Another fantastic case born out of time trouble was the following missed win by Tabatabaei, who ultimately finished in seventh with 5.5/9 and therefore qualified for the knockout anyway.  With Black to move, can you find the elegant finishing blow?

Wildcard Martinez (often referred to by his username, Jospem) did not fail to impress as he finished second in the Swiss with a score of 6/9.  Also defeating reputable players such as Alekseenko and GM Anton Demchenko in the first two rounds, the highlight of his Saturday had to be a miraculous save against GM Wesley So in the final round.

Had Jospem lost this final game, he would not have made it to the knockout; conversely, this draw ended any hope of So crossing over to the Sunday event.

Nepomniachtchi, having a reputation for being a quick player even in classical games, played at an alarmingly rapid pace, even for such fast time control. Although he dropped a loss to GM Andrei Volokitin in the second round, he recovered with wins against notable players such as the FIDE 2022 Grand Prix participant GM Vincent Keymer and the winner of the Tata Steel Chess 2022 Challengers, GM Arjun Erigaisi, a clutch victory in the last round to finish fifth in the Swiss on 6/9. 

In the following clip featuring one of his early wins, it is hard to tell whether he is premoving or not as he quickly sails to victory.

Giri was in first for virtually the entire tournament, from start to finish, and finished with 6/9 and the best tiebreaks. After defeating top dogs like GM Vasyl Ivanchuk and GM Aleksey Dreev in the first two rounds, his most important win was ironically—now, in hindsight—against Nepo in round six as he benefited from a shocking and completely unforced blunder.

Knockout

Although there was an additional two-second increment in the knockout, unlike the Swiss, this did not prevent tragicomedies from occurring. While the rapid games clearly showed an uptick in quality, the blitz games at times caused the evaluation bar to start hula-hooping. 

After the rapid game ended in a draw, Giri and Kovalev played a 3+2 blitz game. After controlling the position and seemingly playing for two results, the Belarusian grandmaster panicked in time trouble and allowed a shocking mate in one. 

Tweeting shortly after the game (before the event was even over!), Giri compared the shock to an earlier incident on the same day when his Twitter account was hacked and several scandalous tweets went out under his name.