While none of the matches truly went down to the wire, the players did an excellent job of entertaining the audience with exciting games from Sept. 3 through Sept. 5.
Garry Kasparov may have been out of the match since Day 3, but he continued to fight admirably and picked up some nice wins for his efforts.
Wesley So clinched his match with a draw in the first game, then proceeded to continue dominating his match against Veselin Topalov.
Peter Svidler officially won his match by holding a long endgame against Leinier Dominguez. Levon Aronian couldn’t slow down the momentum of U.S. champion Hikaru Nakamura, and the American finished off the match two rounds before the end of the tournament.
Let’s take a look at the final results and see what happened in each match.
Fabiano Caruana vs. Garry Kasparov
Caruana, the top American player officially won the match on Day 3, but that didn’t stop both players from entertaining audiences with some exciting games on the final day. Kasparov had his best day of the event, and scored a highly respectable 3.5 out of 8, not a bad result for anyone against the world's No. 2. Fabiano won the match with a final score of 19 - 7.
Wesley So vs. Veselin Topalov
While So technically didn’t clinch his match, it was quite clear that there was no way he wasn’t going to win this match. He officially sewed it up with a draw in the first blitz game of the day. Despite this, both players played a lot of entertaining games, and it was mainly Topalov’s penchant for time pressure that hindered him in this match.
Once the match was decided, Wesley didn’t lose a single step and continued to dominate. So won the match with an impressive 18 - 8 score.
Josh Friedel is an American chess grandmaster and was U.S. Open Champion in 2013.
