Anish Giri

Dutch GM

“Yeah, I’m really happy today. Of course, it was almost like a joke, that will manage to win in the end, and some of my teammates were even saying that I probably will win my final games too. But at this point it was much more wishful thinking than the expectation and I’m really happy that it actually happened, that’s a great finish for us. It was such a lucky struggle, the whole preliminary stage, so many of us were so shaky, especially the top three boards, all the candidates were so shaky, and in the end, we managed to clutch it out.

Against Wei Yi I was really fortunate, honestly. He’s a great player. There are many other great players, for example, I lost both games to Arjun. I think, if we do it again, I can beat him sometime and Wei Yi surely can beat me. We played many times, I think I have bad score against him mostly. I was honestly just fortunate.

Sometimes, when you have bad score against someone, it can actually help you because he over-pushes a little bit, takes much more risk than usual. That’s also a thing. These things — they turn around.

So, again, it’s a bit random. We are all good players and sometimes you can beat someone twice in a row and the other time you are at the receiving end.”