Daily Roundup: Leuven, Svidler-Yu, Navara-Harikrishna
It's rapid & blitz time in the chess world, as not one, and not two, but three elite quick-play events transpired today.
We already know about Leuven, the first Grand Chess Tour tournament of 2018. Today was the last day of the rapid portion of the event, and Wesley So continues to enjoy a dominant lead. He defeated Hikaru Nakamura in the first game of the day, then drew the next two to finish with 7/9. Or rather 14/18, since the rapid games count double compared to the blitz games coming Friday and Saturday. Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave have 11 points apiece, Sergey Karjakin and Nakamura have 10, and on it goes: Mamedyarov 9, Grischuk 8, Caruana 7, and Anand and Giri have 5 each.
Next, Peter Svidler played a rapid and blitz match against Yu Yangyi that started Tuesday and finished today (Thursday), consisting of eight rapid games (which counted double) and ten blitz games. Svidler massacred Yu in the rapid, going 6-2 thanks to a five-game winning streak, but after going +1 in the first five blitz games it was Yu who delivered the beatings, scoring 4.5 points in the last five games. Yu thus won the blitz portion 6.5-3.5. It wouldn't have been enough to save the match even without the double scoring in the rapid, but with it Svidler's final margin of victory was 15.5-10.5. (Offiical site here; this will be more helpful to non-Chinese readers.)
Finally, David Navara and Pentala Harikrishna are halfway through a rapid-only match, and the score is tied 3-3 with one win apiece. As with Leuven, play continues through Saturday.
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