Pavel Anisimov Wins March 23 Titled Tuesday
GM Pavel Anisimov (@PaulfromSPb) won the Chess.com Titled Tuesday tournament on March 23. The grandmaster from St. Petersburg (as his handle points out!) finished half a point ahead of GM Hikaru Nakamura (@Hikaru) and Dmitry Andreikin (@FairChess_on_YouTube).
This week's Titled Tuesday tournament, the first after the official end of the winter, had a total of 659 participants. The 11-round Swiss, with a 3+1 time control, was kind of a "Russian spring" as seven out of the top-10 were Russian grandmasters.
It's tempting to describe Anisimov's tournament as the perfect Swiss gambit. He lost his very first game on time and in a lost position to a young candidate master but then finished with an astonishing 10/10.
It took a while before he faced big names, but it is still impressive that he also managed to win his last three rounds against GM Sanan Sjugirov (@Sanan_Sjugirov), GM Alireza Firouzja (@Firouzja2003), and his famous co-resident of St. Petersburg, Peter Svidler (@PSvidler).
Sjugirov was deceived by a nasty trick:
Firouzja will probably think twice before 1...b6 next time against this opponent as he never really got into the game and was completely outplayed, except at one moment he did miss a chance:
The game in the final round was tense. Svidler at one point lost control and couldn't regain it. Anisimov had missed an earlier win, by the way:
Besides an early draw, Nakamura came short half a point as he lost a long and tough game with Firouzja:
March 23 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)
| # | Rk | Fed | Title | Username | Name | Rating | Score | SB |
| 1 | 65 | GM | @PaulfromSPb | Pavel Anisimov | 2840 | 10 | 65 | |
| 2 | 1 | GM | @Hikaru | Hikaru Nakamura | 3228 | 9.5 | 67.75 | |
| 3 | 9 | GM | @FairChess_on_YouTube | Dmitry Andreikin | 3010 | 9.5 | 66.5 | |
| 4 | 32 | GM | @BilodeauA | Kirill Alekseenko | 2942 | 9 | 62 | |
| 5 | 109 | IM | @Volodar_Murzin | Volodar Murzin | 2764 | 9 | 57.5 | |
| 6 | 8 | GM | @mishanick | Aleksey Sarana | 2928 | 9 | 56 | |
| 7 | 19 | GM | @PSvidler | Peter Svidler | 2960 | 9 | 54.5 | |
| 8 | 42 | GM | @DrVelja | Velimir Ivic | 2886 | 9 | 52 | |
| 9 | 3 | GM | @DanielNaroditsky | Daniel Naroditsky | 3062 | 9 | 49 | |
| 10 | 47 | GM | @Fandorine | Maksim Chigaev | 2863 | 8.5 | 57.75 | |
| 11 | 57 | GM | @GMSrinath | Srinath Narayanan | 2807 | 8.5 | 56.75 | |
| 12 | 17 | GM | @Duhless | Daniil Dubov | 2986 | 8.5 | 54.25 | |
| 13 | 127 | NM | @Abund | Yuan Qingyu | 2733 | 8.5 | 54 | |
| 14 | 39 | GM | @BillieKimbah | Maxim Matlakov | 2910 | 8.5 | 52.25 | |
| 15 | 77 | GM | @Sharpchess22 | Andres Carlos Obregon | 2747 | 8.5 | 51.5 | |
| 16 | 14 | GM | @Jospem | Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara | 2948 | 8.5 | 48 | |
| 16 | 126 | CM | @ymoy | Vadym Petrovskyi | 2716 | 8.5 | 48 | |
| 18 | 343 | FM | @INLOVEWITHF | Ongut, Tamas Gunes | 2500 | 8.5 | 46.25 | |
| 19 | 43 | GM | @Onischuk_V | Vladimir Onischuk | 2879 | 8.5 | 43.75 | |
| 20 | 2 | GM | @Firouzja2003 | Alireza Firouzja | 3125 | 8 | 55 |
(Full final standings here.)
Anisimov won $750 for first place, Nakamura $400 for second, Andreikin $150, and GM Kirill Alekseenko $100.
The $100 prize for the best female player went to GM Valentina Gunina (@Vanina1989) who finished 21st scoring 8 points.
Titled Tuesday is Chess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (19:00 Central Europe).
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!
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