Olympic Esports Series 2023: Aleksei Sarana wins Chess.com event
The Serbian Grandmaster sweeps opponent Maksim Chigaev in three games to clinch the inaugural chess title at the finals of the Olympic Esports Series 2023.
Serbian chess Grandmaster Aleksei Sarana is the inaugural winner of the Chess.com event at the finals of the Olympic Esports Series 2023 in Singapore.
The 23-year-old Sarana was dominant in the final against Maksim Chigaev, played in a best-of-four blitz format, sweeping the final in three games.
Sarana was aggressive in his moves but serene and considered, managing the clock while Chigaev ran his timer down in all three games, nearly forfeiting on time on multiple occasions.
Ultimately, Sarana forced resignations from his opponent in the endgame thrice to secure his win.
"It's an amazing feeling. I expected a lot from this tournament, and I enjoyed it," Sarana said afterwards.
"It was the first tournament which I considered myself the favourite, and I even won it. It's something very unusual, something very new, but I liked it a lot. To play on scene with a lot of spectators; I think I've never played with spectators, I think."
In the bronze-trophy match, Vietnam's Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son – the youngest Grandmaster from his country, having earned the title aged 14 – defeated Aleksandr Rakhmanov in a thrilling Armageddon tiebreaker.
Two games in their series were drawn, while Rakhmanov won game 2 as White and Nguyen game 4 as Black, requiring the tiebreaker. In that game, Nguyen was White and had five minutes to play his moves, while Rakhmanov was Black and had four minutes – but would win in the event of a tie.
Nguyen appeared to make an error by giving up a free bishop, but managed to move a pawn to the end of the board in the endgame to promote it to a queen, drawing a resignation from Rakhmanov.