Leuven Rapid, Day 1
In round 1, World Champion Magnus Carlsen drew with Black against Wesley So, and the other games finished with a winner. Vladimir Kramnik won an impressive technical game against Hikaru Nakamura on the white side of a Reti; the beginning of a bad run for last week's winner of the Paris Rapid & Blitz tournament. (That said, if Nakamura had chosen ...a5 on move 21 or 22, he probably would have drawn without too many tears.) Viswanathan Anand also won impressively, defeating Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with Black with a well-calculated sacrificial attack. The other two wins weren't quite as clean, but both Fabiano Caruana (vs. Veselin Topalov) and Levon Aronian (against Anish Giri) were deserved winners.
Leaders: Anand, Aronian, Caruana and Kramnik.
Less blood was spilled in round 2 - only Topalov-Nakamura ended with a decisive result. Nakamura came out of the opening in great shape, with a rook and two massive center pawns for a pair of minor pieces. Topalov defended well, managed to blockade the position, and after Nakamura played 38...Rfd8? it was a light-squared rout after 39.Bxe5 Qxe5 40.Nh4. Giri-Caruana should have been a second win, as Giri had an overwhelming advantage, but Giri got careless and allowed Caruana a near-miracle draw.
Leaders: Exactly the same: Anand, Aronian, Caruana and Kramnik.
In round 3 more strange things happened. Anand blundered a piece against Caruana on move 8 to a straightforward tactic, and then kept playing and pulled out a draw. Almost as strange was the grudge game Kramnik-Topalov. Kramnik enjoyed a two-results ending for a long time, but then he uncorked 58.f6??, blundering a piece to a trivially simple tactic and lost. Aronian had an edge against Carlsen for a while, and certainly should have drawn. In the rook ending, however, everything went wrong for Aronian, who is not the first and won't be the last player to lose a "drawn" rook ending to the champ. Nakamura-Giri was another disaster for the American, whose was lost already out of the opening. Finally, MVL-So was a clean draw.
Leaders: Anand, Carlsen, Caruana and Topalov.
Round 4 finally resulted in a single leader: Fabiano Caruana. He was getting outplayed by Carlsen in a complicated middlegame, but in mutual time trouble Carlsen's 43.Bd6! allowed 43...Re5!, equalizing, after after 44.Rf1 Rg5 Carlsen was about to play the correct 45.Rf2 before changing his mind and sliding the rook on to f3. That lost to 45...Rxg2+! 46.Kxg2 Nd4, and Caruana duly converted his advantage. Anand and Topalov failed to keep up, as they only drew with Nakamura and Giri, respectively. So-Aronian was also drawn, while Vachier-Lagrave defeated Kramnik after the latter again blundered a piece (this time in an inferior position).
Leader: Caruana.
That state of affairs did not last. In round 5, Caruana lost with White to So; this was the undefeated So's first win of the tournament, and was good enough to put him into a tie for second with Caruana. And in first? It is Anand, who defeated Topalov on the black side of a rather peculiar English (1.c4 e5 2.d3). White was fine after the opening (though not better), so the "blame" for the loss goes to Anand's better play in the middlegame and not to any fault with the opening experiment. Both Aronian (against MVL) and Kramnik (against Giri) had some advantage with White before their long-lasting games finished peacefully.
Finally, in the remaining game - which was the first one to finish - a sort of miracle happened: Nakamura defeated Carlsen in something other than a blitz game! It was no masterpiece, and Nakamura didn't have to show any grit or find any brilliant ideas. Carlsen just hallucinated or miscalculated - or didn't calculate at all - and straightforwardly blundered a piece on move 11, resigning six moves later. It's not a game Nakamura will brag about, but to finally defeat Carlsen after taking so many lumps from him over the years must still be psychologically huge.
Here are the full standings after day 1 (remember, the rapid games are counted on a 2-1-0 scoring system; the blitz will have the traditional 1-.5-0 weights):
- 1. Anand 7/10
- 2-3. Caruana, So 6
- 4-7. Topalov, Aronian, Vachier-Lagrave, Giri 5
- 8-9. Carlsen, Kramnik 4
- 10. Nakamura 3
Reader Comments (1)
"to finally defeat Carlsen after taking so many lumps from him over the years must still be psychologically huge"
Naka had beaten Carlsen in rapid before (even if only once).
[DM: Right you are - back in 2009, in their first decisive game.]