Three GMs Tie In Biggest, Richest Titled Player Tuesday
It wasn't quite as clean as his first three titles, and this time he had to share the winner's check.
GM Baadur Jobava won his fourth Titled Player Tuesday event but shared this crown with two others, GM Eltaj Safarli and GM Jose Carlos Ibarra Jerez. All three finished with 7.5/9 and all won $583.33 by splitting the top three prizes ($1,000, $500, $250).
With the total purse increased 150 percent to $2,500 for this iteration, a record 102 titled players participated Tuesday. Amongst them were 28 grandmasters, also a record.
They weren't just any GMs. Three of the players are currently playing in the FIDE Grand Prix! Not taking a "rest day" included GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Leinier Dominguez, and Jobava (the second time he's competed from a FIDE Grand Prix -- he won the inaugural event just after Tashkent finished in October, 2014).
Throw in the first event participation by world number four GM Hikaru Nakamura and the world champion's second GM Laurent Fressinet, and you've got a well-credentialed field.
You may think that all this chalk would make an underdog unlikely to succeed, but several proved their mettle today. More on that later.
In the first two rounds, all went according to form, at least considering the results. The 100-plus players produced only 15 perfect 2-0 scores after two rounds. Nakamura won both despite some interesting events.
In round one, he didn't make his first move until only 1:11 remained his clock (the event is a nine-round Swiss played at 3+2). He ended up winning with 1:37 remaining, thanks to a clever fork of king and queen. In round two, he parted with his queen after she became ensnared, then won wildly, finishing with another king and queen fork!
Round three produced the first surprise. Nakamura, fresh off 18 hours of plane rides, faced more struggles. He only mustered a draw against GM Axel Bachmann.
The unofficial king of Titled Tuesday was doing his normal thing. Jobava continued playing the Veresov Attack and Larsen's Opening and winning.
Amidst Nakamura's struggles, FM Eric Rosen proved the first dark horse of the event. Despite having a Chess.com blitz rating barely in the 2000s (and therefore 500-800 points behind the other leaders), he began with 3.5/4 before fading late.
By round five we had clarity at the top. Only two players remained perfect on 4.0/4 and thus squared off. Jobava, with the now-famous username "LexySexy," took White against Vachier-Lagrave ("LyonBeast"). The game lacked the usual Jobava drama -- he played a relatively staid Reverse Dragon and won when the French number one inexplicably hung a piece on move 28.
With Nakamura squeaking out a win, many expected his 4.5 points and top rating to create a matchup with Jobava, all alone at 5.0. That didn't happen in the pairings, and instead Vachier-Lagrave matched with Nakamura and Jobava with Bachmann.
For those who thought that Jobava couldn't reach new levels of creativity, just look at his knights after move 9. Try to guess which was the king's knight and which was the queen's knight!
The two world top-10 players competed in the highest-rated game in Titled Player Tuesday history, which shockingly also became one of the shortest. Nakamura chatted afterward that he knew 6...b5 was not quite sound. Strangely, for the third time in the tournament, Nakamura's game featured a king and queen fork, but this time he was victimized by the tactic.
"This has been pretty bad all around," Nakamura wrote. He admitted that he also had losing positions in the last two rounds. In this game, he prefered trading knights instead of 12...Kf7.
IM Danny Rensch explained in the live broadcast on Chess.com/TV that after 12...Nxd5 13. exd5 13...Nf6 would allow Black to trade or displace White's lone remaining knight.
GM Hikaru Nakamura, the highest-rated blitz player on Chess.com, is usually at home in front of a computer (photo: Tyson Mao).
Still lurking was past Titled Tuesday winner GM Georg Meier (along with GM Daniel Naroditsky, the only other man to win the event going into Tuesday). He stood on 5.5/6, as did the next player that surprised, young American IM Akshat Chandra (who finished in the money, tied for 8th).
In round seven, two Titled Tuesday champs matched up, Jobava and Meier, with predicatable results -- another Veresov and another win for the Georgian number one.
"Is there something about Titled Player Tuesday that just makes Jobava a stud?" Rensch asked.
The win was the 18th straight for Jobava over the last three events (he went a perfect 4/4 and 7/7 in two truncated events in January). It looked to be another runaway (he also began 8/8 in his first win) until a crucial round eight.
Fellow Titled Tuesday veteran Ibarra Jerez stopped Jobava in his tracks. The Spanish GM took a page out of MVL's playbook by sacrificing a knight early against the uncastled king.
The leader's loss seemed to leave the door slightly ajar for the trailers, but it was Meier that took advantage of the good fortune, not Nakamura.
How did he do it? In their head-to-head encounter, Meier either played one of the weirder mouseslips or most effective psychological ploys of all time. It's hard to say. What shall we call 1. Nf3 and 2. Ng1!? The Neo-Neo Alekhine? In any case, Nakamura placed all his chips on the h-file, but he busted out when Meier closed it down.
Nakamura withdrew after this second loss, which left him mathematically unable to catch the leaders.
Things @redbull does not seem to cure are jetlag/tiredness and bad play! Congrats to the winners of the @chesscom Titled Tuesday event!
