Wei Yi Wins 2024 Tata Steel Chess Masters In Thrilling Tiebreak

GM Wei Yi became the winner of the 2024 Tata Steel Chess Tournament on Sunday after winning a thrilling four-player tiebreak that also involved GMs Anish Giri, Gukesh Dommaraju, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. For the first time, Wei entered the world's top 10.

GM Leon Luke Mendonca defeated WGM Divya Deshmukh, won the Challengers, and secured a spot in the 2025 Masters as co-leader GM Marc'Andria Maurizzi could only draw his game with GM Erwin l'Ami.

Results - Masters Round 13

Final Standings - Masters

The final day of this year's Tata Steel Chess Tournament won't be quickly forgotten. The last time the tournament witnessed a four-way tie for first place was 35 years ago, which was GM Viswanathan Anand's first (shared) victory together with GMs Zoltan Ribli, Predrag Nikolic, and Gyula Sax, who all scored 7.5/13 in 1989. That was long before the tournament said goodbye to the concept of shared winners and introduced playoffs, in 2018.

Today it all went to the wire, with a big tiebreak at the end of a day — a day that had started quietly with a small historic record. I am talking about the special pairing between World Champion Ding Liren and Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun, the first clash between the two title holders since GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Hou Yifan played each other in the same tournament in 2015. Before that, the last time was Gaprindashvili-Spassky, Goteborg 1971, and then we have to go pre-World War II: Alekhine-Menchik, Montevideo 1939.

Especially because GM Judit Polgar never wanted to compete in the women's world championship cycle, these "double-crown" clashes are rare. Even so, the women's champion had never managed to hold the game to a draw, until today.

GMs Ian Nepomniachtchi and Jorden van Foreest also drew quickly, but soon things got more exciting, and also louder. Like on the first day, a protest group had begun to block the incoming road to Wijk aan Zee and, as the round got underway, they also went into town. Because the protesters were not welcome inside the playing hall, they switched to a different form of protest: making a lot of noise, which lasted for a few hours. It could definitely be heard inside the playing hall, where the grandmasters and the amateurs were all given earplugs.

Meanwhile, @NLRebellion is once again protesting against the use of coal by @TataSteelNL, “the most harmful fossil fuel for the climate.” Since the organizers decided not to welcome the protesters inside, they are currently making noise in front of the venue to make their point. pic.twitter.com/rX4HewHrfS

— Peter Doggers (@peterdoggers) January 28, 2024

While some of the amateur players in the same playing hall decided to just agree on a draw to get it over with and avoid noise-induced blunders, the top grandmasters on the stage didn't have that luxury. No, everyone still in contention was involved in a big fight.

The first of the five leaders to win was GM Wei Yi, who played an excellent game against GM Vidit Gujrathi. The Chinese player started modestly with 1.d4, 2.Nf3, and 3.e3, setting up a Colle System, but as soon as he accomplished the central pawn break 9.e4, he grabbed the initiative and never let go. With an exchange sacrifice on move 22, Wei soon had a winning attack.

After eight rounds, Wei was still on 50 percent, and few were paying attention to him. With a superb finish of 4.5/5, the Chinese GM somehow sneaked up on everyone, and still had energy left for the tiebreak, as we will see later.

GM Rafael Leitao annotated this game of the eventual tournament winner:

Wei said no to an in-between interview and traded the playing hall for his hotel room, where he saw three more of his rivals win their games, starting with GM Anish Giri. Last year's winner was gifted half a point the day before, but this time, his full point was the result of a Giri that we don't see too often: one that goes for a very sharp opening to maximize winning chances from the get-go.

Giri's opening scheme involved a fianchetto of his queenside bishop, combined with an early g2-g4 push, played before by hyper-aggressive white players like GM Alex Shabalov and IM Manuel Bosboom.

"Of course, I have to play for a win today, it's obvious that somebody else would win as well, it's very likely, and even if they don't win then it's better to win than a draw as well," said Giri.

Like in many of his earlier games, GM Max Warmerdam reacted quite well and initially managed to avoid real trouble, but as he got lower on time, he failed to defend accurately enough. He told me he is still OK mentally after finishing with half a point out of his last seven games and multiple heartbreaking losses: "I just lacked the energy at the critical moments."

By the time Giri won, it was clear that some of the other leaders were also doing well. With a Dutch TV station standing quite close to where he was being interviewed, he said: "I know Dutch media don't like chess, but they do like tiebreaks!"

The next winner was GM Gukesh Dommaraju, who defeated GM Parham Maghsoodloo in a wild game. Asked about Maghsoodloo's knight sacrifice on move 16, Giri felt it couldn't be correct, but the longer the game went, the more unclear it seemed. And indeed, the engine points out one moment, on move 30, where Maghsoodloo wasn't worse.

"I was very happy with how he was playing," said Gukesh. "He is such a great fighter, he even went for it today. It got very tricky."

As it went, Gukesh could eventually convert his extra material while neither king ever felt safe. 

"As I said in the opening ceremony, my goal is to improve my result," noted Abdusattorov after he had indeed improved on last year. By beating GM Alexander Donchenko, the Uzbek GM also secured a spot in the playoff.

