Chessable Masters Day 1: So Leads; Tough Start For Mishra

GM Wesley So leads the Chessable Masters preliminaries after the first day of play. GMs Vladislav Artemiev, Alireza Firouzja, and Hikaru Nakamura are trailing by half a point. The eighth leg of the Champions Chess Tour runs until August 8.

Although the FIDE World Cup is still underway, the next leg in the Champions Chess Tour started on Saturday. The format is still the same: 16 players start in a single round-robin tournament of 15 rounds, and the top eight players advance to a knockout stage.

After GM Hou Yifan made her debut as the first female player in the Tour in the previous tournament, it is nice to see two female players in this field: Women's World Champion GM Ju Wenjun and GM Humpy Koneru.

It was a good first day for American players Nakamura and So, who are on top of the leaderboard with Artemiev and Firouzja. It was So who did the best with an undefeated 4/5 score. The field also includes GM Abhimanyu Mishra, the new youngest GM in history, who started with 0.5/5.

Chessable Masters | Round 5 Standings

The game that stands out in the first round is GM Jorden van Foreest's win over GM Levon Aronian. For starters, the Dutchman played 7.Nc3 in the Giuoco Piano that led to the good old Moller Attack, named after Danish player Jorgen Moller who published an analysis of this variation in Tidsskrift for Skak in 1898.

After Van Foreest had gradually been outplayed, he won the game after all due to a blunder by Aronian:

GM Magnus Carlsen couldn't play because he is busy trying to win a more important tournament. His compatriot GM Aryan Tari is defending the Norwegian flag for this one and won a good game vs. Van Foreest in round two:

Mishra's baptism of fire was a tough one, although he came quite close to making draws against the other Americans, Nakamura and So. For example, he blundered his rook in the theoretically drawn rook endgame RB-R vs. Naka:

Mishra, who is from Englishtown, New Jersey, said afterward: "It's an honor to play in this tournament; it is a very good learning opportunity for me."

All Games Day 1

The Chessable Masters runs July 31-August 8, 2021 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a six-day knockout that consists of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advance to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize fund is $100,000, including a $30,000 first prize.