4-Way Tie As Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge Takes Off
GMs Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, and Wesley So are tied for first place after the first day at the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge. The event is the second tournament in the recently announced Magnus Carlsen Tour.
The games of the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge can be found here as part of our live events platform. GM Robert Hess is providing daily commentary on Nakamura's Twitch channel, embedded on Chess.com/TV.
The tournament started on Tuesday with the first day of the preliminary phase, which is a 12-player all-play-all. After 11 rounds, the top eight players continue to a knockout phase, meaning that only four players will leave the tournament tomorrow.
Right now, the players who are in danger of an early elimination are GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Daniil Dubov, Alireza Firouzja, and Wei Yi, although all of them are just half a point behind number-eight GM Yu Yangyi.
Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge | Round 4 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Pts | SB |
| 1 | Carlsen,Magnus | 2881 | 2997 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 3.0/4 | 6.75 | |||||||||
| 2 | Nakamura,Hikaru | 2829 | 2956 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 3.0/4 | 6 | |||||||||
| 3 | So,Wesley | 2741 | 2952 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 3.0/4 | 4 | |||||||||
| 4 | Karjakin,Sergey | 2709 | 2964 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3.0/4 | 3.5 | |||||||||
| 5 | Ding Liren | 2836 | 2871 | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 2.5/4 | ||||||||||
| 6 | Grischuk,Alexander | 2784 | 2793 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.0/4 | 3.5 | |||||||||
| 7 | Aronian,Levon | 2778 | 2801 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 2.0/4 | 3.25 | |||||||||
| 8 | Yu,Yangyi | 2738 | 2643 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ½ | 1.5/4 | ||||||||||
| 9 | Duda,Jan-Krzysztof | 2774 | 2556 | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1.0/4 | 2 | |||||||||
| 10 | Dubov,Daniil | 2770 | 2598 | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1.0/4 | 2 | |||||||||
| 11 | Firouzja,Alireza | 2703 | 2605 | 0 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1.0/4 | 2 | |||||||||
| 12 | Wei Yi | 2752 | 2558 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1.0/4 | 1 |
The tournament started off with a bang, as the first two rounds saw nine out of 12 games ending decisively. One of the best games of the first round, and of the whole day in fact, was the clash between GM Levon Aronian and Firouzja.
The Armenian grandmaster initially had a safe spacial advantage but allowed some mesmerizing tactics after he had weakened his light squares. The game also showed that Firouzja always manages to find counterplay out of nowhere.
Carlsen started with two wins, but then slowed down with two draws. The world champion scored a surprisingly quick win against Aronian in round two. The engines think Black is doing OK out of the opening but don't like 15...c5, a move Aronian spent only 15 seconds on.
Magnus in form, makes it look soooo eeeeasy
— Sokolov Ivan (@GMSokolovIvan) May 19, 2020
The first day also saw a few blunders, but none of these were worse than Wei, a pawn up, allowing a mate-in-one against Karjakin. Those knights are tricky...
Round four saw the clash between the two finalists of the Steinitz Memorial last Sunday. Carlsen was pressing for the whole game, but this time Nakamura didn't budge. He held the draw, seen by over 16K of his fans on his Twitch channel where GM Robert Hess was providing guest commentary. Both American grandmasters jumped into the Titled Tuesday tournament right after—a separate report on that will appear soon in our news section as well.
All games of day 1
The Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge runs May 19-June 3 on Chess24 in association with the Lindores Abbey Heritage Society. The prize fund is $150,000 with a first prize of $45,000. The time control is 15 minutes for all moves, with a 10-second increment after each move. No draw offers are allowed before move 40.
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