Anand vs Anish Giri, Zurich Blitz Chess Challenge 2016.
Chess Studio,
Zurich Chess Challenge 2016,
Viswanathan Anand,
Hikaru Nakamura,
Vladimir Kramnik,
Levon Aronian,
Alexei Shirov,
Anish Giri,
In the 2016 tournament, held from 12–15 February 2016, starting on a Friday and already ending on the following Monday,
players were awarded two points for a win and one point for a draw in the rapid section,
and one point for a win and half a point for a draw in the blitz section.
No classical chess was played.
Hikaru Nakamura won the blitz section on tiebreaks and tied with Viswanathan Anand in the rapid section.
Hikaru Nakamura won the overall event.
If you missed the 2015 Zurich Chess Challenge, that’s OK, the 2016 edition had pretty much the same finish.
GM Hikaru Nakamura and GM Viswanathan Anand tied, again,
this time in both rapid and blitz, but unlike 2015 there was no Armageddon playoff,
although the idea was proffered! More on that proposal later.
Instead, the arbiters defaulted to cumulative Sonneborn-Berger (rapid and blitz combined),
which allowed Nakamura to keep the trophy by one point.
“You should let me have this one after last year,
” Anand joked to Nakamura as they exited the playing room.
Hikaru Nakamura has now successfully defended his Gibraltar and Zurich titles from 2015.
In April, he’ll try to do it again at the U.S. Championship!
“It’s only tiebreakers,” Nakamura said later. “Both Vishy and I played well.
But March is what matters.”
He has been referencing the Candidates’ Tournament for more than half a year,
and he will now go to Moscow with more recent momentum that other players (counting Gibraltar,
Nakamura already has two wins on this calendar).
“We were both kind of trying to play good moves but not show anything,” he told Chess.com.
Anand and Nakamura seemed destined to end this way. They finished one-two in the opening blitz,
both scored seven points in the rapid, and both earned 3.5/5 in the final blitz.
Neither man lost a game among those that counted for the final standings,
and they simply couldn’t shake the other.