It was a bad day for the world’s strongest chess couple as GMs Alexander Grischuk and Kateryna Lagno were both knocked out of the 2023 FIDE World Cup in round-two tiebreaks. Grischuk lost to 17-year-old Iranian GM Bardiya Daneshvar, while women’s 4th seed Lagno was sent packing by Indian WGM Maria Ann Gomes.
GMs Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So flirted with disaster, but joined fellow top GMs Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in round three, which begins on Saturday, August 5, at 7 a.m. ET / 13:00 CEST / 4:30 p.m IST.
How to watch the 2023 FIDE World Cup
There were no less than 39 tiebreaks on Friday, 30 in the World Cup Open section and nine in the Women’s. Once again most matches were decided in the first two games.
25-Minute Games: 28 Players Eliminated
“The top players just keep the games going, keep the match going, and eventually the quality will show,” said Nakamura, and that was as good an explanation as any for why none of the top seeds in the Open tournament fell at this stage. Some eased through, with Giri and Vachier-Lagrave in no danger as they made a draw and a win to clinch their matches against GMs Arseniy Nesterov and Valentin Dragnev respectively. So and Nakamura made the same results, but they went through hell on the way to reaching round three.
Sixth seed So can’t have imagined his match against 123rd seed GM Emre Can from Turkey could be so tough. The three-time U.S. champion found himself struggling with the white pieces in the first classical game, was very close to lost in the second, and then found the experience repeated in the first rapid tiebreak. 23.Nxa7! left So on the ropes.
23.Nxa7! and Emre Can is again putting the pressure on Wesley So, for a 3rd game in a row! https://t.co/7xc586XHP4 #FIDEWorldCup #c24live pic.twitter.com/1i3L6hbd32
— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 4, 2023
For a long time things looked grim for Black, but So somehow found a way not to just to hold on but to win.
These were the final stages.
Wesley So was losing, then drawing, then winning, then drawing, then winning again, and finally he takes the lead in the toughest of matches against Emre Can! #FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/7fOcOIs2mZ
— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 4, 2023
That left So back in his comfort zone of only needing a draw in the second game, and after opening 1.b3 he successfully steered the game to a peaceful outcome.
Number-two seed Nakamura’s match against Indian Champion GM Karthik Venkataraman was even more tense. It started with one of the longest rapid games you’ll ever witness, as Nakamura regretted a missed chance and then didn’t get a second opportunity in the over 100 moves that followed.
After a rapid game lasting over 1.5 hours and 144 moves, Karthik once again frustrates Nakamura! #FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/LudRkdVAxC
— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 4, 2023
Nakamura was impressed by his 2565-rated opponent.
“If he was 15 or 16, I would have said I wouldn’t be surprised by the way he played, but he is 23… It’s very clear he’s underrated. His decision making, especially in this first game today, when he had limited time, in a couple of spots he found the absolute best moves. It shows his intuition is very good and, at least as far as positional play goes, he’s very strong. I think he’ll easily cross 2600 very soon.”
Nakamura confessed that game left him “kind of tilted”, and that spilled over into a poor start to the second game. Things got wild, and in the middle Karthik correctly chose not to acquiesce to a draw by repetition. For a fleeting moment the Indian champion was winning, but when he missed the chance Nakamura hit back and managed to seal a round-three clash with Hungarian GM Benjamin Gledura.
That struggle was our Game of the Day, and has been annotated by GM Rafael Leitao below.
Some of the top women’s stars also made it through tiebreaks smoothly. Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun pounced on a blunder to ease past IM Eva Repkova. Ju said she wasn’t feeling tired after having some time to recover from the recent match, adding, “I feel love and passion just to play chess!”
Defending Women’s World Cup champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk bounced back after the surprise win for her opponent WIM Tianqi Yan the day before, while eight-time US Women’s Champion GM Irina Krush did the same, winning both 25-minute games against Canadian WGM Maili-Jade Ouellet. “I’m old enough to be her mum,” said Krush, while explaining why they’d never met before.