Also this game was one with a lot of ups and downs, and mistakes in time-trouble, according to Abdusattorov. "I  think it was interesting to watch the game!"

After this, only the game between GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and GM Alireza Firouzja was still underway, which brought back memories from three years ago. Then, Firouzja was asked to move to another spot in the playing hall to make space for the tiebreak games, which didn't end well. This year, the organizers decided not to ask the same. Luckily, the game ended in a draw not long after, so this time the problem solved itself.

It would be lack of any sense of humor, not to ask Alireza to change his table, to make room for the play-off.

— Peter Heine Nielsen (@PHChess) January 28, 2024

The tiebreak consisted of two semifinals and a final. The games were standard 3+2 blitz, but in the sudden-death games White got 2.5 minutes.

Wei had typical winner's luck in the very first game, where he was dead lost against Abdusattorov, who needed to make a move in three seconds and allowed a perpetual:

Wei then defeated Abdusattorov with Black to reach the final. Meanwhile, Giri had started with a convincing win against Gukesh, but lost the second game and then also the first sudden death:

Wei held the first game in the final to a draw and then clinched tournament victory with the white pieces, showing great endgame skill and impressive cold-bloodedness in the decisive moments.

"I felt really relaxed after the final classical round," he said about that. "I didn't have so much confidence because my opponents are of course very strong at blitz. I just wanted to do my best."

"I feel very excited and happy to win this very strong event. It's my biggest achievement in my chess career," said Wei, who is the first Chinese winner in the long history of the tournament, which has existed since 1938.

Nine years ago, Wei won the Challengers group and a month after, he became the youngest grandmaster to break 2700, aged 15. Only now has he won his first super tournament, and the reason for that is a combination of factors. For starters, he said he has had some bad luck at key moments in tournaments, and Tata Steel Chess was only his second event outside China since the pandemic. Apart from that, Wei has been a student at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management since 2018. He is planning to graduate in July, and after that, he will fully focus on chess again.

Tournament director Jeroen van den Berg has already invited him for next year, and Wei replied that the chance he will defend his title in 2025 is 99%.

Results - Challengers Round 13

Final Standings - Challengers

It was Maurizzi who was leading the Challengers for most of the tournament, but in the end it was Mendonca who went home with the much coveted first prize, a smaller version of the same trophy in the Masters and, more importantly, a ticket to the main tournament next year.

While Maurizzi drew his game, Mendonca won yet again, completing a tremendous finish of 6.5/7.

"I'm very happy and relieved, because it was not clear at all throughout the tournament whether I was close to winning or not and it was only before this round that I had a real chance," he said. "I also needed a lot of luck as well, but mostly I'm just relieved."

Mendonca knew the theory up to move 19, but started to make mistakes right after. For the next 10 moves, Deshmukh was the one with winning chances. 

"I played so badly," said Mendonca, "it was just disgraceful and I did the most suspicious things ever and I just got away with it in the end. It was just so crazy!"

It was just disgraceful and I did the most suspicious things ever and I just got away with it in the end. It was just so crazy!
—Leon Luke Mendonca

However, on move 27 Deshmukh made a big mistake, and soon after, Mendonca started to wonder whether he might be all right. It's interesting to note that, in a tournament that has very strong anti-cheating measures, Mendonca might have gotten some indirect help from what was happening elsewhere in the playing hall:

"I was just wondering to myself whether I'm seeing real things or am I just imagining things but then I started looking at it over and over again and I thought, okay, maybe it's winning, but still I wasn't like sure, and then I saw these camera crew guys, they were coming to take my photo and all and I thought, okay, maybe I'm winning, that's the only reason they would take my photo. So then it confirmed my suspicions that it actually works, the whole thing."

The Tata Steel Chess tournament took place January 13-28, 2024, in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands. The time control was 100 minutes for 40 moves followed by 50 minutes to finish each game with a 30-second increment. Both the Masters and Challengers groups were 14-player round-robin tournaments.

Previous posts:

• Tata Steel Chess Masters Wide Open As Vidit Beats Abdusattorov, Becomes India's #1
• Abdusattorov Sole Leader At Tata Steel Masters; Wei Yi Wins Brilliancy
• Abdusattorov, Gukesh Lead At Tata Steel Chess Masters
• Abdusattorov, Praggnanandhaa Catch Leaders; Warmerdam Suffers Worst Nightmare
• Firouzja Joins Leaders; Abdusattorov Falls Behind In Tata Steel Chess Masters
• Abdusattorov Beats Giri For Shared Lead With Gukesh In Tata Steel Chess Masters
• Firouzja Bounces Back In Tata Steel Chess Masters; Roebers Wins Again
• Women Ascendant In Tata Steel As Ju Wenjun Upsets Firouzja, Roebers Defeats Niemann
• Praggnanandhaa Defeats World Champion Ding, Passes Anand To Become #1 In India
• Giri Beats Donchenko, Catches Firouzja In 1st Place
• Firouzja Moves To 2/2 In Tata Steel Chess Masters
• 4 Black Wins In Tata Steel Chess Masters Opening Round
• Ding Liren Ready For Tata: 'I Feel Much Better Than Before'
• 2024 Tata Steel Chess: World Champion Ding Returns, Carlsen Missing