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) February 24, 2015
Going into the final round, Jobava, Safarli and Ibarra Jerez all stood on 7.0/8, while Meier was the lone player on 6.5/8.
Ibarra Jerez took White versus Meier, and just after the starting gun, the two agreed on a draw. Meier chatted that his 13th and final turn was a "terrible move" due to 14. Bc4. "I wanted to play for a win."
To finish equal first, Ibarra Jerez needed a completely unlikely draw between the other two leaders. Why "unlikely"? Well, Jobava had played 37 Titled Tuesday games up to that point, with exactly 33 wins, four losses, and zero draws.
Amazingly, this time the Veresov got him an extra pawn, but only a half-point.
So with the three grandmasters all still knotted at 7.5/9, they each are co-champions of the sixth Titled Tuesday.
A four-way tied for fourth with 7.0/9 produced $112.50 paychecks and two final unlikely stories. Vachier-Lagrave and Meier recovered for this placement, but Latvian NM Arturs Bernotas and Venezuelan FM Pedro Ramon Martinez Reyes also enjoyed a day in the sun.
Three players on 6.5/9 all received $100 (10 places paid for this expanded prize fund, as opposed to the usual five). Here's the final standings:
Titled Tuesday, 24 Feb 2015 | Final Standings (Top 25)
| # | Rk | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Score | SB |
| 1 | 7 | AZE | GM | EltajSafarli | Safarli, Eltaj | 7.5 | 44.25 |
| 2 | 23 | ESP | GM | jcibarra | Ibarra Jerez, JosÊ Carlos | 7.5 | 39.25 |
| 3 | 2 | GEO | GM | LexySexy | Jobava, Baadur | 7.5 | 38.75 |
| 4 | 3 | FRA | GM | LyonBeast | Vachier Lagrave, Maxime | 7 | 33 |
| 5-6 | 29 | LVA | NM | Ar4uha | Bernotas, Arturs | 7 | 31.5 |
| 5-6 | 5 | SWE | GM | GeorgMeier | Meier, Georg | 7 | 31.5 |
| 7 | 82 | VEN | FM | pedromartinez91 | martinez, pedro | 7 | 28 |
| 8 | 6 | FRA | GM | Nouki | undisclosed | 6.5 | 31.5 |
| 9 | 34 | RUS | IM | 9ShMat2 | Shcherbin, Matvei | 6.5 | 28.25 |
| 10 | 73 | USA | IM | QuestToGM | Chandra, Akshat | 6.5 | 27.5 |
| 11 | 15 | PRY | GM | chito89 | Bachmann, Axel | 6 | 32.5 |
| 12-13 | 4 | ARG | IM | megarompa | Liascovich, Lucas A. | 6 | 27 |
| 12-13 | 27 | USA | GM | Inopov | Boomboom, Chess Pacman | 6 | 27 |
| 14 | 14 | FRA | GM | Zlatan56 | Fressinet, Laurent | 6 | 26.5 |
| 15 | 13 | BGR | FM | Tilicheev_Viacheslav | Viacheslav, Tilicheev | 6 | 24.75 |
| 16 | 8 | USA | GM | DanielNaroditsky | Naroditsky, Daniel | 6 | 24.5 |
| 17 | 41 | FRA | IM | tac49 | undisclosed | 6 | 24.25 |
| 18 | 89 | DEU | FM | Schemato | undisclosed | 6 | 20.25 |
| 19 | 1 | USA | GM | Hikaru | Nakamura, Hikaru | 5.5 | 31 |
| 20 | 30 | FRA | GM | tigrangharamian | Gharamian, Tigran | 5.5 | 23 |
| 21 | 31 | LVA | GM | igorkovalenko | Kovalenko, Igor | 5.5 | 21.5 |
| 22-23 | 63 | RUS | CM | stepanosinovsky | Osinovsky, Stepan | 5.5 | 21 |
| 22-23 | 11 | VNM | FM | wonderfultime | Le, Minh | 5.5 | 21 |
| 24 | 18 | ARM | GM | Gevorg_Harutjunyan | Harutjunyan, Gevorg | 5.5 | 20.5 |
| 25 | 21 | LVA | GM | arturchix | Neiksans, Arturs | 5.5 | 19.25 |
A reminder that Titled Player Tuesdays are switching to the first Tuesday of the month starting in March, 2015. That means the seventh edition is only a week away!
All events are at 11 am PST (GMT -8) and the full schedule for 2015 can be found at the bottom of the historical archive.
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Mike Klein began playing chess at the age of four in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, he lost to Josh Waitzkin at the National Championship featured in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." A year later, Mike became the youngest member of the very first All-America Chess Team, and was on the team a total of eight times. In 1988, he won the K-3 National Championship, and eventually became North Carolina's youngest-ever master. In 1996, he won clear first for under-2250 players in the top section of the World Open. Mike has taught chess full-time for a dozen years in New York City and Charlotte, with his students and teams winning many national championships. He now works at Chess.com as a Senior Journalist and at ChessKid.com as the Chief Chess Officer. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, he was awarded Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. He has also previously won other awards from the CJA such as Best Tournament Report, and also several writing awards for mainstream newspapers. His chess writing and personal travels have now brought him to more than 85 countries.
