Garry finishes the last day. With 3 wins, one loss and 5 draws.
The tournament finished too early, he was just getting warmed up.
In the after tournament interview, honest and entertaining as always,
he says it was not a comeback but to get publicity for Chess.
It worked, the main site got over one million viewers.
He predicted he would be bad at rapid, the hour was too long and his
concentration after 12 years was bound to wane. In Blitz it was always
going to be a lottery but his two wins today v Nakamura and Caruana were good.
He was pleased with his last win v Dominguez Perez as it was probably
his last Najdorf. So a major comeback is not on the cards.
He was a tad lucky v Caruana but blitz is not Fabiano's forte,
He finished the bottom of the blitz with 5½ from 18 games.
Gary finished 5th on blitz with 9pts. (4 wins, 4 losses and 10 draws).
Here, Caruana to play.
White has 56.Nc5 and it is winning. (56..Nxf6 57.Ne6+).
Caruana missed it.....
Against Nakamura and again with no time left he shunned a draw and found the winning variation.
Here with Kasparov to play. and everyone predicting draw.
33...h6! winning (according to Garry) an important tempo.
Hi congruent
He said no that was it. He is a $millionaire so money won't tempt him but perhaps
£50,000 appearance fee and given the wildcard spot in the candidates might do it.
But they will have to make that offer soon and give him time to knock himself back
into shape board wise and body wise.
That is not a silly suggestion. Sponsors and organisers will have seen the
record breaking views Garry attracted. His pulling power is massive compared
to the rest of the players and that includes Carlsen.
He predicted he would do badly in the first few days as he was getting rid of the rust.
This was true. But on the last day he lost one game, to Karjakin, the current blitz world
champion. and winner of the blitz section and won or drew the rest. Three of those
wins contain some wonderful chess the highlight for me being the one v Nakamura
(given above) where Gary playing solely on a 3 second delay saw and played h6.
In the after game interview he could understand the fuss as if to say:
"can't you see this is the only winning try in the position."
Despite his, as predicted terrible start, I got the feeling he was not impressed with
this field. 5 of them were not even born when Garry was world champion and yet his
stamina seemed to last the longest.
The next book will be: "My Not So Great Successors."