2017 London Chess Classic, Round 1: Everyone Tied for Last
Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 12:42AM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2017 London Chess Classic

Or first, depending on how you want to look at it. All five games were drawn, but not all the draws were created equal.

In the headline game between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, the champion had the upper hand throughout. Repeatedly he would outplay Caruana and obtain the advantage, but then he'd commit an inaccuracy and Caruana would equalize or draw nearer to equality. Finally, Carlsen made one inaccuracy too many, and Caruana was able to escape with a draw.

Hikaru Nakamura and Viswanathan Anand had an even more volatile contest. Nakamura had an edge in the opening that increased in the middlegame thanks to the bishop pair, but the Elmer Fudd plan to blow Anand away with 25.g4, 27.h4, and 28.g5 backfired badly. Anand took over and had serious winning chances in a crazy middlegame, but after mutual errors the game resulted in an exciting draw.

The other three games - Nepomniachtchi - Aronian, So - Vachier-Lagrave, and Adams - Karjakin - were short, "warm-up" draws.

Saturday was a rest day, odd as that might seem after just one round. Play resumes Sunday (today for most readers), with the following pairings:

First round games here (with my comments to Carlsen-Caruana and Anand-Nakamura).

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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