Sinquefield Cup, Round 1: Wins for Aronian and Mamedyarov

The series in St. Louis has come to its culmination with the start of the Sinquefield Cup on Saturday. (Always avoid alliteration, I know.) 10 of the world's top 14 are playing, including the top 3 - which includes world champion Magnus Carlsen and his challenger, Fabiano Caruana.

It was the world's #3 player who won first though, as Shakhriyar Mamedyarov - one of the hottest players in the world going back to the end of last year - took advantage of the suddenly ice cold Wesley So. Alexander Alekhine (world champion from 1927-1935 and 1937 until his death in 1946) used to boast that an opponent would have to beat him three times to win a game: once in the opening, once in the middlegame, and once in the endgame. On this occasion So managed to lose three times, once in each stage of the game. He came out of the opening with a poor (but not technically lost) position, immediately went wrong in the queenless middlegame with a miscalculated idea that wasted multiple tempi, and then after Mamedyarov tried taking a shortcut in the ending So missed a bonus chance to draw. It was a good game by Mamedyarov but a remarkably poor one for So. Hopefully he will bounce back from the problems he has suffered in St. Louis over the past week and return to his world-beating form straight away.

Levon Aronian was the day's other winner. Surprising Sergey Karjakin (and just about everyone else) by playing 1.e4, he took the white side of the Berlin ending and ground his opponent down in a long (69 move) game. Overall it was a very good effort by Aronian, even if he was disappointed in himself for allowing Black to play ...g5 late in the game.

In the day's draws, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave had a better position against Magnus Carlsen for a while, before letting it slip. Then Carlsen may have been a little better, but there wasn't much he could do after MVL closed up almost all the lines on the board. Hikaru Nakamura had a little surprise for Viswanathan Anand in a well-traveled line of the QGD. He obtained an edge, but 19.Qe2 let Anand liquidate his way to a speedy draw. Finally, Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk played a very long game. Grischuk was slightly better in the middlegame, despite playing Black, but by the end of the first time control Caruana was winning. He either missed or underestimated his best plan, however, and Grischuk managed a narrow escape.

Here are today's games, with my comments.

A Swindle of Sorts from the Vachier-Lagrave vs. Dominguez Match

This is going back a couple of weeks to their Chess.com match. Slowly but surely I've been going through all the matches of the Speed Chess Championship, picking out the occasional gem or otherwise eye-catching game for your entertainment and instruction. Here's a nice swindle by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who managed to befuddle Leinier Dominguez early in the match. There were zwischenzugs and a king walk that reminded the commentators of the famous Short-Timman game from Tilburg 1991. Good entertainment all the way around, and a useful reminder that we should not automatically assume that our opponents will recapture the pieces we've just captured with.

Ultimate Moves, Wei Yi-Inarkiev (Game 4)

Randy Sinquefield has improved since last year, though when short of time he's not yet blunder-proof. But most of the time he played pretty well, and his team managed to defeat his father's team in this year's Ultimate Moves competition. The games were pretty good, so I'd suggest having a look. Tomorrow's activity in St. Louis is the opening ceremony (for those who want to watch it online) for the Sinquefield Cup, which gets underway on Saturday.

In the other especially notable event - professionals only - Wei Yi completed a hat trick against Ernesto Inarkiev. After losing the first game of their match, Wei Yi has won three in a row. Today's game was headed for a draw in an equal rook ending, but Wei Yi kept on grinding and managed to win. Two classical games remain, followed by six rapid games.

St. Louis Rapid & Blitz: Nakamura Wins, Mamedyarov Trips, Vachier-Lagrave Comes up Just Short

The last day of the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz was a thriller, almost coming down to the wire. As yesterday - in fact, as it was all tournament long - Hikaru Nakamura and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov went back and forth, neck and neck all day long. Only today, almost at the very end, did one player emerge as the clear leader.

Nakamura and Mamedyarov started the day tied for first, with Fabiano Caruana a point and a half behind and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave two points back. MVL was the star yesterday, halving his deficit with a stellar 7-2 score. Caruana also had his moments yesterday, starting well and finishing with two wins after a rough middle patch. He started strong today, and when both Nakamura and Mamedyarov each went -1 in their first two rounds it looked like anyone's race. Both Caruana and MVL went +1 in those rounds, closing the gap to half a point and a full point, respectively.

The key game for Caruana - at least the first key game - took place in today's third round. Caruana had White against Nakamura and started well, but 34.Rxc2 brought him from better to precariously equal. A difficult draw was still available on move 46 with 46.Qc3!!, but without much time it wasn't surprising that he failed to find it, and lost. Mamedyarov and Vachier-Lagrave both won, leaving Nakamura and Mamedyarov a point ahead of MVL and a point and a half in front of Caruana.

