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Azerbaijani chess grandmaster Teimour Radjabov claimed the Airthings Masters title after beating his Armenian rival, Levon Aronian, in a two-day final of the tournament on Sunday.
Radjabov took the lead in the first match of the final on January 2 with a win in one game and a draw in three games against Aronian. In a decisive Day 2 of the final, the Azerbaijani megabrain gave his Armenian rival no chance to end the 4-game quick match with a 2-1 victory to win the Airthings Masters title and a $ 60,000 prize pool.
“2020 was a super difficult year for me … It took me a lot of energy to work on my chess. To go back to professional chess, because I was a little depressed … It means a lot to me to win this,” Radjabov said shortly after winning the Masters by Airthings.
“I don’t know what happened in the last game, but it was certainly about the nerves. I was very scared of losing this rook ending, but then I found this good way to catch his king on f4, which made me happy because of otherwise, you have to calculate all the time. “
Teimour finished the Airthings Masters standings on top with 91 points, 28 points clear of runner-up Wesley So, a Filipino grandmaster. The international chess federation FIDE announced on its official website the Azerbaijani super grandmaster “The Person of the Day”. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and First Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva congratulated him on the “convincing victory”.
With the victory at the Airthings Masters, 2019 World Cup winner Radjabov was the first chess master of the tournament to reach the Tour Finals of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, which will take place in San Francisco in September. .
Airthings Masters was Aronian’s second loss to Teimour Radjabov after a loss at the Skilling Open in November. Radjabov beat his counterpart during the seventh round of the tournament, which marked the inaugural competition of the 2020-2021 Champions Chess Tour.
Radjabov is one of the most renowned chess grandmasters in present-day Azerbaijan. He has achieved the greatest success in Azerbaijani chess history by winning the FIDE World Cup in October 2019, when he outpointed Ding Liren in the two 5-minute blitz games in the final tiebreaker to win the biggest trophy in your professional career.
The 33-year-old chess champion is said to have inherited his talent from his father, a Soviet regional champion Boris Sheynin. After ten years of delving into the secrets of the game of chess, Radjabov became a grandmaster when he was 14 years old.
At the age of 15, he rose significantly through the ranks after defeating world champion Garry Kasparov at the Linares tournament in 2003. Radjabov described the game against Kasparov as the “most memorable” of his life. The Azerbaijani grandmaster also managed to defeat Ruslan Ponomariov, Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand, three victories that placed him in the elite of world chess. He currently ranks in the Top-10 of the 100 best FIDE players for January.
