Run It Back: So Wins Sinquefield; Tan Takes Cairns

When the dust settled Wednesday at the Saint Louis Chess Club and the Sinquefield Cup and Cairns Cup were finished, the leaders at the halfway point still stood atop the standings.

Seirawan, So, Tan, Ashley (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

American GM Wesley So won his second straight Sinquefield Cup, his third total, after a playoff against Indian GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu that went to the Armageddon phase; in the Cairns Cup, Chinese GM Tan Zhongyi kept her lead despite a last-round stumble, while 16-year-old American IM Alice Lee finished in second place for the second year in a row, making a GM norm in the process. Tan is the first repeat winner of the Cairns Cup, having won it in 2024.

In the Sinquefield, So coasted to the finish with six straight draws after a blazing 2.5/3 start. It looked like that would be enough until Round 8 on Tuesday, when Pragg took down GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in a mere 27 moves with black to pull into a tie for first with So. A Wednesday final round of draws all around left the two leaders with 5.5/9 and headed to the tiebreaks.

Pragg shakes hands with So after the Armageddon game ends. (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

After two rapid games were drawn relatively uneventfully, the tiebreaker headed to Armageddon, with So taking the black pieces and draw odds. So teetered on the brink of defeat two separate times. Praggnanandhaa won the bid and chose to play as White, and this seemed to pay off as he achieved a winning position several times before So was finally able to reach Move 60 (when increment begins) in a drawn two-versus-one rook-and-pawn endgame.

So used two hands to execute a capture at one point, but Pragg didn’t complain until after he made his move, so it was too late for a penalty to be applied. Anyway, the penalty time would have been added to Pragg’s clock rather than deducted from So’s.

A happy Wesley So! (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

Keymer and Sindarov tied for third with 5/9 scores. Sindarov’s tournament began unremarkably with the aforementioned loss to Pragg and he was still winless after his sixth-round draw against Caruana.

Sindarov gesticulates in Round 7. (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

But then he showed us why, in GM Luka Budisavljevic’s words, he is currently the most feared player in the world, taking down Keymer and van Foreest back to back. He was unable to crack So in Round 9, though.

Keymer had a chaotic tournament. We covered his outrageous loss to Aronian in Round 2 already. Then his Round 7 loss to Sindarov slightly lessened the impact of his win the next day over Caruana, as he still trailed the leaders.

Tan Zhongyi (photo courtesy SLCC / C. Fuller)

In the Cairns Cup, Tan seemed invincible after Round 7, when she was in huge trouble against GM Divya Deshmukh, but managed to not only survive but increase her lead by winning to bring herself to 5.5/7. She basically wrapped up the tournament in the penultimate round, dispatching GM Bibisara Assaubayeva, leaving herself a point ahead of the field going into the last round.

Alice Lee (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

Meanwhile, Lee won in Round 8 against GM Vaishali Rameshbabu, the challenger in the women’s world championship match later this year, to keep pace a point behind Tan and a point ahead of Assaubayeva and IM Carissa Yip, last year’s Cairns champion.

A last-round win for Lee over her friend and Olympiad teammate could give her a share of first if Tan stumbled against IM Stavroula Tsolakidou. A draw would leave Lee in second, but wrap up her first GM norm. How hard to press?

Carissa Yip (photo courtesy SLCC / Ootes)

It may have seemed unlikely that Tan would lose and provide Lee with an opening, but that’s exactly what happened. It’s worth mentioning that Tsolakidou also dealt Lee a defeat in Round 4, giving the Greek IM wins over the top two finishers. And as it turns out, in the Lee-Yip game, Yip was the only one with chances, so it wasn’t that tense of a race for first.

Yip tied with Assaubayeva for third with 5/9.