 "Freestyle Chess Tour Paris: Carlsen, Nakamura set for blockbuster showdown; Erigaisi defeats Nepomniachtchi")
Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura setup a dream final in the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour while Arjun Erigaisi bounced back from consecutive defeats with back-to-back wins on Saturday to advance to the fifth-place playoff. Erigaisi wasn’t the only Indian who ended up on the winning side on Day 6 of the event though as R Praggnanandhaa defeated Richard Rapport to finish ninth out of 12 competitors.
The second of five events in the inaugural Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour is set to conclude with a showdown between the two top-ranked players in the world, with Carlsen and Nakamura defeating Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer respectively in the semi-finals on Saturday. Both Carlsen and Nakamura won by identical 1.5-0.5 margins, winning the second Standard game on Saturday after drawing the first one on the previous day.
Hikaru time tomorrow
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) April 12, 2025
Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer, finalists in the Weissenhaus leg of the tour in February, are set to compete for the third place on Sunday after losing to Carlsen and Nakamura respectively. Keymer had pulled off a fairytale win at the seaside resort on Germany’s Baltic coast to the north, but wasn’t able to pull off an encore.
Erigaisi keeps the Indian flag flying high in Paris
Indian Grandmaster Erigaisi had finished fourth at the end of the round robin stage on his Freestyle Chess Tour debut, only for Nakamura to dash his hopes of going the distance in the French capital. And on Friday, the 21-year-old from Warangal, Telangana suffered his second successive defeat by resigning in 41 moves in his 5th-8th place classification match against Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Erigaisi, however, fought back in stunning fashion on Saturday, defeating the Russian GM in just 24 moves in the second Standard game to level the scores and take the tie into the rapid tie-breaks, where he went 1-0 up by winning the first game. Both victories came while playing with white pieces.
Facing a must-win scenario, Nepomniachtchi surged ahead in the second rapid tie-breaker, with the eval bar surging past 2 in his favour at one point. His chances of taking the contest into the blitz tie-breaks with a 2-2 scoreline was further boosted by his considerable time advantage over his opponent.
A blunder in the 27th move (Bc3), however gave Erigaisi the chance to sneak his way out of the tight corner. And like D Gukesh in Game 14 of his World Championship showdown against Ding Liren, he exhibited the kind of ’never-say-die’ attitude that allowed him to drag the game to a 78-move draw and seal a 2.5-1.5 victory.
Erigaisi faces Maxime Vachier-Lagrave for the fifth spot in Paris, with the latter having defeated Nodirbek Abdusattorov by a scoreline similar to that of the Erigaisi-Nepomniachtchi match.
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