The elite tournament at Stavanger in Norway has resulted in yet another victory for the world champion Magnus Carlsen. The format was unorthodox in that draws were replayed as so-called Armageddon blitz games. In such cases White has more time but any draws count as Black wins. Classical wins count as 2-0, whereas Armageddon wins count as 1½-½. The random factor is therefore very high and I doubt that the format will catch on. Final scores (out of a possible 18) from Stavanger were: 1. Carlsen 13½; 2= Lev Aronian and Yu Yangyi 10½; 4= Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So 10; 6 Ding Liren 8½; 7= Viswanathan Anand and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 8; 9= Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk 5½.
Carlsen-Ding: Altibox (Armageddon game), Stavanger 2019 (see diagram 1)
This is a good example of the random nature of Armageddon games. Here Carlsen, playing White, needs to win the game but after 50 … Be3 this is unlikely to happen.
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