News
News
World Rapid: Half-Point Lead For Carlsen After Day 2 | UPDATE: Video

World Rapid: Half-Point Lead For Carlsen After Day 2 | UPDATE: Video

PeterDoggers
| 40 | Chess Event Coverage

Magnus Carlsen is the sole leader at the FIDE World Rapid Championship in Dubai with five rounds to go. In round 10 the Norwegian defeated co-leader Fabiano Caruana of Italy in a direct confrontation and is now half a point ahead of Levon Aronian of Armenia, who defeated Hikaru Nakamura in Tuesday's final round. On Wednesday the decisive last five rounds will be played.

Update: here's our video report, which includes interviews with the world's #1 and #2 of classical chess (and currently in the standings!) Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian:

On what was another very hot day for most participants, but a normal one for Dubai standards, rounds 6-10 of the World Rapid Championship were played in the rook-shaped Dubai Chess & Culture Club. Luckily many of the technical problems of the first day were solved, and so the tournament was easier to follow for the chess fans at home.

The tournament is enjoying the luxury of having many of the world's best players among the participants, and even better: none of them is out of form. Not all of them had a good first day, but players like Carlsen, Aronian, Grischuk, Caruana, Anand, Nakamura, Karjakin and Svidler were all moving up to the top of the standings, and together with e.g. Ian Nepomniachtchi, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Yu Yangyi they will fight for the top prizes tomorrow.

Yesterday he told Chess.com that he was playing the tournament “just for fun”, and perhaps it was that mindset that helped Caruana to beat Nepomniachtchi on board one in Tuesday's starting round. He found a healthy set-up against the King's Indian Attack and slowly outplayed his opponent.

Karjakin and Carlsen played a very interesting draw that started as a Sicilian Dragon (!). It's been a while, but Carlsen played that sharp variation four years ago in classical games as well.

Karjakin-Carlsen, a fascinating Sicilian Dragon | Photo Anstasiya Karlovich

Sergei Movesian crushed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave using yet another 6th move against the Najdorf: the innocious-looking 6.a3!?

KingLoek was undefeated after the first day, and continued very well:

Alexander Morozevich won quickly against Judit Polgar using 2.b3 in the Sicilian:

The 7th round saw lots of draws on the top boards: Caruana-Karjakin, Anand-Movsesian, Grischuk-Morozevich, and Carlsen-Fressinet. This time the Frenchman wasn't “too weak, too slow.” :-)

Nepomniachtchi won a good game against Le Quang Liem to join Movsesian and Karjakin in second place, half a point behind Caruana.

Nakamura joined the group of players with 5.0/7 after inflicting the first loss upon Van Wely.

The 7th round lasted about 1.5 hours because of one game: Matlakov-Vakhidov, who reached a RN-R ending. Matlakov tried it for many moves (most probably more than fifty) before giving up his winning attempts, and it was all watched by the other participants on TV screens in the cafeteria.

Players watching the Matlakov-Vakhidov game...

...but finally there was a handshake!

Caruana maintained his lead in round 8 with a draw againt Movsesian, who was making a very solid impression. Nepomniachtchi and Karjakin also split the point, and the group of players behind Caruana became bigger. One of them was Nakamura, who beat Morozevich in an excellent game as Black. The American had no problems with that 2.b3 move!

Nakamura, wearing the latest fashion today

Grischuk then defeated his compatriot Tomashevsky from a Bishop's Game/Vienna.

Carlsen outplayed Kryvoruchko from the black side of a 3.Bb5+ Sicilian that looked more like a Closed Ruy Lopez:

Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son managed to hold Vishy Anand to a draw, while Aronian defeated Potkin, who has the tendency to go down in pretty fashion:

Even though there was no long endgame this time, between the 8th and the 9th round there was a break of about 45 minutes anyway - because it was prayer time.

Carlsen had a different way of spending the break, as he posted on Facebook:

In round 9 Caruana-Grischuk and Nakamura-Nepomniachtchi ended in draws. Carlsen caught Caruana in first place thanks to a win against Movsesian, who was very disappointed - he probably thought the ending should have been holdable, and he was probably right.

Karjakin lost his first game in round 9 (!) to Aronian. The Berlin Ending is always tricky.

In an all-Indian match, Anand defeated Harikrishna convincingly:

As in any Swiss event, the tournament leaders get paired against each other and so it was Carlsen vs Caruana in round 10! Via 1.d4 the players reached a Philidor and White was a bit better after the opening. A tactical sequence led to a passed a-pawn for Carlsen and he used more nice tactics to get it to the eighth rank:

On board 2 Nakamura “chose the wrong plan”, according to Aronian, who reached a strategically winning position very early on. 

