Carlsen wins the 2022 Tata Steel Chess Tournament for the eighth time
Round 12 of the 2022 Tata Steel Chess Tournament ended with a new Champion! Magnus Carlsen takes the title from Van Foreest and his eighth Tata Steel Title in total. After beating GM Fabiano Caruana and being assured with one more point from his last match in the tournament against Dubov, Carlsen will watch R13 today relaxed and insusceptible.
In his final game of this year’s Masters, Carlsen picked the Sicilian against Caruana’s 1. e4! “Draw was also good for me, but I guess I was feeling a bit bolder and kind of wanted to play. He [Caruana] clearly wanted to play as well, so we got into a good fight” Carlsen said after the game. In their game, the World Champion went for a risky plan, but Caruana followed a completely wrong plan, forcing himself into an endgame against two powerful bishops. According to Magnus, the win was not obvious, but he would eventually have it.
About the tournament in general, Carlsen acknowledged that there were lots of positives in his playing especially in comparison with the past 2 years. “The huge amount of chances I got were partly due to my opponents playing a bit weaker than usual but I think I also managed to create more of them,” he said. With nine winning positions and five converted to a point, the eight-time Tata Steel Champion is satisfied with his performance, and his rating evolution!
Carlsen repeated that you want things to be decided on the board, but Dubov is still unable to play the last round of the tournament.
Besides Carlsen’s almost inevitable conquest of the title, Round 12 had some fascinating games, with Mamedyarov refuting an incorrect piece sacrifice by Vidit, Duda escaping with a draw against Foreest, and Shankland out preparing Karjakin in the Nimzo-Indian.
Sam Shankland won his first game of the tournament against Sergey Karjakin, and also in record time! Thanks to good preparation in the Nimzo-Indian, Shankland had a walk on the beach.
On the other hand, Duda managed to escape a hard position against Van Foreest. The Polish GM was clearly lost for a couple of moves but Van Foreest could not calculate his way to victory and the game ended in a draw.
Mamedyarov found the correct move though, after a big blunder of Vidit. Actually, It did not cost Mamedyarov much effort to refute Vidit’s bishop sacrifice on h6, and win the game.
Rapport never came close to winning against Esipenko and fought for the draw he reached at move 36. Also, Giri was too comfortable with his position against Grandelius, and even after his suboptimal last move, the game ended in a draw.
Watch R13 with us, on Sunday the 30th, at 13:00 UTC: https://chessarena.com/broadcasts/11117
