Freestyle Chess Tour Paris: Carlsen, Nakamura set for blockbuster showdown; Erigaisi defeats Nepomniachtchi

Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura advanced to the final of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Paris after defeating Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer respectively in the semi-finals. Arjun Erigaisi, on the other hand, is set to battle for the fifth place with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave after defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi.

Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura setup a dream final in the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour while Arjun Erigaisi bounced back from consecutive defeats with
back-to-back wins on Saturday to advance to the fifth-place playoff. Erigaisi wasn’t the only Indian who ended up on the winning side on Day 6 of the event though as R Praggnanandhaa defeated Richard Rapport to finish ninth out of 12 competitors.

The second of five events in the inaugural Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour is set to conclude with a showdown between the two top-ranked players in the world, with Carlsen and Nakamura defeating Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer respectively in the semi-finals on Saturday. Both Carlsen and Nakamura won by identical 1.5-0.5 margins, winning the second Standard game on Saturday after drawing the first one on the previous day.

Fabiano Caruana and Vincent Keymer, finalists in the Weissenhaus leg of the tour in February, are set to compete for the third place on Sunday after losing to Carlsen and Nakamura respectively. Keymer had pulled off a fairytale win at the seaside resort on Germany’s Baltic coast to the north, but wasn’t able to pull off an encore.

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