Palma Grand Prix, Round 1: Three Winners, Including MVL. UPDATED
Teimour Radjabov and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the two players who are in the running for the Candidates, given a sufficiently successful performance in this, the final leg of the 2017 FIDE Grand Prix, drew and won (respectively) in round 1. Radjabov drew with Alexander Riazantsev in just 12 moves - with White - which is hardly an auspicious start. Possible reply: He offered the draw because he was worse, not because he was unambitious. Rejoinder: It's true that he was a little worse (but only a tiny bit - "equal" is more accurate than "Black is slightly better"), but that just shifts the mystery around a little. He chose the opening - Jobava's/Prie's London/Veresov hybrid - he introduced the first new move of the game, 8.Ne5, and nothing after that was earth-shattering from either player. Anyway, it's early; no doubt he'll push more as the event goes on.
Vachier-Lagrave played more ambitiously, defeating Boris Gelfand on the white side of an Accelerated Dragon. Gelfand sacrificed a pawn on move 8, and never got it back. Or rather, he did on move 30, but it was a different and entirely meaningless pawn he managed to pocket. Meanwhile, the extra pawn MVL collected and kept was on its way to promotion, and Gelfand resigned just four moves later. It was an impressive start to the tournament for Vachier-Lagrave.
The day's other two winners were Anish Giri, who won a very nice ending against Richard Rapport, and Ernesto Inarkiev, who obtained a fantastic position out of the opening against Li Chao and easily converted his advantage.
Could someone remind me in the comments why no outside entities are covering the event live? I thought Agon/World Chess lost their lawsuit when they tried to frighten others off from covering the last Candidates and the World Championship. At least they lost in the U.S., and I don't recall their winning anywhere else. Did everyone capitulate just to avoid legal fees from nuisance lawsuits?
UPDATE: Ah, here's the reason, courtesy of one of the many affected parties. FIDE will blacklist people who follow the law in a way they don't like for a period of up to ten years. Charming. They lost in court, in the court of public opinion, and in the realm of argumentation, so they'll simply use their monopoly powers to thuggishly cow parties into submission. There really needs to be change at FIDE (not solely because of this; this is reason 12,754), or a viable rival not fronted by a slash-and-burn personality like Kasparov. (In an assisting role, maybe, but definitely not its head.)