Esipenko Wins Qatar Masters; Arjun Misses Chance To Catch Caruana In FIDE Circuit

GM Andrey Esipenko on Thursday won the $25,000 first prize at the Qatar Masters, one of the strongest opens of the year. GM Arjun Erigaisi could only draw his final round game and finished in a tie for second place, which means GM Fabiano Caruana maintains a slim lead in the 2024 FIDE Circuit.

GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, third in the Circuit, started with a loss followed by a draw, but he still managed to score 7/9 and tie with Arjun. As the prizes were not shared, Arjun earned $15,000 for coming second on tiebreak while Abdusattorov earned $10,000. The tournament's A group, eligible for players rated 2300 and higher, was a nine-round Swiss that took place in the Torch Ballroom in Doha, Qatar.

Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full standings here.)

On the day that the chess world celebrated a new world champion, the final round in Qatar brought some special intrigue relevant for the next world championship cycle. Arjun needed to win the tournament alone to be able to take over the number-one spot in the FIDE Circuit from Caruana, who had just finished pursuing the same goal by playing back-to-back tournaments: the 2024 U.S. Masters and the Saint Louis Masters.

In Thursday's final round in Doha, Arjun was the only player on 6.5 points and had the white pieces against the only player on seven points, Esipenko. The latter was too solid and held his own without major problems, although afterward the players were probably surprised to see the eval bar jumping up for White briefly at move 16. It was a very theoretical Ragozin, so it's not easy to remember every little detail...

Five wins and four draws was still another very good result in an open tournament for Arjun, who is just 6.02 points behind Caruana in the FIDE Circuit. Note that their performances at the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships at the end of the year will count too. The player with the most circuit points at the end of the year will claim the first seat in the 2026 FIDE Candidates Tournament, which will decide the next world championship challenger.

2024 FIDE Circuit Leaderboard (Top 10)

Abdusattorov's loss on board two was the first round's big shocker. His opponent, the Iranian FM Reza Mahdavi, is an excellent blitz player who regularly finishes in the top-20 of Titled Tuesday. As it turns out, he's pretty decent in standard chess too! After his tactical wizardry in the game below, he ended up performing two hundred points above his rating and gained 42.4 points in Qatar.

The Armenian GM Shant Sargsyan was the clear leader halfway through the tournament as the only contestant with 5.5/6. He continued well, holding Arjun to a draw in the seventh round, but then lost a key game to Esipenko in the penultimate round.

The eventual tournament winner had to work hard for the point. He reached a pawn-up but complicated double-knight endgame on move 34 and converted it 58 moves later, with a NN and pawn vs N endgame at the end where he had to avoid losing his last pawn for the black knight because two knights cannot checkmate.

Erigaisi kept his hopes of tournament victory alive until the last day thanks to a similar, hard-fought victory against his compatriot GM Karthikeyan Murali. The latter played very well until a certain point when White's double-bishop pressure became too much.

IM Polina Shuvalova won $5,000 for finishing as the highest-placed woman in the final standings with a score of 5.5/9. The end of her game with Uzbekistain's IM Almas Rakhmatullaev is worth checking out:

The A group of the 2024 Qatar Masters was a nine-round Swiss eligible for players rated 2300 and higher that took place December 3-12, 2024, in the Torch Ballroom in Doha, Qatar. The time control was 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting on move one. The total prize fund was $94,250.

Correction: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Shuvalova won $1,000; it was $5,000.