Shenzhen Masters 2019, What Happened There?

Anish Giri won the $20,000 first prize at the Shenzhen Masters in China after beating Dmitry Jakovenko in the final round and seeing tournament leader Pentala Harikrishna losing his game to Ding Liren. Exactly two years after winning the Reykjavik Open Giri took first place in Shenzhen. He scored both victories on April 27, which happens to be King's Day in the Netherlands. While Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands turned 52, Giri became King of Shenzhen for a day.

We're picking up the tournament at half-time, when Pentala Harikrishna of India was leading with 3.5/5 ahead of Giri who had 3/5. After a first-round draw and losing to the Dutchman, "Hari" had bounced back with three straight wins.After the rest day, Harikrishna increased his winning streak to four games, beating Dmitry Jakovenko in another fine endgame. These days you don't often get the chance to play a game like this against the Berlin.

Giri agreed that the achievement of his main rival Harikrishna was quite remarkable."Yes, he won five games, which is very cool, and he did an immediate comeback twice. Of course, as I always say, with good or bad results, draws and what not, coincidence and circumstances always play some role. In fact what saved me, was breaking the trend of him winning better endgames, by holding against him [in round seven - PD]. Had he won there, he would have been there already, I guess." 

Below is that key game, which was probably lost for Giri, he thought. "Probably, especially before the time-control, my position was too shaky, he had nasty bishops and I had little time." He added: "The endgame after the time control, I felt should be surely holding, but wasn't so simple either. I will have to analyse it in more detail, but from what I heard the endgame actually did hold."

For a player of Giri's level and status, the Dutch player has won relatively few tournaments in his career so far. His victory at the 2011/2012 Reggio Emilia tournament is a long time ago, and some don't regard this as a "super tournament" even though that term doesn't have a clear definition and Giri finished ahead of the "super" strong grandmasters Alexander Morozevich, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Vassily Ivanchuk and Nikita Vitiugov.

Besides the aforementioned Reykjavik Open, which definitely doesn't count as a super tournament, there was his shared first place with Magnus Carlsen at the 2018 Tata Steel Chess tournament. An excellent result, but it doesn't count either as Carlsen won the playoff.

Giri: "I don't give too much importance to exact placing. For example, if somehow Hari would win today because Ding would blunder something, I would be second and I don't see exactly what I would have had done differently then.

"My critics have a point that I haven't won too many top tournaments, much less than Carlsen, Caruana, but also Levon [Aronian], Hikaru [Nakamura], Nepo[mniachtchi] and many others have probably more first places. I am in a happy place nonetheless and I hope to do well in the cycle this year. I will have a few opportunities, hopefully I can peak at some of them, though it won't be easy."

The topic of "not winning super tournaments" appeared in some recent Twitter trolling between Giri and Carlsen, and yesterday at the Grenke Chess Classic the world champion referred to it once again, joking that he was "extremely worried" Giri would win in China and calling the Shenzhen Masters "a bit of a soft super-tournament."

Giri: "I had quite an interesting thought about softness actually. I came to realize that Magnus has it much easier than the rest of the players in his tournaments! He never has to play against himself, so he by definition always has a softer pairing.

Also, do realize, every tournament Magnus wins, it is like Shenzhen for me. Good tournament, but without Magnus. Soft!
"As for Twitter, I had a perfect tweet setup today, in case I would win the tournament with a draw, but in the end I messed it up."