Tata Steel: Van Foreest Defeats Giri in a Playoff to Win the Tournament

It's a bizarre result, worthy of a year that seems to have inherited more than its fair share of 2020's turmoil. Anish Giri entered the last round of the Tata Steel chess tournament in clear first, half a point ahead of his Dutch countryman Jorden Van Foreest, Fabiano Caruana, and Alireza Firouzja. All four with favorites in their respective games, but only one managed to win.

Caruana had Black against Aryan Tari, the bottom seed (though by no means the tailender - he finished with a very respectable -1 score). Unfortunately, Tari chickened out with the Exchange Variation against the French (or maybe he hoped that Caruana would do something crazy trying to create winning chances against it), and while Caruana did outplay him for a time, he never managed to dredge up enough and Tari held the draw.

Firouzja came much closer with White against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. He was much better-to-winning for most of the game, and only on move 61 did he let his winning chances slip away for good. Apparently, though, he would not have been in contention for the title even had he won: he would have tied for first, but his tiebreak score would have left him outside of the playoff.

Van Foreest made it into the playoff by crushing Nils Grandelius, whose second half was as unpleasant as the first half was delightful. Grandelius led just before the halfway mark with 4/6, but only managed two points in his remaining seven games.

Giri, as you will have gathered from the subject line and from simple logic, drew his game. He was in serious danger of losing to David Anton with Black in a positional Najdorf, but White's technique wasn't good enough to finish the job. So it was on a playoff, with the winner to become the first Dutch player to win their country's remaining extant super-tournament since Jan Timman did it in 1985.

In the ensuing blitz (5'+3") playoff, Giri was winning the first game, with Black, but failed to convert his advantage: draw. In game 2 Giri was much better, if perhaps never clearly winning, but once again the game finished in a draw. Finally, it was time for an Armageddon game, and Giri was absolutely winning this game - at two different stretches. Unfortunately, on the very last move without a prior increment (move 60) Giri made a colossal error that transformed the game from completely winning to totally lost, and Van Foreest won the playoff and the tournament. All credit to him for surviving the playoff, but it has to be said that Giri distributed more gifts than Santa Claus on the Oprah Winfrey show.

It was a great event for Van Foreest (and for the even younger Andrey Esipenko, who also won in the last round and also made it to 2700 by tournament's end), who obviously achieved a career result. Is he too old at 21 to be talked about as a future member of the world's elite? By the standards of the last 20-30 years the answer would seem to be yes, and even here, aside from an almost comically fortunate win in an Armageddon game he didn't beat any of the elite players. Still, he is just 21, this was a great result, and none of the elite players managed to beat him, either. So we'll see, and hopefully he gets some other invitations to classical events, and the critical experience that goes along with it. That he has achieved as much as he has with so few opportunities to play slow games against 2700-level opponents is extremely impressive. With the world's absolute elite committed to the almost hermetically sealed Grand Chess Tour, and the only slightly less exclusive FIDE world championship qualifying events, it is difficult for Van Foreest (or any other up-and-comer) to get much experience against the absolute top players, but hopefully this will be a crowbar that opens the door for him (and Esipenko).

Here are Van Foreest's games from the last day of the event, and here are the final standings:

• 1-2. Van Foreest, Giri 8.5 (out of 13)
• 3-5. Esipenko (who won in the last round vs. Donchenko), Caruana, Firouzja 8
• 6. Carlsen 7.5 (Thanks to a last-round win over poor MVL.)
• 7. Harikrishna 6.5
• 8-9. Tari, Grandelius 6
• 10. Duda 5.5
• 11-13. Wojtaszek, Anton, Vachier-Lagrave 5
• 14. Donchenko 3.5