GM Magnus Carlsen won the 2022 Charity Cup on Saturday after beating GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda in a playoff, necessary as the Polish grandmaster managed to win the second regular match.

After he won the Airthings Masters, this was the second tournament victory for Carlsen in the 2022 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour.

After the first game on Saturday, few would have betted on Duda to make the comeback that he would make. Carlsen only needed to score 1/3 in the remainder, with two white games ahead for him, after a crushing kingside attack:

The turning point came on move 48 in the second game. With a draw in hand, Carlsen blundered terribly, forgetting about the f2-square for a second. Duda was back in the match:

Duda won the next game in just 26 moves. This time he was the one getting the attack on the king as Carlsen’s play seemed affected by the unnecessary loss the game before:

A solid draw in the fourth game meant that Duda had won the match, so after the win for Carlsen the other day it was all equal again.

The world champion then won both 5+3 games in the playoff as he was the one with the slightly better nerves. Duda was under pressure throughout the first blitz game and was playing on his last few seconds of increment when he blundered, just as the game was about to end in a draw:

Duda quickly lost the second game and so he got $15,000 for second place, whereas Carlsen bagged $25,000. The Norwegian star leads the Champions Chess Tour firmly, having won both the Airthings Masters and the Charity Cup.

Carlsen said it was a “huge relief” to win such a dramatic match, and that it was definitely not the first time he had been part of such a scenario: “This was right out of the playbook of what feels like every tournament last year after the first few ones where it seems like I’m cruising and then there’s one bad moment and it all falls apart. But yeah, I managed to survive.”

The tournament was supported by NEAR Foundation and was being held as a fundraiser for UNICEF, for which over $100,000 has been raised.

All games of Saturday

The 2022 Champions Chess Tour’s Charity Cup Masters ran March 19-27 on chess24. The preliminary phase was a 16-player rapid (15+10) round-robin. The top eight players advanced to a knockout that consisted of one four-game rapid match during the quarterfinals and semifinals and two four-game rapid matches during the final. Play advanced to blitz (5+3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black has four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match ended in a tie. The total prize fund of the event was $150,000, with $750 for each win and $250 for each draw in the preliminaries.

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