World Champion Magnus Carlsen will play his new arch-rival 16-year-old Alireza Firouzja in the Banter Blitz Cup final after Alireza beat S.L. Narayanan 9:6 in by far his toughest match of the event to date. The semi-final threatened to be a walkover like Magnus Carlsen’s 9:0 win over Sanan Sjugirov, but after Firouzja played a brilliant first game and then reached 2:0 his Indian opponent hit back and eventually went on to win 4 games. Only a blunder in the 15th and final game prevented a nail-biting finale.

After 131 matches involving a total of 133 players we’re down to the final two, with Magnus Carlsen set to play Alireza Firouzja in the final next week, where the winner will take home $14,000. Magnus cruised into the final 9:0, but Alireza had a much tougher time against S.L. Narayanan.

The Magnus Carlsen Invitational also starts a week today – with an announcement of the full line-up coming soon – while we have some more very exciting events lined up before that! Stay tuned to chess24 for non-stop action.

See also:

• All the Banter Blitz Cup games
• Banter Blitz Cup pairings tree
• Scheduled matches
• Carlsen in 1/4-finals, tips Caruana for Candidates
• Carlsen and Firouzja on collision course
• Carlsen, Sjugirov, Firouzja & Narayanan reach semi-finals
• Magnus Carlsen follows in Fischer’s footsteps

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