Niemann Blitz Matches

They never end...Giri, Giri, Aronian; Vidit coming up...

I guess Hans Niemann is publicizing a website (as well as himself) while doing what he can to stay in form and get in some practice against elite opposition. It’s a smart thing to do (even if a smarter thing would be a charm offensive to stop giving the chess world every excuse to not given him a break), and he has been demonstrating repeatedly that he is an elite player, at least/especially at shorter time controls. (He has also been very successful in Titled Tuesday events (he’s “HansOnTwitch”), plus his recent win in a Freestyle qualifier.)

We begin our recap of recent Niemann blitz matches with his June 4 match against Anish Giri, which was apparently a rematch. Niemann was way ahead in this 18-game match, leading 8.5-5.5. Unfortunately for him, Giri won the last four games to win the match, 9.5-8.5.

No problem: he went for a re-rematch on June 18. This time he lost the last five games in a row to go down 9.5-3.5.

Well, there are other fish in the sea, and on Saturday (June 21) he took on his countryman Levon Aronian. Good news! He was leading 8.5-7.5 with two games to go when…yeah, you guessed it: he lost the last two games and the match, 9.5-8.5.

Aside from the re-rematch with Giri, Niemann has been competitive in his many matches, including a couple of close battles a few months back with Daniil Dubov. It seems too soon to say that he’s at the Candidates level, but he has been making steady progress—it’s also too soon to say that he won’t make it into that upper tier. As for his immediate plans: I guess he’s playing Vidit Gujrathi in 2-3 days.