Wesley So wins the Opera Euro Rapid 2021 - Day 9

Wesley So won the Open Euro Rapid beating World Champion Magnus Carlsen 2.5-1.5 in the second set to take the mini-match 1.5-0.5. This is the second time that So has beaten Carlsen in a final of a Meltwater Champions Chess Tour event having won the Airthings Masters in December. So was clearly the most convincing and consistent player in this event.

Carlsen felt he "missed quite a lot of chances today and that's the frustrating part", "at several points I did not trust my intuition and I trusted him more because he was playing so quickly and confidently." Carlsen felt that he had particularly good opportunities in the third and fourth games.

Carlsen "messed up the opening" in the first game and his piece sacrifice was completely unsound and he went down to a loss in just 28 moves. The second game Carlsen got some chances towards the end.

So said he considered trying to play for a quick draw in game three with white, but wanted to keep the pressure on, this nearly backfired as Carlsen got winning chances out of the opening with Bxh3. In the final game Carlsen said that his intuition was "screaming that 23.Kh1 wins" and is does - 23. Kh1 axb3 24. Rg1+ Kh8 25. e6! - it was this last move that Carlsen didn't find but he felt it shouldn't have been difficult.

Carlsen had a pretty poor event by his own high standards but he may be on the road to recovery. We'll have to see in the next event, which is a major taking place March 13th-21st. The name has yet to be announced.

Teimour Rajdabov won 2-0 today against MVL to take 3rd place.