Mamedyarov beat Caruana in the next round, essentially putting an end to Caruana's hopes for first; Nakamura drew with Viswanathan Anand and, in a shocker, Vachier-Lagrave suffered his first (and only) blitz loss of the tournament, misplaying an attack against Levon Aronian on the black side of a Byrne Attack Najdorf. Mamedyarov took the clear lead, Nakamura was half a point back, MVL went two points down and Caruana down two and a half points.

The race immediately tightened, however, as Mamedyarov lost in round 5 to none other than Vachier-Lagrave. Meanwhile, Nakamura leapfrogged into first by defeating Alexander Grischuk and Caruana kept his very slim chances alive by defeating Anand. Now Nakamura was in first, half a point ahead of Mamedyarov, a point and a half in front of Vachier-Lagrave and two points ahead of Caruana.

In round 6 MVL kept in striking range by defeating Caruana, while Mamedyarov caught up to Nakamura by defeating Sergey Karjakin while Nakamura only drew against Leinier Dominguez. Mamedyarov and Nakamura shared the lead, with MVL a point back and Caruana out of the picture two and a half points behind.

In round 7 Nakamura took a full point lead by defeating Aronian, while Mamedyarov shockingly lost to Wesley So, a tailender throughout the event. Vachier-Lagrave fell off the pace after a draw with Karjakin, leaving him a point and a half behind Nakamura. But things were not as grim for the chase pack as it might seem, because Nakamura would have to face Mamedyarov in round 8 and MVL in the final round, round 9.

In round 8 MVL drew again, with So again playing the spoiler role. Still, not all would be lost in the race for first if Mamedyarov could defeat Nakamura, and he enjoyed an advantage at various times in what was a crazy and very hard-fought game. With 42.Be5 Mamedyarov would have had Nakamura under serious pressure, and a few moves later 45.Kc3 would have maintained equal chances in a sharp ending. Instead, he played 46.Kd3, a fatal error that gave Black's rook the b3 square. Nakamura won a few moves later, taking advantage of (and winning) White's stuck bishop on c1. With a two point lead over both Mamedyarov and MVL with only one round to go, Nakamura clinched clear first.

Nevertheless, Vachier-Lagrave kept fighting and played a very good game, outplaying Nakamura with Black in the last round to close the gap to a single point. Mamedyarov only managed a draw with Anand, which meant that he took a disappointing third place a point and a half behind Nakamura and half a point behind MVL.

The games (without notes) are here, and these are the final overall standings:

1. Nakamura 22.5/36
2. Vachier-Lagrave 21.5
3. Mamedyarov 21
4. Caruana 20
5. Aronian 18
6. Karjakin 17
7. Dominguez 16
8. Grischuk 15.5
9. So 15
10. Anand 13.5

Had the blitz portion been a tournament in its own right, Vachier-Lagrave would have been the clear winner. He scored a very impressive 13.5/18, gained 59 rating points, and is only two points behind Magnus Carlsen in the blitz ratings. And speaking of Magnus Carlsen, he will replace Leinier Dominguez as the wildcard in the next Grand Chess Tour event, happening in the same place and starting on Saturday. That is of course the Sinquefield Cup, a classical event that will mark the close of two different things: the qualification stage of the Grand Chess Tour (the top four overall in the Tour will fight it out in London in December) and the pre-world championship match battles between Carlsen and Caruana. (They will play in round 7, on Saturday, August 25; Carlsen has the white pieces. Full pairings here.)

Incidentally, tomorrow (Thursday) there will be the informal "Ultimate Moves" "competition" at the St. Louis club, a series of fun chess events featuring the Tour participants along with the founder of the club, Rex Sinquefield, and his son Randy Sinquefield. The fun and games will start tomorrow at the usual hour: 1 p.m. local time in St. Louis/2 p.m. ET.

Finally, you can see the Grand Chess Tour's overall standings here (remember, the top four overall qualify for London, and do so on an equal footing - their qualifying scores play no role once they're there) and the Tour points available in the Sinquefield Cup (which are greater than those given for all the previous GCT events) can be found in this PDF.

St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, Day 4 (Day 1 of the Blitz)

I've been a busy bee on the blog the last week or so, but annotating today's 45 blitz games isn't going to happen, sorry. Here's a more general overview of what happened, beginning with a reminder of where things stood after the rapid. Hikaru Nakamura and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov shared the lead with 12 points apiece, a point clear of Fabiano Caruana. Sergey Karjakin, Levon Aronian, and Leinier Dominguez each had 9 points; while Wesley So and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave had just 8 points to their credit. After that, Viswanathan Anand and Alexander Grischuk brought up the rear with 6 points each.

