Catching Up: Speed Chess Championship, Russian Championship, and Hainan Danzhou
The 2020 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship peaked in the semi-final, alas, though the final between Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was competitive...for a while. In the 5'+1" portion the battle went back and forth, with Nakamura finishing the stage with a one-point lead. The 3'+1" segment was even more competitive, with the players breaking even to leave Nakamura with a one-point lead entering the 1'+1". MVL won the first two games to take the lead, and drew the third game. And...that was basically it. Nakamura won five in a row, and after a draw won the last two games to win the segment by five points and the match by six, 18.5-12.5 overall.
In the realm of slow chess - it still exists! - the Russian Championship is down to the last round, with Sergey Karjakin and Ian Nepomniachtchi tied for first at 7/10, with Vladimir Fedoseev a point behind. Here are the key pairings:
- Dubov (5.5) - Karjakin (7)
- Chigaev (5.5) - Nepomniachtchi (7)
- Esipenko (4.5) - Fedoseev (6)
It's a very strong event, with Peter Svidler, Nikita Vitiugov, Vladislav Artemiev, and Maxim Matlakov also in the field.
Finally, the Hainan Danzhou tournament (online, 15'+10") finished a few days ago with Richard Rapport winning the double round-robin event with an undefeated 9/14, half a point ahead of Ding Liren (8.5) and a point and a half ahead of Alexander Grischuk and Anish Giri (7.5). The bottom half of the table featured players who could easily win such events as well: Wei Yi (6.5), Yu Yangyi (6), Wang Hao (5.5), and Veselin Topalov (5.5).
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