St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, Day 3: Mamedyarov & Nakamura Lead Heading Into the Blitz
Monday, August 13, 2018 at 11:39PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2018 St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, Hikaru Nakamura, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov

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

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