As always in a blitz tournament, there were plenty of blunders, reversals, and time trouble horrors. Two notable ones: Grischuk blundered against Caruana, allowing the latter to win with 49...Nc3. Caruana moved the knight there in time, but then saw 50.Rd6, with the idea of Rg6, and started calculating it. It took him several seconds to do so, and by the time he finally settled on the move and let go his flag fell before he could hit the clock. Another farce was the last round game between Karjakin and So, a dead drawn rook ending that could have been agreed drawn at least 15 moves before the end. For no obvious reason, Karjakin kept playing, and in a position with at least two obvious decent moves he managed to lose on time.

And there were blunders too, none more significant than the one at the end of the Nakamura-Mamedyarov game. Mamedyarov led Nakamura by half a point at that moment, and having outplayed him looked to increase his lead by a point. Having played a terrific game through 36 moves, he uncorked the unfortunate 37...e4??, losing on the spot to 38.Qxd3.

There were lots of interesting moves and games too, and I'll direct your attention to So-Grischuk; in particular to So's fantastic 26th and 27th moves. The subsequent play wasn't perfect, but his idea was terrific.

As for the race: Mamedyarov and Nakamura had a surprisingly hard time of it, each player only managing a plus-one score on the day. Nakamura lost two games and Mamedyarov even lost three; nevertheless, they maintained their lead and even extended it by half a point, as Caruana only managed an even score. (He did win his last two games though, which would have been three in a row were it not for the failure against Grischuk noted above.)

Aronian had a good day, also going +1 - and it was +2 until he lost in the last round to Grischuk. And speaking of Grischuk, he did even better, going +2, only losing to Anand. But the star of the round was Vachier-Lagrave, who went from near the bottom of the table to fourth overall, just half a point behind Caruana and two points behind the leaders. He scored a fantastic 7/9, producing a 2994 TPR (based on classical ratings, which are lower than the players' blitz ratings). He defeated Mamedyarov, Caruana, Anand, Karjakin, and Dominguez, going undefeated on the day. He's right back in the hunt. Finally, a player who looked like he would make a run was Karjakin, who won his first two games. Unfortunately for him, he went winless the rest of the round while losing four games to fall out of contention.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) the tournament concludes with a second blitz round-robin, with the players reversing the colors from today's action. Here are the current standings:

1-2. Nakamura, Mamedyarov 17/27
3. Caruana 15.5
4. Vachier-Lagrave 15
5. Aronian 14
6. Karjakin 12.5
7. Dominguez 12
8. Grischuk 11.5
9. So 11
10. Anand 9.5

Chess is tough - remember that less than a year ago Anand won the World Rapid Championship and took third in the World Blitz Championship! As for the games, you can replay and/or download the lot of them here (but sans annotations).

Wei Yi-Inarkiev: Wei Yi Wins Again

And in good style, too, to take a 2-1 lead in their classical & rapid match. Here's game 3.

Ding Liren Wins Again, Defeats Topalov 3-1

It was a very good little match for Ding Liren, who defeated an illustrious opponent - former FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov - by a convincing 3-1 score. In the process, he has also joined the 2800 club. He is the 14th player to do so, and is currently ranked #4 in the world. Ding's win in the last game was very convincing - a complete positional crush of the sort one would expect from a rating mismatch, but not against a legend like Topalov who has been a top player for more than two decades. Here is the game, which even finishes with a petit combinaison.

St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, Day 3: Mamedyarov & Nakamura Lead Heading Into the Blitz

There were more interesting games today as the rapid portion of the tournament came to a close. Both Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Hikaru Nakamura scored 2.5/3 today (or rather, 5/6 on the 2-1-0 scoring in effect for the rapid games) while day 2 leader Fabiano Caruana finished the day a point (half a point on traditional scoring) behind after a loss in round 7 and draws in rounds 8 and 9. Round 7 was critical, as Caruana gave away a won game - and certainly one that would normally be unloseable - after committing an anthologizable hallucination-style blunder against Leinier Dominguez.

All the day's games, with my comments, are here. And here are the standings going into the blitz. (Remember, the rapid games count double, while the blitz games will be scored and counted in the conventional way. Tomorrow they'll have their first blitz round-robin, and on Wednesday the second round-robin with colors reversed.)

1-2. Mamedyarov, Nakamura 12/18
3. Caruana 11
4-6. Karjakin, Aronian, Dominguez 9
7-8. So, Vachier-Lagrave 8
9-10. Anand, Grischuk 6

Wei Yi vs. Inarkiev

Another match involving a young Chinese super-GM is afoot, this one in Russia featuring Wei Yi against Russian GM Ernesto Inarkiev. It's a mix of six classical games and six rapid games; so far, the players have exchanged victories at classical time controls. The games are here (without notes), but I recommend having a close look at game 2, won by Wei Yi. His 14.b4 launched an initiative that brilliantly blew Inarkiev away.

Ding Liren-Topalov, Game 3

A second straight draw following his victory in game 1 means that Ding Liren only needs a draw with the white pieces in game 4 tomorrow to win his short match with Veselin Topalov. Game 3 is here; note Ding's instructive defense from move 48 on to hold the draw.