GM Arjun Erigaisi gained the 2024 Menorca Open on Sunday. The Indian top-GM edged out GMs Kirill Alekseenko and Maksim Chigaev on tiebreaks in any case completed on 7.5/9. Arjun reached a career-peak reside score of 2761 and briefly occupied the fifth place on the planet rankings.

Because it goes with these fast adjustments on the high, Arjun is at present in seventh place within the reside rankings, one-and-a-half days after his event victory. An eight-move draw within the ultimate spherical towards GM Vladimir Fedoseev misplaced him one Elo level and pushed him just under GM Ding Liren, whereas GM Ian Nepomniachtchi moved forward as effectively with rating in Toronto.

Nonetheless, it is exceptional to see an additional small soar within the rankings for Arjun, making an allowance for that he achieved it in open tournaments – he performed the Grenke Open shortly earlier than Menorca. His secret? Not dropping.

It is a frequent perception that it is more durable to win score factors in opens, though GM Fabiano Caruana disagreed with that notion in a current episode of his C-Squared podcast: “I do know that it is a quite common narrative, that high gamers play in their very own little fish bowl after which they go to the huge open sea, after which they lose all their hard-earned score made by drawing one million video games. Completely not the case from my expertise.”

Caruana famous that he is gained score factors in virtually each open he is performed in since 2016 and talked about  GM Hikaru Nakamura doing the identical in numerous Gibraltar tournaments. He argued: “Scores are there for a purpose. They imply one thing.”

Arjun’s Buchholz tiebreak was an identical to Alekseenko’s, however after eradicating the worst opponent for each, it was the Indian GM who prevailed. The laws don’t make a point out of shared prizes in case of a tie, so it appears to be like like this tiny distinction was fairly expensive for Alekseenko.

Within the fourth spherical, Arjun beat the 23-year-old German IM Roven Vogel, who blundered ready that was nonetheless OK for him. Shortly earlier than, the eventual event winner missed a tactic which you could attempt to resolve your self:

An vital sport, which took Arjun to that short-term fifth spot on the planet, was his win within the penultimate spherical. He performed a mannequin sport in a Semi-Tarrasch towards his compatriot GM Aryan Chopra, a 22-year-old participant from New Delhi who was a grandmaster on the age of 14 however so far has failed to interrupt 2650.

Alekseenko got here second after profitable a hard-fought battle towards Dutch GM Max Warmerdam within the ultimate spherical. Alekseenko is one among a number of gamers who left Russia as a result of warfare in Ukraine (like third-placed Chigaev), and now represents Austria. His most notable sport was in spherical six, the place he misplaced to GM Daniel Dardha. The gifted Belgian got here up with an excellent theoretical novelty and gained a really good sport:

Ultimate standings (Prime 10)

The Menorca Open 2024 occurred April 2-7, 2024, within the four-star MarSenses Paradise Membership in Ciutadella de Menorca, Spain. The format was a nine-round Swiss. The time management was 90 minutes for the whole sport plus a 30-second increment beginning on transfer one. You will discover all of the video games on our occasions web page.