gukesh.
Just when Kasparov was saying that Carlsen is playing better here than when he scored 9/9 in a single day in Croatia, Gukesh lands the blow 15.Rxg6!!#GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/6mSBB9ATEu
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 12, 2024
Was the winning streak going to be ended in spectacular style? No, just one move later, Gukesh blundered, and Carlsen went on to win a 10th game in a row and take the sole lead for the first time in Warsaw in 2024.
If you need a man to stop a winning streak, that man is GM Anish Giri, and he weaved his magic to stop the rampage.
😂🤷♂️ https://t.co/qwS0C6hHGN
— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) May 12, 2024
By this stage, however, Fortune had finally turned her back on Wei. Perhaps the craziest game of the tournament saw Praggnanandhaa, with White, emerge victorious from a game that was anyone's to win and where the phrase "every move is a blunder" was close to literally true. It has to be replayed with computer analysis.
That meant Carlsen had a full-point lead going into the final round, where he had the white pieces against GM Arjun Erigaisi. He only needed a draw to clinch overall victory, and he made no mistake, wrapping up a seventh tournament win in a row.
SEVEN TOURNAMENT WINS IN A ROW FOR MAGNUS CARLSEN 👑
— Chess.com (@chesscom) May 12, 2024
🏆 Champions Chess Tour Final
🏆 World Rapid Championship
🏆 World Blitz Championship
🏆 Chessable Masters
🏆 Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T Challenge
🏆 Grenke Chess Classic
🏆 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland
Unstoppable. pic.twitter.com/z6hn06QYDU
His score of 26 points was the same he scored in Zagreb a year ago and just one point short of the record 27/36 score he posted in Kolkata in 2019.
What's perhaps more remarkable, however, is that Wei's 25.5 would also tie as the sixth-highest winning score of all time... but it only earned him second place. Carlsen sympathized:
"It was an incredible performance by Wei Yi still. I had so many moments both yesterday and today where I win my game then I look over, ‘Oh, he won, I’m not any closer,' so he had a performance that you win with every single time!"
He had a performance that you win with every single time!
—Magnus Carlsen on Wei Yi
The remaining players, or more precisely Duda, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun, and Abdusattorov, were in a distant battle for third place, with Duda winning with a 6/7 streak at the finish, including mating Shevchenko in a tense final game. The Polish number-one also had the third-best score for the blitz section.
That left the final standings for prize money and points as follows—note "WC" = wildcard, with only the four regular Grand Chess Tour players picking up points.
As you can see, the world championship challenger's tour debut didn't get off to a flying start. The result is not a huge surprise given that Gukesh is much less known as a rapid and blitz player than most players of his generation, but the practice he's going to get on the tour may come in handy in case the world championship match goes to a playoff.
Meanwhile, the Superbet Rapid & Blitz may be over, but the Chess.com Classic continues for Carlsen, Keymer, and Duda.
The live broadcast was hosted by IM Jovanka Houska, GM Yasser Seirawan, IM Nazi Paikidze, GM Cristian Chirila, and WGM Anastasiya Karlovich.
The 2024 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland is the first event on the 2024 Grand Chess Tour and runs May 8-12 in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. The 10 players first compete in a single rapid round-robin with a time control of 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, followed by a blitz double round-robin with a 5+2 time control.
Previous coverage:
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
