Candidates Tournament 2022- Recap
Ian Nepomniachtchi creates history
2022 Candidates, an eight-player chess tournament to determine who gets the right to challenge the world champion, Magnus Carlsen has just been finished. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi won the tournament for the 2nd time in a row with 9.5/14(+5–0=9) and is set to challenge Magnus(?) in 2023 for the World Chess Championship. With this ominously dominant performance, Ian Nepomniachtchi made a new world record scoring the highest in the current candidates format.
Fide announced The magnificent Palacio de Santoña, a historical building in Madrid, will be the venue of this iteration of the candidates. As the first candidate to start after the chess boom, the excitement and anticipation for the tournament were immense among the millions of chess fans around the world. However, the announcement of the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen that he is unlikely to play the next championship match did add some complications. If Carlsen's unwillingness to defend his title for the 5th time comes to fruition, it was decided that the next world championship match will be played between the number 1 and 2 player from the standings of the candidates tournament.
The tournament started with Ding Liren and Fabiano Caruana being the clear favorites both by the metrics and the pundits. Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Richard Rapport were considered to be the dark horses. Alireza Firouza, the 19-year-old chess sensation who recently became the youngest player to break the 2800 elo barrier, was by far the player with the most expectations. People were keen on the performance of the young GM as he was the only one against whom Carlsen professed interest in defending his title.
It is time to check out the 8 participants and analyze their overall tournament performances. We will be doing this in ascending order from the bottom of the standings.
8. GM Richard Rapport, 2764
Result- 5.5/14 (+1–4=9)
Rating Change: -13.4, TPR: 2693
An incredibly creative player. Although few chances were given to him to win the whole thing, he was still considered a contender for the top place if things go well. His joint last-place finish was a shock to some degree. He had a very solid start with 6 draws in a row. Then in the 7th round, with the white pieces, he made an extremely erroneous decision to decline a repetition of moves and decided to sacrifice his queen for two rooks. This ended up costing him the game against the eventual tournament winner, Ian Nepomniachtchi. He bounced right back and managed to win the very next game against Duda to even out his score. But he failed to keep up his momentum and scored only 1.5/6 in the last 6 games of the tournament with losses against Alireza Firouza, Ding Liren, and Teimour Radjabov.
7. GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, 2750
Result- 5.5/14 (+1–4=9)
Rating Change: -10.2, TPR: 2695
Being the lowest-rated player on the field, the odds of him winning the tournament were relatively low. However, he is young and has become the Achilles Heel of Magnus Carlsen whom he beat in the world cup semifinals to qualify for the candidates. So, he did have some Magnus appeal when the world champion is evidently uninterested to defend his title. His journey in the tournament was quite similar to Rapport. Like Richard, he started the tournament with several(5) draws. In the 6th round, he got paired up with Nepo and lost the game with black pieces. That ended up being his only decisive game in the first half. The second half of the tournament was nothing short of a nightmare for Duda. He started with 2 losses in a row against Richard Rapport and Ding Liren. He fought back the very next round and beat Caruana with white in the 10th round. His tournament ended on a bad note as he only managed to score 1.5/4 in the remaining 4 rounds with 3 draws and 1 loss against Nakamura.
6. GM Alireza Firouza, 2793
Result- 6/14(+2–4=8)
Rating Change: -14.8, TPR: 2719
Iran-born French Super-GM had the most eyes on him out of everyone in the tournament and for good reasons. Current world champion Magnus Carlsen declared that he is unlikely to play another championship match unless it is against an opponent of the future generation. This has made the chess fans follow the youngster with great enthusiasm as he became the third-youngest person (after Carlsen and Fischer) to qualify for the candidates. His run in the candidates, yet, was sort of disappointing. He went winless in the first half conceding 2 defeats against Ian Nepomniachtchi and Fabiano Caruana. It was nothing special in the 2nd half as well, but he did manage to win 2 games. The first one came against Rapport with white and in the last round, he got his revenge against Caruana by beating him with the black pieces. The wunderkind did stir some controversies around the chess world. Following his loss to Nakamura in the 10th round, he played an online bullet marathon of 250 games against GM Naroditsky the night before his clash with Ian Nepomniachtchi. Later, that game resulted in another loss for him.
I have done many idiotic things during my chess career, but staying up all night, playing bullet, during the Candidates, is not one of them.
-GM Nigel Short, former World Championship Challenger
Players and pundits alike are associating this sub-par performance with his lack of experience in playing at the highest level.
5. GM Fabiano Caruana, 2783
Result- 6.5/14 (+3–4=7)
Rating Change: -7.6, TPR: 2741
The former world championship challenger was considered one of the clear favorites to win the tournament. He started incredibly strong with 5/7 securing 3 wins and drawing the rest in the first half. This essentially made the candidates a two-horse race between him and Nepo after 7 rounds. Or so everyone thought. Caruana, who is generally known for his consistency witnessed a disastrous turn of events for himself. In his attempt to catch the tournament leader, Caruana might have pushed too hard. The risks he took backfired on him and he lost 4 games in the next 7 rounds drawing the remaining ones.
