WORLD RAPID & BLITZ CH - DOHA 2016

[LawrenceCooper]

But Magnus loses to Ivanchuk in round 16 allowing Karjakin to catch him.

1 Karjakin, Sergey & Carlsen, Magnus 12/16
3 Nakamura, Hikaru 11½/16
4 Dubov, Daniil, Morozevich, Alexander & Ivanchuk, Vassily 11/16

1 Tan, Zhongyi 9½/13
2 Muzychuk, Anna & Lagno, Kateryna 9
4 Harika, Dronavalli, Ju, Wenjun, Kashlinskaya, Alina & Gunina, Valentina 8½/13

[Mick Norris]

Magnus beats Vishy to go to 16/20 but Karjakin won from a lost position to reach 15.5 and has the better tiebreak I think, so Magnus must win the last round to be certain of the title

[LawrenceCooper]

Anna Muzychuk wins the women's event half ahead of Lahno & Gunina.

Carlsen needs to beat Leko with black to be sure of finishing first.

[LawrenceCooper]

Magnus beats Vishy to go to 16/20 but Karjakin won from a lost position to reach 15.5 and has the better tiebreak I think, so Magnus must win the last round to be certain of the title

A draw for Magnus and a win for Karjakin so I'm guessing the latter has won on tie-break.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Someone in one of the comments windows at Chessbomb pointed out that Carlsen has tied for all three world chess titles this year (classical, rapid and blitz); a step down from when he won all three. At least he won the important one (and the only one that had play-offs for a tie-break).

[Paul Cooksey]

Congratulations to Sergey, Magnus also tops all 3 rating lists again,

Kirsan just turned up for an interview, he is targeting 1 billion chess players by 2020.

[Mick Norris]

Karjakin wins on tiebreak from Carlsen on 16.5/21; Dubov gets bronze with 14.5 on tiebreak from J'adoubeamura and Grischuk

Anna Muzychuk wins with 13/17 from Gunina and Lagno on 12.5

[Matt Mackenzie]

Someone in one of the comments windows at Chessbomb pointed out that Carlsen has tied for all three world chess titles this year (classical, rapid and blitz); a step down from when he won all three

That may just provide him with the motivation he needs for 2017.....

[Matt Fletcher]

And at the other end of the table, a fantastically consistent performance from Mohammed Ali Dima, scoring 0/15 in the Rapid and 0/21 in the Blitz.

Can't have been easy for him to turn up each round, especially as he was dispatched by the 'lesser' players in rounds 4-6 in the rapid and 5-7 in the blitz, then had to finish both tournaments (9 and 14 rounds respectively) playing against titled guys.

[Mike Truran]

Qatar's very own Colonel Moreau.

[Andrew Bak]

And at the other end of the table, a fantastically consistent performance from Mohammed Ali Dima, scoring 0/15 in the Rapid and 0/21 in the Blitz.

Can't have been easy for him to turn up each round, especially as he was dispatched by the 'lesser' players in rounds 4-6 in the rapid and 5-7 in the blitz, then had to finish both tournaments (9 and 14 rounds respectively) playing against titled guys.

His games were really bad - I'm not even sure he was a 100 ECF strength player. How did he qualify for the event?

[IM Jack Rudd]

The usual answer is "local guy playing to make up the numbers" or "friend of the organizers" or something like that.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I noticed him on 0/10 in the rapids, but didn't follow him any more after that. Can anyone tell from his play whether he was that out of place or just unlucky? I was going to say he was a local making up the numbers, but he is from Djibouti on the coast of Africa at the southern end of the Red Sea (maybe that counts as 'local'?). One of 18 players from that country in the FIDE rating list.

Of the other untitled players in the Rapid tournament, two finished with Mohamed Ali Dima at the foot of the table, but Sarkhan Gashimov from Azerbaijan did well to score 6 points. Similarly, IM Cristobal Henriquez Villagra from Chile is clearly of GM strength and finished in 25th place with 8.5 points.

In the Blitz, the same three untitled players propped up the foot of the table, with Sarkhan Gashimov a bit less successful than he was in the rapids but still finishing above an IM. The highest-placed non-GM was Iranian IM Alireza Firouzja in 54th place with 10.5 points (50%). David Howell did finish a long way back, but it was a really strong event and a number of very strong GMs finished with minus scores.

Back up at the other end of the tables, Carlsen got a medal of each colour if you say he got 'gold' in the classical version. Bronze in the rapid and silver in the blitz.

[NickFaulks]

The highest-placed non-GM was Israeli IM Alireza Firouzja

Iranian, bad mistake to make! Age 13 and clearly a real talent.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

David Howell did finish a long way back, but it was a really strong event and a number of very strong GMs finished with minus scores.

Having said that, I just looked at David Howell's tournament result:

http://chess-results.com/tnr255851.aspx ... 984&snr=38

50% after 8 rounds. That run of three losses in a row in rounds 14-16 when already on -2 had to hurt. The low point must have been the loss to a 2428-rated FM in round 16, and then being paired against one of the untitled players in round 17. David had to win 5 games in a row at that point to get back to 50% and nearly did it but lost to Bologan in the pentultimate round.

So many games to play through. Easy to miss some nice ones. The chess-results game statistics look a bit suspect, but definitely thousands of games to play through. Any good visual bits from the livestream footage?