Wei Yi Wins Rapid, Carlsen Still Unbeaten
GM Wei Yi posted a five-game winning streak as he scored 13 of a possible 18 points to top the table after the rapid section of the 2024 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland. World number-one Magnus Carlsen is just a point behind before the weekend's 18 rounds of blitz after surviving a difficult game against GM Anish Giri. With only three points separating third and last place anything is possible if the leaders stumble.
Day four starts Saturday, May 11, at 7 a.m. ET / 13:00 CEST / 4:30 p.m. IST.
Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland Standings After Rapid
"Relaxed" Wei Yi Powers On
"I feel really relaxed after today's games!" said Wei after topping the field after the nine rounds of rapid chess in Warsaw. It was understandable that he was feeling good, since a run of five wins in a row, followed by a draw against GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, had been enough to finish ahead of the rapid world champion. It perhaps shouldn't shock us, however, since 24-year-old Wei is the rapid world number-three.
His first game set the tone, as he went for the bold 18.Nf5!? against GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, explaining, "I thought if I don’t play Nf5 he will play f5 with strong counterplay, so that’s why I played Nf5."
That's our Game of the Day, with analysis by GM Rafael Leitao below:
The moment Carlsen saw Wei clinch the win and take the lead was captured on video.
Magnus sees Wei Yi is winning and about to take the sole lead! #GrandChessTour pic.twitter.com/URjjP9rZkY
— chess24 (@chess24com) May 10, 2024
Wei wasn't finished beating top players, as he then took down world championship challenger GM Gukesh Dommaraju with the black pieces. Pro tip: Don't play the Alapin Sicilian against Wei! Gukesh did, and after one mistake on move 13 slumped to defeat despite making no glaring mistakes.
Praggnanandhaa was the only player who managed to stop Wei, playing very solidly with the white pieces in the final game, but it wasn't enough to stop the Chinese star from ending in a deserved first place.
The only negative for Wei? There are no prizes given out after the rapid section; what matters is the combined score after 18 rounds of blitz. And there's a dangerous player lurking a single point back.
Carlsen Favorite Heading Into The Blitz
Carlsen was the only player to avoid losing in rapid chess in Warsaw, though he let things get dicey in the final round with the careless 17.Be3? against his arch-rival Giri, who did some serious checking before grabbing the pawn on e4.
Giri explained that he took his time since he knew that Carlsen knew this opening and feared some tricky preparation. It seems it was just a mistake, but, as it turned out, the position still had decent resources for White and Carlsen ultimately made holding a draw look easy.
That balanced out the first game of the day, where it was Carlsen who had chances before acquiescing to a draw against Praggnanandhaa, so that the world number-one had an unusual record of drawing the first and last game each day in Warsaw but winning the one in the middle.
The win came against the struggling GM Vincent Keymer, who was already under pressure when he made a losing move.
Carlsen is an absolute beast in blitz—it's enough to recall his 9/9 day in Zagreb last year—so that his greatest obstacle may be that he's also playing the Champions Chess Tour Chess.com Classic in the evening, though he's far from the only player combining both events.
A Stable Of Dark Horses
Besides the top two, no one has either truly impressed or completely collapsed. Three draws on the final day of rapid kept Praggnanandhaa two points behind Carlsen in third place, while GM Kirill Shevchenko may have struggled after his perfect first day but goes into the blitz in joint fourth. Given his blitz skills, that means he's still in contention, as is the person he shares fourth with: two-time World Blitz Championship silver medalist GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The local hero had a quiet rapid tournament, but won a chaotic final game against Gukesh to keep his hopes alive.
Gukesh, fresh from his Candidates triumph, finds himself in joint last place with Giri and Keymer, a point behind Abdusattorov and GM Arjun Erigaisi, but with just five points separating last and first there's still time to bounce back and challenge for the top places, though the time to do it is likely on Saturday. With the time control shortening to just five minutes per player and a two-second increment after each move, we're guaranteed excitement ahead!
The live broadcast was hosted by IM Jovanka Houska, GM Yasser Seirawan, IM Nazi Paikidze, GM Cristian Chirila, and WGM Anastasiya Karlovich.
The 2024 Superbet Rapid & Blitz Poland is the first event on the 2024 Grand Chess Tour and runs May 8-12 in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland. The 10 players first compete in a single rapid round-robin with a time control of 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment per move, followed by a blitz double round-robin with a 5+2 time control.
Previous coverage:
Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.
