Riga Grand Prix: Vachier-Lagrave Only Winner Round 2, Day 1
Round two of the FIDE Grand Prix cycle started on Monday in Riga, Latvia and had only one winner: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. This is the second Grand Prix tournament, following the Moscow Grand Prix. Only eight players remain in this knockout event after round one needed six matches to be decided in tiebreaks.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave hadn't won a classical game in 21 games before Riga, but today he won his second in three games as he beat former FIDE world champion Veselin Topalov in the Sicilian Najdorf. Find out how Vachier-Lagrave is focussing on qualifying for the Candidates tournament.
Although all the remaining games were drawn, a couple of them were hard-fought draws. For example, the match-up between Russian star Alexander Grischuk vs Chinese number two Yu Yangyi was quite a contest.
Grischuk sacrificed a pawn to launch a kingside attack. Black managed to thwart the attack by trading queens and giving up his extra pawn. The game soon fizzled out to a draw with both sides having negligible chances of winning.
The game between Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was an interesting struggle but neither chances had a significant edge. The closed pawn structure didn't offer much chances to either side and they traded pieces frequently before agreeing to a draw on move 34.
Today's results at #GrandPrixFIDE in Riga:
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) July 15, 2019
🇷🇺 Karjakin 1/2-1/2 So 🇺🇸
🇵🇱 Duda1/2-1/2 Mamedyarov 🇦🇿
🇷🇺 Grischuk 1/2-1/2 Yu 🇨🇳
🇧🇬 Topalov 0-1 Vachier-Lagrave 🇫🇷
Veselin Topalov needs to win with Black tomorrow to take the match to tiebreaks!
Games: https://t.co/7XdU4JLd6J pic.twitter.com/OfoA6lvqcb
The 2019 FIDE Grand Prix series consists of four knockout tournaments, each with 16 players who play two classical games per round and, if needed, a tiebreak on the third day. Ian Nepomniachtchi won the first Grand Prix tournament in Moscow. The remaining two are Hamburg, Germany (November 4–18) and Tel Aviv, Israel (December 10–24).
Each of the four tournaments has a prize fund of 130,000 euros ($145,510). Prizes for the overall standings in the series total 280,000 euros ($313,405), making the total prize fund of the series 800,000 euros ($895,444).
The games start each day at noon UTC. You can follow the games here as part of our live portal. The official site is here.
Watch FIDE World Chess Grand Prix Riga 2019. Round 2. Game 1 from FIDE_Chess on www.twitch.tv
The official World Chess broadcast with GMs Evgeny Miroshnichenko and Arturs Neiksans.
Previous reports:
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