GM Joel’s Chess Week Recap - Episode 137

Opening: A19, C89, B59, B30, B06:

Player(s): Ding, Radjabov, Grigoryan, Quesada, Bochnicka, Pranav

Teimour Radjabov is the 2019 World Cup Champion, defeating top seed Ding Liren. It's not so much a surprise for the Azeri grandmaster to triumph in this match, but he looked like a longshot after Ding took the lead in the second game. Keep in mind that Ding recently achieved a 100 game undefeated streak. Radjabov had one shot with the white pieces, and made good with it, trying a second, slightly less drawish line in the Marshall Attack. The match went into overtime, with Radjabov scoring a win in a long endgame in the 9th game. Radjabov won the tenth for good measure, though Ding missed a pop-up opportunity to even the match. Congratulations to Radjabov! Meanwhile, the Vachier-Lagrave Yu match went well into overtime before MVL broke through in game five. Yu played desperately to square the match and ended up also losing again in the sixth playoff match. As the third-place finisher, MVL is not assured a spot in the Candidates tournament but has to be a favorite, if not the favorite, to get a wildcard.

Check out ICC's article on the World Cup!
Download Joel's annotated games HERE!