Petrosian Wins Titled Tuesday Ahead Of Giri, Caruana

Titled Tuesday returned to its regular schedule this week on the first Tuesday of the month. Joining the fun with 275 titled players were two household names of chess: the world championship challenger Fabiano Caruana and the Dutch number-one Anish Giri. 

The eventual clear tournament winner was Tigran Petrosian, who scored 9/10. Chess.com fans will remember Petrosian as a regular contender and winner of the qualifier to play Magnus Carlsen in the Grandmaster Blitz Battle Championship.

World Championship Challenger Fabiano Caruana Streams His Games

The huge news as the event got underway was Caruana's entrance into the streaming universe. Caruana joins the elite likes of Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in streaming play and commentary live on Twitch.tv.

As the chess world looks forward to the world-championship match between Carlsen and Caruana in November, the community can enjoy live commentary from both players.

Caruana's live stream started bumpily as he lost in round two to FM Nick Raptis after missing some tactics and dropping a piece, but he rebounded with two fairly comfortable wins before playing this swindle-filled game against Gawain Jones.

By his own admission, he was "totally lost."

Gawain Jones must have more performance swings in his games than any other grandmaster. | Photo: Maria Emelianova, Chess.com

As exciting as that game was, it would be hard to call it "correct." From this point, though, Caruana was cruising and bruising. In round seven, he found a way to press in a symmetrical position against FM Renato Terry Lujan, eventually reaching this conclusion:

Possibly Caruana's best game was this ensuing victory in which he cavalierly proffered an exchange to turn the play against GM Alan Pichot of Argentina. Had a historic grandmaster offered this sacrifice 100 years ago, this game would likely be in many textbooks on exchange sacrifices.

Watch Caruana's full stream with the dulcet (though slightly distorted) tones of GM Cristian Chirila on backup vocals.

Anish Giri Enters The Fray

Always attuned to opportunities for trash talk, Anish Giri made a last-minute decision to enter the tournament in player-three-has-entered-the-game style.

A recreation of Giri's surprise entrance into the Titled Tuesday field.

In joining the tournament, Giri responded to Caruana's streaming announcement with a tweet that seems to contain at least three inside jokes, some of which this author thinks he gets, and some of which he definitely does not. Alternatively, perhaps Giri's second-sentence assertion is truthful, and there is simply little sense in this tweet. What ground was to be given? Which feet were cold? Covfefe.

Giri won several nice positional efforts in which he outclassed his opponents, but his most fun win was surely this Marshall Gambit victory against Pichot, the same GM against whom Caruana sacrificed an exchange.

Giri lamented missing an opportunity to rain on Caruana's parade with an on-stream victory. Perhaps next time he will have to stream his own games so that he can maintain a polite flow of trash-talking commentary throughout the event. It is after all quite difficult to tweet and play at the same time. 

Two Fine Games

The victorious Petrosian had to make his way to the top with Black against Giri. That's never an easy task, but when put to the test, he delivered in a big way, showing the maxim that Sicilian endgames always favor Black to be true.

By Chess.com rating, the top seed of the event was Dmitry Andreikin. He eventually finished in fourth place after losing a critical late-tournament game against Petrosian, but he made a nice mark in round three as he won the following pretty miniature.

Final Standings | May Titled Tuesday

Find the complete crosstable, standings, and games here.

IM Daniel Rensch streamed coverage of Titled Tuesday, wearing a Batman shirt. Watch the show and party like it's time for Saturday-morning cartoons! 

Petrosian pocketed $500 for his clear first place victory. His chasers, Giri and Caruana, each received $325 for their shared second place. The fabulous four who shared fourth place, GMs Conrad Holt, Alireza Firouzja, Dmitry Andreiken, and IM Swayams Mishra each received $62.50.

The $100 prize for best stream goes to...drumroll please...GM Fabiano Caruana!!! Welcome to the world of streaming, world championship challenger!