 "How Magnus Carlsen's triumph and Arjun Erigaisi's 5th-place finish in Paris affects Freestyle Grand Slam Tour standings")
The Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour concluded on Monday with a dream final between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, and all it took was one blunder to help the former win by a 1.5-0.5 scoreline and take home the $200,000 cash prize . Nakamura was doing a decent job steering the game towards a stalemate while playing with black pieces in Game 1 on Sunday when his decision to advance his bishop in his 35th move proved to be his undoing.
Despite playing with white pieces in Game 2 on Monday, Nakamura was unable to mount a serious challenge against Carlsen as the world No 1 sealed his triumph with a comfortable draw.
Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer were the finalists in the opening leg of the Grand Slam Tour in Weissenhaus in February, with the latter completing a fairytale triumph in the final after pulling off a stunning victory over Carlsen in the semi-finals.
Caruana, however, avenged the loss in the Weissenhaus final by defeating the German Grandmaster 1.5-0.5. Like Carlsen, he won Game 1 on Sunday, albeit while playing with black pieces, and completed his triumph with a draw on the following day.
Arjun Erigaisi turned out to be the most impressive of the four Indians in action in the Paris Grand Slam, finishing fifth after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave following his quarter-final loss against Nakamura.
Erigaisi had earlier secured a top-four finish at the end of the round-robin stage, defeating Carlsen and Caruana along the way, and appears to have taken to the Freestyle format like duck to water.
How Carlsen’s triumph affects the overall Freestyle Chess Grand Slam standings
With his triumph in the ‘City of Light’, Carlsen surged past Keymer to the top of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour standings with 40 points, three more than the 20-year-old German. Caruana and Nakamura are third and fourth respectively, both having finished among the top four in Weissenhaus and Paris.
Erigaisi, meanwhile, moves to the seventh spot after collecting 10 points with his fifth-place finish. D Gukesh , meanwhile, remains 11th with four points - all of them coming from his eighth-place finish in Weissenhaus. Points are awarded from positions 1 to 10, meanwhile Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi failed to collect a single point for their joint-11th finish in Paris.
Here’s the updated Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour standings at the end of the Paris leg along with the total prize money won so far:
1. Magnus Carlsen – 40 points – $300,000
2. Vincent Keymer – 37 points – $260,000
3. Fabiano Caruana – 33 points – $240,000
4. Hikaru Nakamura – 28 points – $190,000
5. Nodirbek Abdusattorov – 12 points – $60,000
5. Javokhir Sindarov – 12 points – $60,000
7. Arjun Erigaisi – 10 points – $50,000
8. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave – 8 points – $40,000
9. Ian Nepomniachtchi – 6 points – $30,000
9. Alireza Firouzja – 6 points – $30,000
11. D Gukesh – 4 points – $20,000
12. R Praggnanandhaa – 2 points – $12,500
12. Levon Aronian – 2 points – $12,500
14. Richard Rapport – 1 point – $7,500
14. Vladimir Fedoseev – 1 point – $7,500
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