Nepomniachtchi Wins Play-in On Tiebreaks Over Nakamura, Antipov

GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi, Hikaru Nakamura, and Mikhail Antipov finished in a three-way tie with 7/9 in the CrunchLabs Masters 2024 Play-in, but it was Nepomniachtchi who had the best tiebreaks. Mizzou student and CCL star Antipov reaches Division I Placement for the first time, and his clean win against GM Jules Moussard is our Game of the Day.

The top 11 finishers move on to Division I Placement, 18 players to Division II Placement, and 40 to Division III Placement.

Division Placement begins on Thursday, July 18 , starting at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m.

Players Qualified For Division I Placement Stage

• What's The Format And Who's Playing?
• 'It Always Matters If You're Lucky Or Not': Nepomniachtchi Wins
• Divisions II And III

What's The Format And Who's Playing?

The CrunchLabs Masters is the third of four online events that lead to the in-person Champions Chess Tour Finals at the end of the year. Like the last event, the 2024 Chess.com Classic, this will last eight days. The Play-in is the initial stage of determining which division the players will enter later on—and there are three divisions in total.

Based on their performances in the last CCT event, some players get to skip the first two days of this tournament. GMs Alireza Firouzja (Division I winner), GM Magnus Carlsen (Division I runner-up), and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Division II winner) are already in Division I and will start their tournament on July 19, with the other five players still to be determined.

Four other players we didn't see on the first day are GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Wesley So, Grigoriy Oparin, and Dmitry Andreikin. Thanks to their performances in the Chess.com Classic, they start the tournament on July 18, in Division Placement round two.

The Play-in saw 118 participants, nearly all of them grandmasters. The tournament was a nine-round Swiss with a time control of 10+2. The top 11 have a shot at getting into Division I on day two, if they manage to win two matches on Thursday. 

Play-in Final Standings | Top 15

(You can see the full standings here.)

'It Always Matters If You're Lucky Or Not': Nepomniachtchi Wins

"I had a warm-up playing in [Titled] Tuesday yesterday and I was unusually close to the first place," concluded Nepomniachtchi, "but it always matters if you're lucky or not." All in all, "it was a very smooth tournament, but not without a grain of luck."

We'll get to his fortunate escape in round eight against GM Frederik Svane, but we'll start with the two-time challenger's most crushing victory, against GM Benjamin Bok in round five. In that game, Nepomniachtchi reached a winning position with more time than he started with, after his opponent grabbed a sacrificed knight and fell into the well-known "fishing pole trap."

The opening in that game was theoretically relevant, by the way, as Nepomniachtchi explained:

This is some new idea, this [8.]Bc4 [9.]Nf3 move. I mean, now it's not new anymore, but actually I saw it in some video on the Levitov Chess YouTube channel... I also played it a couple of days ago against Fabiano in a blitz game in Zagreb, and also got a better position, and also lost. Now it's finally paying off a little.

His immensely lucky break came in round eight, where the evaluation bar hardly showed a sliver of hope for the black pieces. The German number-four had a draw in the pocket, but thought until he had two seconds left, and instead of repeating a third time he decided to play on for the win. Rather than receiving zero or half a point, Nepomniachtchi went on to win.

With two seconds on the clock, Svane decides to play for the win (declining a repetition) and goes on to lose! Nepomniachtchi keeps the Division I dream alive!https://t.co/mjaJM7tpZd#ChessChamps https://t.co/pWMKBgKdaU pic.twitter.com/ZqAh3jSD3Q

— chess24 (@chess24com) July 17, 2024

His undefeated five wins and four draws was enough to top the scoreboard. As a reward, he receives a bye in the first round of Placement on Thursday.

The other player to go undefeated, with the same number of wins, was Nakamura. His round-two victory against former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov was a classic Nakamura game, where his opponent had an objectively defensible position but succumbed under time pressure and continued threats.

Nakamura had two close calls. In round three, he came closest to losing against GM Oleksandr Bortnyk but ultimately saved a lost position, a skill that the world's elite exhibit time and again. In the last round, Nakamura defended with the Berlin Defense against GM Vladimir Kramnik. The former world champion was pressing and declined a repetition at one point, but the game ultimately ended in a draw, leaving both players in Division I Placement on Thursday.

Antipov suffered one loss, in round six against GM Fabiano Caruana, but bounced back and scored one more win than his co-victors. His round-eight win against Moussard was one of those "make it look easy" games, which GM Rafael Leitao reviews below.

In the final round, Antipov also defeated a suffering GM Arjun Erigaisi, who started the tournament strong with 5.5/7 but then crashed and burned with two losses in the last rounds. The new world number-four deserves an honorable mention, and his round-seven victory against GM Levon Aronian was a display of fantastic form, before that form dissipated.

Arjun ended up 23rd and can still hope to get into Division II of this event.

Division I Placement Round 1 Pairings

Divisions II And III

Below, you can find all the players who will be playing in Division II and III Placement.

Division II:

 
Division III: 

The 2024 CrunchLabs Masters is the third of the Champions Chess Tour's four events and determines one of the players who'll make it to the in-person CCT Finals. The event starts on July 17 at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST and features a $300,000 prize fund.

Previous coverage:

• • Announcing The 2024 CrunchLabs Masters, Champions Chess Tour's Third Even