Airthings Masters: The First Event of Meltwater Champions Chess Tour
The Airthings Masters is the first event of the 2022 Meltwater Championship Chess Tour, which has 9 events in total. This year’s tournament lasted a week. It started on the 19th of February and ended on the 26th of February. Games took place on chess24, an online chess platform. At the first stage of the tournament, which is called Airthings Masters Prelims, there were sixteen Grand Masters. These sixteen Grand Masters were: Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Liren Ding, Vincent Keymer, Anish Giri, Levon Aronian, Hans Moke Niemann, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Liem Quang Li, Eric Hansen, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Andrey Esipenko, Vladislav Artemiev, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, R Praggnanandhaa. The first stage took four days, between the 19th-22nd of February. The time control was 15+10, so players had 15 minutes and in every move, they had an addition of 10 seconds. In this stage, fifteen rounds were played and the number of contestants was halved from 16 to 8. If you want to take a look at the Airthings Masters Prelims games, you can take a look at them through this link.
Airthings Knockout, which is the second stage of the tournament, started on the 23rd of February and lasted four days. In this stage, for the quarter-finals, eight players who were not eliminated in the first stage competed. Each of them only played with one other player, but for four rounds. So, each player played with both pieces (black and white) twice. The two players who reached the finals were Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi. If you want to take a look at the Airthings Masters Knockout games, you can take a look at them through this link (See “Quarter-finals and Semifinals”).
The final was interesting and kind of a déjà vu for us. Nepomniachtchi and Carlsen had played in the FIDE World Chess Championship not long ago. Yet, in the finals of this prestigious tournament, they had to face one another once again. On the first day of the finals, I watched the games as well as the live analysis/commentary provided by chess24. It was such a ride! Carlsen missed many opportunities that could have been his chance to win. Especially, he missed one in the 4th game (See “Position”). Maybe you might say that he missed it due to the time pressure, but I do not believe that this was the case. In the analysis, Péter Lékó made a more logical argument about why Carlsen might have missed the winning move 37…Qb8. He argued that Carlsen had mixed the variations and played 37…Qc7 instead of 37…Qb8, which makes sense. Sometimes, while playing, we calculate something and decide on it. However, we don’t always do what we decide on and our hands do a different move. On the second day of the final, the first game ended with a draw, and the following two games ended with Carlsen’s win. Thus, Carlsen won the Airthings Masters 2022 (See “ The Final”).
If you are interested in chess and looking through different tournaments, you have probably seen Airthings Masters. Maybe, you have even come across the “Ding Liren” meme. Ding is a 29-year-old Chinese Grand Master. He had the longest unbeaten streak with 100 games. From 100 games he had 29 victories and 71 draws. However, in 2019 Magnus Carlsen surpassed this longest streak (Ding Liren). If you have not seen the meme yet, let me fill you in. The meme is about the first day of the Airthings Masters, which I have previously touched upon, and how Ding Liren (since he is in China) stayed awake until 1–5 AM to be able to play in the tournament, where he later got first place in the standings. He is a great player without a doubt. The meme shows how we should respect his achievement (See “Meme”).
I don’t want to finish the article without mentioning the sponsor of the tournament and where the name of the tournament comes from Airthings. It is, also, somehow related to my last article which is called A Local Air-Pollution Activism Group: “Bursa’ya Temiz Hava”. If you have not read it, I would recommend you to read it. Airthings is an air-quality based company located in Norway. They are providing six players’ air quality data based on their location. This idea sounded very ingenious to me and I wanted to share it with you as well. You can visit their website from here and check players’ air quality based on their location.
Works Cited
Chessmemex. Meme. 20 Feb. 2022. Instagram, 20 Feb. 2022, www.instagram.com/p/CaL4G9Uh-RF/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
“Ding Liren.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Liren. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
“ The Final.” chess24, chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/meltwater-champions-chess-tour-airthings-masters-2022-knockout/3/1/4. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
“Position.” chess24, chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/meltwater-champions-chess-tour-airthings-masters-2022-knockout/3/1/4. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
“Quarter-finals and Semifinals.” chess24, chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/meltwater-champions-chess-tour-airthings-masters-2022-knockout/3/1/4. Accessed 27 Feb. 2022.
