Tata Steel Chess India: American double delight as Carissa Yip and Wesley So win Blitz titles while Arjun Erigaisi fades

Carissa Yip and Wesley So claimed the Tata Steel Chess India blitz titles in Kolkata. (Express Photo by Partha Paul)

At just 22, International Master Carissa Yip is already a four-time US Women’s Champion. Ahead of the Tata Steel Chess India tournament, she had said that Rapid and Blitz were her weaker formats, based on past performance. However, six days later, she will fly home with enough reasons to reassess that judgment.

After tying for third place in the Rapid event, Yip clinched the Blitz title in the women’s category on Sunday, defeating India’s Vantika Agrawal in a tie-break after the two could not be separated after 18 tiring rounds. Yip’s creative ideas on the board and her versatility make her one of the most exciting young talents emerging from the United States.

It was double delight for the American contingent as 32-year-old Wesley So dominated the Blitz segment in the Open section, winning the title with a round to spare.

A regular participant and a crowd favourite in Kolkata, this was So’s sixth appearance at the Tata Steel event and his first title.

He didn’t allow the next three players in the standings – Nihal Sarin, Arjun Erigaisi and Hans Niemann – to win a single game against him. In the six contests against them in the double round-robin format, So secured three wins and three draws, taking 4.5 points from those encounters. The Blitz segment was also impressive for Vantika, who outperformed some of the big names to finish second in the women’s category. After starting the day with two draws followed by back-to-back losses to Divya Deshmukh and Harika Dronavalli, Vantika won five of her next six games, including her last four rounds, to mount a remarkable comeback.

Vantika’s cause was aided by Aleksandra Goryachkina, who led for much of the day, suffering back-to-back losses. And when Yip was held by Divya in the final round, it meant that the American and Vantika tied for first place.

While Yip took the title, Vantika’s performance will not only boost her confidence for the year ahead but also signal that the new crop of Indian women chess players is gaining the required depth across formats. Greek IM Stavroula Tsolakidou finished third in the women’s event, making it a 1-2-3 for International Masters, with six Grandmasters and a Woman Grandmaster (WGM) finishing below them. Nihal Sarin also had a terrific event. Having clinched the Rapid title soon after his grandfather’s passing, he scored 5.5 points on Day 2, the most by any player on Sunday. He finished level with Arjun on 11 points but secured second place by virtue of a superior tiebreak score.

For Arjun, the jinx of fourth-place finishes that haunted him for nearly three years now seems to have shifted to third-place finishes. After securing bronze medals in both the Rapid and Blitz events at the recent World Championship in Doha, the Tata Steel India event also saw him finish third in both segments.

Arjun had a worried look on his face and was pacing back and forth near the players’ lounge with his mother after the event, one that could easily have gone his way after he started with five wins in a row. He held So to a draw in the 15th round, and trailed by just half a point. While So could only manage two draws in his last three rounds, adding just one point to his tally, Arjun’s finish was worse as he suffered defeats to Niemann and R. Praggnanandhaa to secure only 0.5 points from his final three rounds.

So mentioned how impressive Arjun had been in Doha just a week earlier and how he faded on a day when So himself would have been content with second place.

“Arjun finished at plus eleven in 19 games in Doha. He scored 15 points out of 19, which is really insane, and that was only a week ago. I would have been happy with second place. But Arjun wasn’t himself today. He only scored 50 percent. Meanwhile, I scored plus one. Arjun actually played very embarrassingly today,” he said.