4. GM Hikaru Nakamura, 2760
Result- 7.5/14 (+4–3=7)
Rating Change: +7.8, TPR: 2803
The American Grandmaster turned into a full-time chess streamer during the covid-19 phase. He made his much-awaited comeback to classical chess in the Fide Grand-Prix series where he was granted a wild card entry. Nakamura surpassed everyone's expectations and won the whole event thus ensuring his qualification for the 2022 candidates. Even after such a stellar performance in the qualification tournament, his chance in the candidates was considered low by the chess experts and masters. Their doubt seemed to be in the right place when Nakamura lost his first-round game against Caruana. However, he made an immediate comeback in the next round and beat Radjabov with relative ease. In the following rounds, he seemed extremely strong with white but often got into trouble with the black pieces. The chess world was quite amused when Nakamura beat Alireza in the 10th round, thus making his prophecy come true. With a win in the penultimate round against Duda, he got to a +2 score and only needed a draw against Ding Liren in the last round to finish 2nd. However, Ding won on-demand and Nakamura finished the tournament joint 3rd. For someone who was out of the classical landscape for so long, this result was definitely praiseworthy.
3. GM Teimour Radjabov, 2753
Result- 7.5/14 (+3–2=9)
Rating Change: +9.4, TPR: 2804
Radjabov entered the Candidates as the oldest player on the field. He was under criticism from the chess world even before the tournament started. His qualification to the candidates via wildcard was questioned by many. After the first half, the questions and criticisms only increased as the Azerbaijani GM scored 2.5/7 losing 2 games and winning none. By round 7, Teimour Radjabov went 35 classical games without a win(+0–5=30). Despite the setbacks, he made a stunning comeback in the last 7 rounds. He won 3 games against Nakamura, Ding, and Rapport and drew the other 4. His wins against Nakamura and Ding had a significant impact on the tournament standings as it killed any hope for the latter 2 to catch the tournament leader, Ian Nepomniachtchi. After 14 rounds, Radjabov finished as joint 3rd and proved the constant hate towards him to be unreasonable.
2. GM Ding Liren, 2806
Result- 8/14 (+4–2=8)
Rating Change: +2.4, TPR: 2817
The Chinese grandmaster replaced Sergey Karjakin as the highest-rated player who had not yet qualified after the latter was disqualified from the tournament for breaching the FIDE Code of ethics following his public support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite his late entry and possible fatigue due to the marathon of classical games(26) he had to play to be eligible for the qualification, he was still considered a favorite. The questions about the possibility of Ding being fatigued seemed legitimate when he lost the very first round against Nepomniachtchi and then went to have a precarious first half with 3/7. He did a lot better in the second half scoring 3 wins in a row between rounds 9–11 but conceded a crushing defeat against Radjabov in round 12 playing over-ambitiously. The loss all but ended his hope for the first place. Yet, he won a must-win game against Nakamura in the final round and clinched the clear 2nd position.
- GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, 2766
Result- 9.5/14 (+5–0=9)
Rating Change:+26.4, TPR: 2906
After the disappointing result from his last World Championship match against Magnus Carlsen, the Russian GM was not a favorite. Most of the predictions before the tournament placed him in the bottom half of the standings. He then went on to show pure dominance and won the tournament with one round to spare. He scored an unprecedented 9.5/14 winning 5 games and losing none. He started his candidates journey this year by blowing Ding Liren off the board with the black pieces. He never had to look back after that. He beat the young GM Alireza Firouza with both colors. His other 2 wins came against Duda and Rapport. Of all the 14 rounds, he was in trouble only in two games. One against Caruana and the other one against Nakamura. He had the black pieces in both of them and defended fantastically.
With this dominant win, Ian Nepomniachtchi has certainly silenced his doubters. He showed beyond doubt that the pre-tournament expectations of him being placed in the bottom half were indeed slightly exaggerated.
In Conclusion:
The tournament garnered a massive audience through various streams of chess.com, chess24.com, FIDE chess, etc. Also, the round-by-round recaps done by famous chess YouTubers such as Gothamchess, Agadmator, and even former candidate GM Anish Giri provided the chess fans with deep insight and analysis of all the games. While some might argue that Nepomniachtchi’s dominance made the competition somewhat stale, there were still numerous exciting moments throughout the tournament. But the big question still remains. Will Magnus Carlsen go for his sixth world championship title? Or are we going to witness a match between Nepo and Ding for the vacant World Championship in 2023? Only time will tell.
