Four of the five days of the SuperUnited (what, are they glued or welded together?) Rapid & Blitz in Zagreb, Croatia are now history, and we can divide this history into two parts. The first part consists of the first two days, and the second part, obviously enough, of the next two days. In part 1 Magnus Carlsen struggled. Day one was okay - a win and two draws - but on day two he was massacred (and with White) by Fabiano Caruana, and then lost to Alireza Firouzja as well. And then, the comeback began.
He finished the day with a win over Viswanathan Anand, and after opening day 3 with a draw against Richard Rapport he finished it with victories over Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Constantin Lupulescu. That brought the rapid portion to the end, and he was only half a point - or actually, a point, as the rapid games count double the value of the blitz games - behind Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi, the joint leaders.
That one-point deficit was soon gone. In the first round of the blitz, he ground down Caruana in a 104-move epic, catching Caruana but remaining half a point behind Nepo, who drew his game. No matter: in round 2 both Nepo and Anand lost, so by defeating Duda he was already in clear first. In round 3 Carlsen beat Gukesh, in round 4 it was Saric - who, to be fair, should have won that game, but didn’t - in round 5 it was Anand, then Nepo in round 6, Firouzja in round 7, Rapport in round 8, and finally Lupulescu in round 9. That’s right: 9-0 against a field that included a world champion and two world championship finalists, and 11 straight victories overall.
Carlsen leads the tournament by three points now, ahead of Caruana and Nepo (who are apparently super-united) who both scored 5/9 on the day. Firouzja had the second-best score in the first day of the blitz, going 6.5/9, and he’s in fourth place overall, a point and a half behind Caruana and Nepo.
I wouldn’t bet on Carlsen going 9-0 again, but if he did his streak would reach 20 games, reminiscent of Fischer’s 20-0 streak from the end of the 1970 Interzonal through the first game of his final Candidates match. We shouldn’t confuse classical chess with (mostly) blitz, but it would still be an incredible feat if Carlsen pulled it off. Tune in tomorrow - we’ll see.