Not How He Drew It Up, But Duda Wins Titled Tuesday

Three co-leaders, none of them playing each other, all made draws in the final round, but someone still had to win the Titled Tuesday tournament out of GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Hans Niemann, and Parham Maghsoodloo. And that is the order tiebreaks played out on March 31, as Duda won his first Titled Tuesday of the year and moved into second place in the Titled Tuesday Spring Split Standings.

• Broadcast
• CCT Standings
• Recap

Broadcast

If you missed the Take Take Take broadcast with GM Robert Hess and CM Jon Kristian Haarr, you can catch it below! Duda joined for an interview afterward, admitting, "I think I was just lucky, to be honest."

CCT Standings

GM Nihal Sarin retains his lead, but Duda and Niemann made progress in this week's split standings.

Full Standings | Titled Tuesday Info | CCT Info | CCT Standings

Tournament Recap

With the Candidates Tournament well underway, it was a smaller field than normal in Titled Tuesday, but there was no shortage of drama in the end.

With nine players on 4/4 entering break, Hess was asked for a winner prediction and took Duda. Duda responded by moving to 5/5, and then to 6/6 with a long but clean game.

Maghsoodloo also had 6/6 at this point. In the ensuing battle for continued perfection, the winner was neither. That gave Niemann the opportunity to join Duda and Maghsoodloo in the lead, which he took with a win over GM Arjun Erigaisi. 

The three leaders never split up after that, all of them making draws in rounds eight, 10, and 11, while winning in round nine. In the last round before the break, Duda ended up dead lost against GM Denis Lazavik, but was able to escape with a draw by repetition because of Lazavik's time situation. With Niemann and Maghsoodloo drawing each other, the tie for first place expanded to five players for a brief moment, GMs Jose Martinez and Ian Nepomniachtchi joining the fun.

Coming out of the break, Duda dispatched Nepomniachtchi easily with one mistake, Niemann won on time with just 0.2 seconds left himself, and Maghsoodloo toppled Lazavik after the 19-year-old, in a difficult endgame, recaptured a knight incorrectly on move 44.

The three victors now led the field by a full point, which is how everything stayed. Duda blundered a pawn against Niemann, but kept on fighting until the end and salvaged a draw, just after Maghsoodloo made his own draw against Arjun.

With one round left, the matchups between the co-leaders had been exhausted, so instead Niemann played Andreikin, Duda faced GM Benjamin Bok, and Maghsoodloo took on Nepomniachtchi. Niemann gained a quick edge on Andreikin, who had blundered a skewered exchange. Maghsoodloo was also doing well, but Nepomniachtchi put him to the test and got into a drawn queen ending. The draw was confirmed just as Duda-Bok also ended in a draw, while Niemann's advantage continued to hold... until it didn't. Mere moves from outright victory, Niemann settled for second place.

Here are all three of the co-leaders' draws in round 11:

The Game Review evaluation bars from the three games also tell a story. At some point in all three games, all three co-leaders, who all had White, were winning, but every game was ultimately drawn.

Two other players entering the round on 8.5 points, GMs Sergey Drygalov and Emin Ohanyan, also drew each other, although neither had the tiebreaks to take first place had they won. Instead, GM Minh Le won his last-round game to take fourth place on 8.5 points, followed by Drygalov in fifth and Andreikin in sixth. GM Alexandra Kosteniuk won the women's prize.

March 31 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings.)

Prizes: Duda $1,000, Niemann $750, Maghsoodloo $350, Le $250, Drygalov $150, Andreikin $100, Kosteniuk $100. Streamers' prizes to be posted on the Events page.

Titled Tuesday is Chess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It begins at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time/17:00 Central European/20:30 Indian Standard Time.