There is some strange scheduling in the chess world, as two rapid events with super-GMs started on the very same day, today. Here in the Superbet Rapid & Blitz, which is part of the Grand Chess Tour, the field includes Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Richard Rapport, Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand, and Jan Krzysztof Duda. That's three current Candidates, two other players who have been as high as #2 in the world (and were former Candidates as well), and a former World Champion (and #1-rated player).
Meanwhile, the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour has an event, the Chessable Masters. Who've they got? At the top, there's the current World Champion and world #1 (Magnus Carlsen), world #2 and Candidate Ding Liren, and there are also former Candidates and world #2 players Anish Giri and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. It's a pity for us as chess fans that the two events are cannibalizing from each other - it would have been nice to see the events merged while shedding some of the lower-rated players. And it's also a pity for chess commentators, who must either stay up all night trying to cover the events deeply, or else must pare down their coverage for the sanity's sake. I'm choosing the latter tonight, but if a day's action really grabs me, I may well go the extra mile.
Anyway, this post will stick to the Superbet tournament. As noted in the headline, Anand got off to a 3-0 start, rejecting even a metaphorical application of Richard Lamm's infamous suggestion that old people have a duty to die and get out of the way. (To be fair, his indefensible statement was that old people who were terminally ill had this supposed duty.) Anand isn't likely to get another crack at the (Classical) World Championship, but he hasn't exactly forgotten how the pieces move, and with wins over Radoslaw Wojtaszek (his former second), Wesley So, and Anton Korobov, he's rolling. The wins were just "good for rapid", they were good games, period, especially the last one, against Korobov.
Aronian, Caruana, and Duda are tied for second with 2/3. Aronian drew with Rapport and Wojtaszek (with some good fortune), but beat Caruana in a good game in the first round. Caruana came back with wins over Duda and (by a very long way) bottom seed (and early cellar-dweller) David Gavrilescu. Duda also beat Gavrilescu, and Rapport as well.
Two more days of rapid await us, followed by two days of blitz. Meanwhile, here are three games from the first three rounds, with my comments.