World Rapid & Blitz, Day 1: Intrigue on the first day
Action is underway at the World Rapid Championship in New York City. The first day kicked off with a few small surprises, as there were six draws in the top 13 boards in the first round, including all of Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Hikaru Nakamura, and Jeffrey Xiong even lost his first game. Especially under a faster time control, these results will happen, but perhaps not usually so many at once! The matchups all had about a 250-point difference between players, though of anyone, Magnus had the very underrated opponent: Awonder Liang is nearly 2700 classical, but the 21-year-old hasn’t played much rapid so it lags at just over 2500. The Women’s section was even more so, with upsets on boards 2 and 4 as Lei Tingjie and Alexandra Kosteniuk started with a loss to 200-point underdogs.
After failing to break through Liang’s Scotch Four Knights, a notoriously dry opening, Magnus was able to overcome Denis Kadric’s Petroff in round two to score his first win. Meanwhile, Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja both lost their first games much earlier than expected, leaving just three of twelve 2700-rated players on 2/2.
The third round had trouble for both Magnus and Women’s World Champion Ju Wenjun. Magnus conceded another draw, to 20-year-old Gleb Dudin, and it could have been a lot worse as he was lost multiple times in a minor piece endgame, salvaging it in a tricky knight-and-pawn scenario. Ju was faced with Bf6-g7!! by Irene Sukandar.
White is winning the queen for rook and bishop, for instance by …Qd8 Rf8+, or the game’s …Kxg7 Rxf8, because …Qxg7?? Qe8+ will mate on f8 next move. The trap for White was Be7?? instead of Bg7, which looks like a fork, but …Qxe7! Qxe7 Rd1+ wins White’s queen. Black did manage to survive by reaching a fortress, and a draw.
In the FIDE Circuit qualifying watch, Arjun Erigaisi also suffered his first setback, losing to Sam Sevian. Nakamura suffered a tragic draw in rook-and-bishop vs. rook, where he had mate in one on the next move, but they had just reached 50 moves of no captures/pawn moves, so Alexander Donchenko claimed a draw. Among the eight leaders at 3/3 in the Open, Anish Giri and Leinier Dominguez are the most familiar.
Round four is currently underway, which is the last one today for the Women’s. Day one of the Open will finish after round five. You can catch up on all the day’s action on Lichess, or the chess24 livestream with GM Aman Hambleton and FM James Canty.