Another U.S. star, IM Carissa Yip, saw her World Cup ended by GM Zhao Xue, but Yip came up with the best self-deprecating tweet of the day.
me when i lose https://t.co/gmpjnG8Hpg
— Carissa Yip (@carissayipchess) August 4, 2023
Those results all went with rating, but we got two big shocks. Women’s fourth seed, and former world championship finalist, GM Kateryna Lagno is out of the 2023 event, after losing to 226-point-lower-rated WGM Mary Ann Gomes from India.
Their match had seen three draws, before Lagno made a fateful one-move blunder. She later got some chances to survive, but it wasn’t to be.
That wasn’t the only shock, as seventh seed GM Nana Dzagnidze fell to the 58th seed, IM Klaudia Kulon from Poland. That clash saw two wild games of attack and counter-attack that could easily have gone either way before Kulon emerged the 1.5-0.5 winner.
10-Minute Games: Five Players Eliminated
The Women’s action wrapped up early, with the single match remaining, IM Irina Bulmaga vs. IM Mai Narva ending in the victory of Narva. Bulmaga had bounced back twice, but fell just short of bouncing back a third time to prolong the match.
In the Open section GM Rauf Mamedov overcame GM Alexandr Predke, GM Mustafa Yilmaz beat GM Awonder Liang, and GM David Navara defeated GM Niclas Huschenbeth despite losing the first game of the day after missing a chance to play a beautiful shot. 39.Qe4? should have been an unfortunate choice.
The 12-time Czech champion nevertheless bounced back to win the next three games and book a clash against Indian prodigy GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu in round three.
The most dramatic route to round three at this stage, however, was that of another Indian GM, Arjun Erigaisi, who after five draws was able to finish with a beautiful queen sacrifice against GM Sergei Azarov.
Arjun Erigaisi finds a beautiful queen sac finish to go through to a Round 3 clash with Vladimir Fedoseev! https://t.co/aC2Hnb7svu#FIDEWorldCup pic.twitter.com/ThHnY7xzCt
— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 4, 2023
Just 12 players remained.
5-Minute Games: Four Players Eliminated
This was the moment when the great Ukrainian GM Vasyl Ivanchuk, who had made four draws, sprang into life to win both blitz games against Chilean GM Cristobal Henriquez Villagra.
A single win in eight games was enough for GM Vidit Santosh Gujrathi to get past GM Dimitrios Mastrovasilis, GM Jonas Buhl Bjerre blundered an instant draw in a must-win game against GM Gadir Guseinov, and former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov won a wild clash against German GM Dmitrij Kollars.
3-Minute Games: Two Players Eliminated
Two matches went all the way to three-minute games, with GMs Alexander Donchenko and Mateusz Bartel trading utterly convincing wins with the white pieces until Donchenko had the good fortune to get White in the first sudden-death game.
The most dramatic clash of the day, however, saw seventh seed and three-time world blitz champion GM Alexander Grischuk lose to a new 17-year-old hope from Iran, GM Bardiya Daneshvar.
The match was an absolute thriller, with Daneshvar needing to win on demand twice, while in the penultimate game he tortured Grischuk up to move 163 in the famously difficult to defend Rook + Bishop vs. Rook endgame.
In what became the final game Grischuk had the white pieces and soon got every chance to win the match and progress to round three. Move 42 was the moment on which the outcome of the game turned.
Our photographer, WFM Maria Emelianova, explains that Daneshvar didn’t realise it was sudden death and thought he still had to make a draw in the next game against Grischuk. Hence no elation at a potentially career-defining win!
Congratulations to 17-year-old Iranian Bardiya Daneshvar on knocking Alexander Grischuk out of the 2023 #FIDEWorldCup after an epic match! pic.twitter.com/2LQvYiZ8vy
— chess24.com (@chess24com) August 4, 2023
Later, however, Daneshvar got to celebrate with the other Iranian-born players in Baku.
Daneshvar now faces GM Saleh Salem in round-three. Here are some of the notable match-ups to watch (all remaining players in the Open section are grandmasters):
We’re down to 32 matches in the Open, and 16 in the Women’s, with the action only set to heat up from here.
The 2023 FIDE World Cup and Women’s World Cup in Baku, Azerbaijan, are big knockout events that will determine six spots in the 2024 FIDE Candidates Tournaments. The action begins July 30 and ends August 24, with a combined $2.5 million prize fund.
