Magnus Carlsen won all three games on the final day of the Julius Baer Generation Cup Prelims to finish a massive 9 points ahead of 2nd placed Arjun Erigaisi. Carlsen plays Levon Aronian next, but could still meet Hans Niemann in the final. We’ve also got Keymer-Pragg, Niemann-Le and Yoo-Erigaisi in the quarterfinals, while Anish Giri just missed out.

The final day of the Julius Baer Generation Cup was an absolute thriller, but not when it came to the battle for 1st place. Magnus Carlsen wrapped up victory with a round to spare after defeating Christopher Yoo and Radek Wojtaszek, while his last-round win over Vincent Keymer meant that despite gifting Hans Niemann 3 points he’d scored 34/45 points, a record for the 2022 Tour.

Magnus was happy, but admitted the end hadn’t been quite as easy as it looked on paper.

17-year-old Vincent Keymer, who had wrapped up qualification with a 102-move grind of a win against Arjun Erigaisi the game before, was on the brink of beating Magnus. The last clear chance came after 41.Qa3.

41…Qf2! with Rb2 to follow, and Black can combine threatening checkmate on the kingside with picking up the crucial c3-pawn on the queenside.

Instead after 41…Qc6? 42.Bh3! Magnus was surviving, until 50…Qd2? (50…Qh2! and White has nothing better that forcing a draw) allowed him to take over.

51.Qd5+! and, after forcing off queens, Magnus went on to win.

He did have one reason to be nervous, however – the chance that he might face Hans Niemann in the quarterfinals, when he would have had to decide whether or not to simply forfeit the match.

They would have met if Hans finished 8th, but despite getting outplayed by Ivan Saric in the first game of the day, Hans hit back to finish in clear 3rd place.

His bounce-back win over Vasyl Ivanchuk was strange, as Vasyl simply blitzed out bad moves and resigned with 13 minutes left on his clock.

Peter Leko suggested the Ukrainian’s nerves had failed him, as they had at times in the past, though a clarification from Levon Aronian on the interview he gave about losing in 21 moves to Hans the day before offered another possibility.

Magnus was also, inevitably, asked about his game against Hans Niemann. He commented:

That was perhaps a barbed comment by Magnus. Maxim Dlugy is indeed a mentor of Hans, but he’s also faced accusations of cheating on Chess.com in the past.

Max Dlugy recently posted about Hans Niemann on his Facebook page

Magnus talked about how he’d been handling the situation.

Back then Magnus had won the 2019 Croatia Grand Chess Tour despite facing an unprecedented wave of criticism in Norway over his attempts to get the Norwegian Chess Federation to accept sponsorship linked to lobbying for the break-up of the state monopoly on gambling.

Garry Kasparov, who has been highly critical of Magnus in the last weeks, supported the World Champion back then.

Magnus Carlsen suddenly found himself attacked by the Norwegian media

Check out the interview with Magnus.

A final-round thriller

Things couldn’t have been closer going into the final round of the Prelims. Magnus and Hans were joined by Arjun Erigaisi, Vincent Keymer and Liem Le as players already through to the quarterfinals, but everything else was up for grabs.

It’s noteworthy that of the players in the 6th to 8th spots with a round to go it was only Praggnanandhaa who qualified, after a slow but utterly convincing win over Ivan Saric — it came just in time, as Pragg had gone 8 games without a win!

Jan-Krzysztof Duda lost with barely a chance against Hans Niemann, and had a lot to regret since before losing to David Navara in the penultimate round he’d seemed right on course to qualify. Navara himself never got anything against Boris Gelfand in the final round, and a draw wasn’t enough.

The most intense battle was among the four players tied on 18 points, with no less than three of them winning. One of them was 15-year-old Christopher Yoo, who bounced back from losing to Magnus in the first game of the day to beat Adhiban and then clinch a qualification spot with a fantastic win with the black pieces against the in-form Liem Le.

Afterwards the youngest player in the tournament said he’d been happy just to get invited. He commented:

“Hopefully some miracle will happen and I’ll qualify — then I promise to play well!” said Levon Aronian a day earlier after he’d gone on a run of 6 losses in 7 games. The miracle did happen, with Levon first beating Praggnanandhaa, then drawing against Saric, before finally winning a total rollercoaster against Vasyl Ivanchuk, who himself had a very outside chance of qualifying.

The win was the surprising 41…Qc2+! 42.Kf3 Qb1! and it turns out you can’t defend both the rook and knight e.g. after 43.Nd2 Qd3+. “Beautiful, and the horsey’s gone!” said Levon, when he was told about it.

Vasyl missed that, however, and Levon managed to weave a mating net and win the game.

Levon admitted to getting “really lucky” to win the position and echoed Ivan Sokolov with, “If you survive something like this, then most likely you will live very long!”

In the Tour Prelims there always tends to be one player who just missed out, and this time it was Anish Giri, who did everything in his power in the final round.

“I thought if I should beat Arjun with Black I deserve qualification,” said Anish afterwards, and if conventional scoring and not 3 points for a win had been used he would have finished half a point above both Yoo and Aronian.

As it was, however, they were tied on 21 points, and Anish was doomed by having lost to both his rivals.

So when the dust had settled, we got the following pairings: Carlsen-Aronian, Keymer-Praggnanandhaa, Niemann-Le and Yoo-Erigaisi.

There are no more representatives from the legends, but the two all-teen match-ups ensure we’ll have at least two young prodigies in the semi-finals.

In fact there are five teens in the semis, with Magnus commenting when asked if we're witnessing the start of generation shift in chess:

We could also get a Carlsen-Niemann final, but that’s one bridge to cross if we come to it!

There’s no break, as the one-day quarterfinals take place on Thursday at the same time of 12pm ET/18:00 CEST and you can follow all the action here on chess24. Each match is played over four rapid games, with two blitz games and potentially Armageddon if the players are tied.