admin The winners of World Rapid Chess Championship 2019, which ended on Saturday evening in Moscow, are Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Humpy Koneru of India. The Norwegian chess master comfortably won the Open Rapid with eight wins, seven draws, and no lost games, this was his third victory in this category.
The Indian Humpy Koneru is the winner of the women’s rapid which was determined in a playoff beating Lei Tingjie in the Armageddon. Turkey’s Ekaterina Atalik won the bronze medal.
On Saturday in Moscow, Magnus Carlsen won the world rapid championship for the third time in his career after getting the titles in 2014 and 2015; whereas Alireza Firouzja playing under the FIDE flag, won the silver medal and Hikaru Nakamura took bronze.
In Moscow, the final day of rapid started with the clash between the top two players in the world in the FIDE rapid rating list, Carlsen and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave; however, Carlsen was briefly very close to victory, MVL’s advantage was modest but lasted for a while.
Vachier-Lagrave said, “I had a great position against Magnus, but then I let him back into the game, and after a couple of moves I was under pressure. I managed to hold, but I was not very optimistic during the game. It was a bit of a miracle to make a draw.”
Carlsen kept the sole lead with 8.5/11 as the two other players on 7.5 points. Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Wang Hao lost their games to Hikaru Nakamura and Leinier Dominguez respectively. Nakamura joined the group of players trailing Carlsen by half a point after Duda unnecessarily gave up his queen.
Carlsen had to win the game twice against Aronian. Carlsen later said it was his only difficult game of the day, “I did feel that I was probably winning anyway, but it had gotten out of hand. After such a tough game there’s no better [move] than to capture the opponent’s queen for nothing.”
With 32-year-old Koneru from Gudivada, India The women’s section saw an amazing comeback and a dramatic finish for the 22-year-old grandmaster Lei from Chongqing, China.
A round before the end, Lei was in the sole lead, half a point ahead of her compatriot Tan Zhongyi, followed by several players, including Koneru, a point behind.
Lei lost the 12th and final round to Atalik from a drawn rook-endgame.
Magazine 
