Russian chess player Ian Nepomniachtchi took third place at the tournament in St. Louis

The leader of Russian chess, Ian Nepomniachtchi, performed very well at the penultimate stage of the Grand Chess Tour series. In the super tournament in St. Louis, in which grandmasters played rapid chess and blitz, Nepomniachtchi took third place. It preserved his chances of getting into the top three at the end of the entire Grand Chess Tour. Its final stage starts in St. Louis this week.

Tournament in St. Louis was the fifth stage of the largest commercial series in chess now with a prize fund of $1.4 million. One of its main characters turned out to be Ian Nepomniachtchi, for whom the Grand Chess Tour is an opportunity to sweeten the apparently not-so-sweet aftertaste of the next chess season. As part of it, Nepomniachtchi took part in the match for the world title for the second time, but in the spring conceded in it in a tiebreaker against the Chinese Ding Liren. He had several more rather painful misfires (for example, at the World Cup in Baku in August), but truly valuable successes – like the September first place in a strong tournament Levitov Chess Week – A little.

In St. Louis, Ian Nepomniachtchi looked quite good.

He had an uneven first half of the competition – one in which ten grandmasters, including such stars as the Americans Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So, the Dutchman Anish Giri, the French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Alireza Firouzja, fought in rapid, but at least not too much, just a point, behind the low-ranked US representative Ray Robson, who unexpectedly led the race for gold.

But in the blitz part Nepomniachtchi was already very good. At some point he even found himself close to the lead. It was only necessary to maintain tone and concentration in the end. But at the most inopportune moment he failed in the game with Firouzja. As a result, Caruana and Vachier-Lagrave fought for first place in the final round. And it was a very interesting game. Vachier-Lagrave, who was half a point behind, needed to win with black and was able to obtain a position in the endgame that, from the point of view of the computer and the experts who had the opportunity to analyze it calmly, without regard to the running seconds, seemed to almost guarantee him a win. But the Frenchman made a mistake, and Caruana defended the draw. Ian Nepomniachtchi limited himself to sharing third place with the Vietnamese Le Quang Liem. At the same time, if we take the results of blitz games exclusively, the Russian with 11 points is at the top of the hierarchy along with the Vietnamese grandmaster and Caruana.

Now Ian Nepomniachtchi is waiting for another important and expensive competition in the same St. Louis. The final Grand Chess Tour tournament opens in this city on Tuesday – Sinquefield Cup.

In it, control will already be classic, and the selection of participants will become even more powerful. Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave, Firouzja, So, Giri will be joined by other celebrities – Americans Levon Aronian and Lenier Dominguez, Pole Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Romanian Richard Rapport.

Nepomniachtchi, thanks to his good performance in the first St. Louis tournament (sharing third place brought him 7.5 points towards the series standings), retained his chances of ending up in the top three at the end of the series, in which 13 points are awarded for a clear victory in the tournament. The Russian now has a total of 19.5 points. Only Fabiano Caruana (33 points) is out of reach. But Alireza Firouzja and Wesley So are very close – 21.75 and 19.75 points. There is also Magnus Carlsen with 26 points. But the Norwegian, who after giving up the championship title is still ranked highest in the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rankings, will not play in St. Louis.

Alexey Dospehov