Carlsen Wins the Total Chess Blitz Swiss on 7/9, Unbeaten

Magnus Carlsen opened the Total Chess World Championship Tour Pilot in Budapest by winning the nine-round blitz tiebreaker on 7/9, unbeaten. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave finished second on 6.5 and Levon Aronian third on 6. The 24 players played a 3+2 Swiss on Tuesday evening at the Anantara New York Palace Hotel.

The result carries no prize bracket weight by itself, but it travels with the players all the way through the event. It breaks ties in the group stage, sets the semifinal pairings in the knockout brackets and, per FIDE, gives the higher-ranked player the choice of colour in the first blitz game of each knockout match.

How Carlsen got there

Carlsen beat Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Richard Rapport, Arjun Erigaisi, Anish Giri and Haik Martirosyan, and drew four, including against Vachier-Lagrave, Nepomniachtchi, Niemann and Aronian. He was not always comfortable.

He told TV 2: “Whenever I could play on instinct, it was pretty good. Whenever I couldn’t play on instinct, it was pretty bad.”

The round-two win over Rapport was the clearest example. Rapport, who had beaten Fabiano Caruana in round one, outplayed Carlsen from the black side of a King’s Indian, but Carlsen turned the position around in the time scramble.

In round four he beat Erigaisi after judging that 28…Rh6?? was a “paper tiger”, a threat with no real teeth, and took the free knight.

Erigaisi still had a big evening: he was the only player to beat Vachier-Lagrave, and his round-eight win over Caruana put him half a point off the lead before Aronian beat him in the last round.

The last-round decider

Carlsen and Vachier-Lagrave were level on 6/8 going into the final round after MVL beat Alireza Firouzja in round eight. Vachier-Lagrave was held to a draw by Hans Niemann. Carlsen beat Martirosyan with Black, converting a pawn-up endgame that Chess.com says was objectively holdable, after 43…Nd4?.

Carlsen was modest about it: “It’s extremely unlikely that anyone will finish tied when there are three points for a win. It doesn’t make much difference to the tournament, but it’s still nice to win.” His point is fair, since the group stage scores 3 for a win and 1 for a draw, so ties on points should be rare.

Others worth noting

Vachier-Lagrave beat Mamedyarov, Keymer, Nepomniachtchi, Artemiev and Firouzja, drew three and lost only to Erigaisi. Chess.com picked his round-four win over Nepomniachtchi, a Rossolimo Sicilian with a temporary knight sacrifice, as its Game of the Day.

Five players tied for fourth on 5.5: Erigaisi, Firouzja, Caruana, Niemann and Rapport. Vaishali R beat Niemann in round one and Wesley So in round three, finishing on 4. Praggnanandhaa R closed with a win over Andrew Hong for 4.5.

What comes next

The groups were drawn before play. Carlsen is in Group C with Giri, Nepomniachtchi, Mamedyarov, Martirosyan and Abhimanyu Mishra. Group D holds So, Erigaisi, Vachier-Lagrave, Niemann, Assaubayeva and Vaishali, while Group B has Caruana, Praggnanandhaa, Keymer and Rapport.

The group stage is a double round-robin at 45+30, two rounds a day over five days, starting today, Wednesday, November 11.

Only group winners reach the title bracket. In the 2027 Tour legs, winning that bracket will be worth the maximum 30 Tour points; this pilot awards none. The event runs through November 21 and has a $650,000 prize fund.