Thrills And Spills At Amber

The first round of the Amber tournament in Monaco provided plenty of spectacle and (nearly) all decisive results.

In such a strong field all games are special, but the pairing of Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura helped start the event with a match-up that many fans were eagerly waiting to see.

Their blindfold game was evenly matched until Nakamura put his rook en prise with 44.Rc7?? , but he was hugely fortunate that Carlsen missed his error and the game ended drawn.  Blindfold chess is tough - even for the best, and there were plenty more blunders in the other games!

Carlsen made amends later by winning the rapid game to win their mini-match 1.5-0.5.

Another great pairing pitted Vishy Anand and Veselin Topalov together, and it was the great Indian champion who came out on top 1.5-0.5 by winning their blindfold game.

But it was Alexander Grischuk (pictured) that won the standout blindfold game of the round, beating Vladimir Kramnik with a lovely Queen sacrifice that would have graced a sighted game.

When Grischuk also went on to win their rapid game, he left Kramnik at the bottom of the leaderboard, but he has plenty of company because Ivanchuk, Karjakin and Giri all ended the day with a big fat zero score.

All the games from an exciting first day are below!

The first day results in full:

The standings:

Nakamura and Carlsen get their clicking fingers ready (pic from the official website)