Sina Movahed Again In Titled Tuesday

GM Sina Movahed claimed his third Titled Tuesday of the year and fourth of his career on September 15, coming out ahead of GM Vincent Keymer on tiebreaks after both scored 9.5/11. One move of extra tactical foresight in round 10 helped move Movahed ahead of the pack.

Broadcast

In case you missed it, this week’s broadcast with GM Robert Hess:

Recap

In the first four rounds, several players achieved 4/4 starts, but neither Movahed nor Keymer was among them. Both were stymied in the third round, Movahed making a draw and Keymer dropping his game. GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov was one of the players on 4/4, and he would also go four for his next four. He finished in third place, however, and the perfect score bounty remains intact and moves to $4,250 next week.

By the end of six rounds, only Tsydypov and last week’s victor, GM Liem Le, were still perfect. Tsydypov had done so with a sixth-round win over GM Oleksandr Bortnyk. 

Le got Tsydypov into some big trouble in the seventh round, but it was Tsydypov who retained the last 100 percent score after Le, pushing toward a win, lost control of the mating track and flagged. By the end of the round, only GM Haik Martirosyan was half a point away from Tsydypov. Movahed made only a draw, making him one of the players a full point behind.

Martirosyan misplayed the opening in his eighth-round encounter with Tsydypov and went on to lose, creating a full-point gap between the lead and second place. Movahed also won in the eighth round, but Keymer made only a draw (against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi, to be fair), putting him 1.5 points out of the lead.

GM Andy Woodward, coming off a dirty flag, got White against Tsydypov in the ninth round and seemed to be cruising, but suddenly allowed a threefold repetition. Tsydypov still held sole first, but now three players moved back within a half-point: Movahed, GM Maxim Matlakov, and IM Tobias Koelle after finding a shot against Le.

With two rounds left, Tsydypov vs. Movahed and Koelle vs. Matlakov were the next key games. Movahed was able to take the sole lead by delivering a loss to Tsydypov, while the other game was drawn. Just moments after Hess demonstrated a key tactic on the broadcast, it nearly happened on the board!

At the same time, Keymer defeated GM Alireza Firouzja to join the tie for second at 8.5/10, with GM Vladislav Artemiev also winning, against Woodward. And so the final round came down to the games Movahed–Artemiev, Matlakov–Tsydypov, and Keymer–Koelle. As Matlakov was winning an exchange and Keymer took a winning edge against Koelle, Movahed had to bail into a draw with a bad time situation despite a pawn-up ending. While Matlakov could not convert his advantage, Keymer did, and moved into a tie for first with Movahed.

It wasn’t enough for Keymer to completely overtake first place. Neither Movahed nor he had very good tiebreaks—of the five players half a point below them in the standings, four would have had better—but Movahed’s outdid Keymer’s in the ones that mattered. After Tsydypov among players on nine points came Artemiev, Nepomniachtchi, Matlakov, and GM Pranav Venkatesh.

Final Standings

Full final standings.