He was briefly in danger early on when, sick, he lost his first game to his old rival Fabiano Caruana, saying: I'm quite aware that I'm just not able to think as clearly as I need on a day like this. The 5/2 blitz tiebreaks brought a further challenge: I had to tell myself several times, make a move, c'mon, what are you doing.
A little over three years ago, the greatest chess player of all-time lost to a swaggering young American grandmaster, self-ejected from an important tournament, and kicked off the biggest and strangest cheating scandal chess has ever seen. The story of Magnus Carlsen's quixotic war against Hans Niemann gripped the chess world for years. Back in 2022, Carlsen was on top of the world, lording over every format of chess and winning most major tournaments even after announcing his plans to abdicate his world championship.
Levon Aronian, at 42 the oldest in the tournament, scored what he described as one of the crown jewels of his career to win the $200,000 first prize at the Las Vegas leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam last weekend.
