By Admin 
Life is a great leveller. Ask Wei Yi.
He came back from the dead in the Chess World Cup semifinal against Andrey Esipenko. It was a terrible blunder from the Russian that saved him, and put him in the final, and also in the Candidates.
Luck seemed to continue to favour the seventh seed from China in the final on Wednesday against Javokhir Sindarov. But not for long: Wei’s blunder gave the 19-year-old Uzbek a win in the second tie-break game and the World Cup. He is the youngest champion in World Cup history.
In the first tie-break game at Resort Rio, Wei had made a terrible mistake with a pawn push on the king-side on the 30th move, putting Sindarov in a potentially winning position. But his opponent blundered in return straightaway with his own ill-judged pawn push on the same flank, and the game, which had reached a bishop-ending from Queen’s Gambit Defence, petered out to a draw in 45 moves.
Soon after the game, Sindarov’s second showed him how he had missed a win. “I was very sad, but didn’t want to think about it, as I had to play another game,” he would admit later. “I thought if I got a chance like in the second, I would make use of it.”
He did.
In that second game, an Italian one, Wei blundered with his rook on the 51st move, and Sindarov pounced on it. Such a blunder under time pressure – with something like 20 seconds remaining – is not uncommon and it wouldn’t have been easy to find the right sequence of moves, involving a rook sacrifice, to get equality.
And this was Wei’s first defeat in the tournament; he had remained unbeaten in 27 games. And Sindarov had offered him a draw, which he had refused.
Life is like that, of course.
The result (final, tie-breaks): Javokhir Sindarov (Uzb) bt Wei Yi (Chn) 1.5-0.5.