Levon Aronian needed just three games on Sunday to wrap up victory in the FTX Road to Miami, adding the $25,000 top prize to his $5,500 earnings from the Prelims. Wei Yi came out all guns blazing, but a late blunder in the first game left him with an almost impossible task.
Levon Aronian finished 7th in the Prelims but ultimately won 7 games and lost just one on the way to triumph in the knockout stages. In the final he won three games, all with the black pieces.
Asked what most satisfied him with his victory, he commented:
The steady improvement, I think! Of course I didn’t really deserve to be Top 8 because my play was very, very poor, and then after that I think I got myself together and I think I played better.
Going into the final day of the event Levon knew that a 2:2 draw would be enough for him to clinch overall victory, but Wei Yi wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The way he approached the first game amounted to a delayed King’s Gambit.
After 14.0-0 the computer thinks Aronian would have had a big advantage with 14…Ng4, aiming for the gaping hole in the white position on e3, but Levon modestly decided to castle himself as well.
It eventually became clear that neither side had a significant edge, but neither player was keen to take a draw either, so that the game went on and on until disaster struck for Wei Yi on move 61.
61.d7! and the game remains drawn, but after 61.Rh6? Kxa5 it was too late. One of the black pawns will eventually win the game, and Wei Yi instead resigned.
That meant Wei Yi would now need to win 2 of the next 3 games to win the 2nd mini-match and force tiebreaks.
Our commentators had barely finished explaining that the best strategy was probably to play solidly in Game 2 and make a draw before pushing in the last two games, when Wei Yi replied to 1.d4 with 1…g6!?
It was a brave strategy, but initially at least seemed to have completely backfired.
19.Nh4! was crushing, according to the computer, but after more than 3 minutes Levon instead opted for the quiet 19.Be4. He later explained:
I wanted just to play safe. At some point maybe I played too safe! I shouldn’t have exchanged the light-squared bishops, and then I had to play precisely to equalise after that, and then suddenly he over-pushed and I had very good winning chances, but I didn’t take full advantage of my position.
That’s a good summary of all the twists and turns that followed, before the game was ultimately drawn on move 60.
Wei Yi now needed to win both of the remaining rapid games, and he opted for 3.g4!
He explained:
I just wanted to make the position crazy, and the g4 idea, Mamedyarov played this with me, and I think it’s interesting, but I think Levon played very good.
Mamedyarov had played the move in the Chessable Masters earlier this year, and though Wei Yi made a draw, his 4…Qe7 was arguably already inaccurate. Levon instead played 4…Bxd2+ and in the play that followed impressed by how fast he was taking decisions. For instance, he barely blinked when Wei Yi went all-in with 14.e5!?, blitzing out the bold 14...0-0-0.
Levon seemed to be enjoying himself.
Here he went for 24…Nd4! 25.Qb4 Qe2! 26.Bd5 Bc6 and, somewhat surprisingly, Wei Yi resigned. That was perhaps uncalled for, but it was going to be extremely tough for the Chinese star to hold the position, never mind get the win he needed.
So Levon had done it, completing victory after defeating Sam Sevian, Richard Rapport and now Wei Yi in the knockout stages.
He summed up:
I think this is definitely one of my best performances. Play-wise, I think I was being resilient, which is very important, so it’s a good confidence boost and I think I’ll try to build on this.
Levon will play for the USA in the Olympiad, which starts on July 29th in Chennai, India.
For Wei Yi, meanwhile, the runners-up spot was a best performance on the tour to date, earning him $15,000 plus the $4,750 he earned in the Prelims. The 23-year-old Chinese grandmaster summed up that, “the result is not good today, but I think the games were interesting”.
The silver lining with the defeat is that merely reaching the final was enough to achieve perhaps the main aim of the event, an invitation to the $310,000 8-player FTX Crypto Cup taking place in Miami, Florida next month. The line-up will be topped by World Champion Magnus Carlsen, and currently looks as follows.
Wei Yi said he’s hoping to be able to travel, and he might be accompanied by his Chinese colleague Ding Liren. The overall Meltwater Champions Chess Tour standings now look as follows, after we’ve crossed the halfway mark of the Tour.
If you’re wondering when we’ll next have live commentary on a top chess event then there’s not long to wait, since the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz in Zagreb, Croatia starts Wednesday, with Magnus Carlsen, Alireza Firouzja and Ian Nepomniachtchi topping the billing.
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