And so, with five rounds to go, Carlsen is on 8.0/10 and Aronian on 7.5/10. They will play each other on top board on Wednesday, and again the round starts at 15:00 local time (Dubai = GMT+4, so 13:00 Amsterdam, 12:00 London, 07:00 New York, 04:00 Los Angeles).

World Rapid Championship 2014 | Round 10 Standings (Top 40)

Rk. SNo Name Fed Rtg Pts. TB1 TB2 Perf
1 4 Carlsen Magnus NOR 2827 8 2713 54,5 2946
2 7 Aronian Levon ARM 2785 7,5 2687 51 2862
3 11 Nepomniachtchi Ian RUS 2768 7 2754 55,5 2890
4 2 Caruana Fabiano ITA 2840 7 2735 59,5 2876
5 31 Tomashevsky Evgeny RUS 2693 7 2706 54,5 2838
6 3 Grischuk Alexander RUS 2828 7 2700 55 2838
7 45 Yu Yangyi CHN 2668 7 2687 52 2807
8 9 Anand Viswanathan IND 2770 7 2684 53 2827
9 6 Svidler Peter RUS 2787 7 2662 53 2804
10 8 Karjakin Sergey RUS 2781 6,5 2741 61 2840
11 49 Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son VIE 2660 6,5 2731 54 2799
12 33 Jobava Baadur GEO 2688 6,5 2722 52,5 2810
13 1 Nakamura Hikaru USA 2841 6,5 2699 54,5 2792
14 28 Movsesian Sergei ARM 2696 6,5 2696 55,5 2776
15 15 Morozevich Alexander RUS 2732 6,5 2685 48,5 2775
16 13 Radjabov Teimour AZE 2750 6,5 2657 51 2751
17 34 Naiditsch Arkadij GER 2687 6,5 2638 51,5 2726
18 43 Van Wely Loek NED 2674 6 2728 53 2768
19 36 Fressinet Laurent FRA 2681 6 2722 55,5 2735
20 57 Iturrizaga Bonelli Eduardo VEN 2652 6 2720 53 2757
21 53 Bologan Viktor MDA 2656 6 2719 52,5 2744
22 68 Yudin Sergei RUS 2626 6 2717 51,5 2767
23 44 Guseinov Gadir AZE 2671 6 2716 55,5 2756
24 14 Vachier-Lagrave Maxime FRA 2749 6 2681 53,5 2747
25 18 Le Quang Liem VIE 2724 6 2675 55 2734
26 17 Harikrishna P. IND 2726 6 2674 51,5 2739
27 64 Adly Ahmed EGY 2634 6 2673 48,5 2717
28 59 Matlakov Maxim RUS 2649 6 2661 50,5 2681
29 32 Bacrot Etienne FRA 2692 6 2660 49 2711
30 22 Dreev Aleksey RUS 2709 6 2655 51 2720
31 5 Mamedyarov Shakhriyar AZE 2799 6 2652 47 2696
32 12 Malakhov Vladimir RUS 2766 6 2650 51 2717
33 23 Vallejo Pons Francisco ESP 2709 6 2650 46,5 2715
34 29 Kryvoruchko Yuriy UKR 2694 6 2635 49 2693
35 40 Efimenko Zahar UKR 2677 6 2628 47,5 2679
36 27 Moiseenko Alexander UKR 2699 6 2621 45,5 2680
37 39 Zhigalko Sergei BLR 2679 6 2593 46,5 2651
38 70 Dubov Daniil RUS 2624 5,5 2708 50,5 2738
39 73 Riazantsev Alexander RUS 2597 5,5 2701 55,5 2695
40 65 Salgado Lopez Ivan ESP 2630 5,5 2694 51,5 2709

(Full standings here)

The World Rapid starts today at 3pm local time which is 1pm CET, 7am New York and 4am Los Angeles. The championship will be broadcast live on the tournament’s official website with online games and commentary.


More from PeterDoggers
Abdusattorov Maintains World #4 Position As Prague Masters Ends With All Draws

Abdusattorov Maintains World #4 Position As Prague Masters Ends With All Draws

Bu Xiangzhi Wins Shenzhen Masters On Tiebreaks, Giri Drops Out Of Top 10

Bu Xiangzhi Wins Shenzhen Masters On Tiebreaks, Giri Drops Out Of Top 10