St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, Day 4
Firouzja, So star in the first day of blitz.
The St. Louis Rapid & Blitz has moved from rapid to blitz, from higher quality to…mostly entertainment. This is not to deny that the skill level remained very high - usually. There were plenty of blunders, with even Hikaru Nakamura blundering in a better position and allowing mate in two. So I’ll skip out on annotating games at this point, and just summarize how the leaders fared.
You may recall that there was a three-way tie for first going into the blitz, with Alireza Firouzja, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave tied for first, with Levon Aronian a point behind and Nakamura, Wesley So, and Leinier Dominguez another point back. (Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Fabiano Caruana were still another point back, three points out of first, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu was way back in last, seven points behind the leaders.)
Almost everyone had surges, but two players were clearly best in Thursday’s action. Firouzja was clearly the best of the leaders, scoring 6.5/9, losing just one game, in round 2, to Aronian. Nepo started slow, drawing with So and then losing two straight. The first loss was to Pragg - that was Pragg’s first win in the tournament, and his only win on the day until the final round. After another loss he then won three games in a row before being stopped by Firouzja in round 7. He finished with a draw and a win over Aronian, and is tied for second, a point and a half behind Firouzja.
He’s tied with So, who had the best day of everyone, scoring 7/9. He drew with Nepo in round 1 and lost to Firouzja in round 3, but then finished with 6.5 of his final 7 games.
MVL is half a point behind Nepo and So, scoring only 4.5 points on the day. He started poorly, but finished well with draws against several of the leaders and beating Pragg. He’s half a point ahead of the last player of the leading group, Levon Aronian, who was in the hunt for second for most of the day. He lost in round 1, then won three in a row (including against Firouzja), but finished with a 2-3 score. Not bad - 5 points on the day - but a disappointing finish.
Nakamura was the biggest negative surprise, only scoring 4.5 points. He’s four points behind Firouzja, and has little chance to take first. Caruana scored 5 points, but he’s another half a point behind Firouzja. As he’s the overall leader in the Grand Chess Tour, with Firouzja in second overall, he’s in serious danger of being overtaken in the Tour standings. He needs to climb up a few spots and hope that Firouzja falters; either way, the Tour title is almost certainly going to be determined in the Sinquefield Cup starting next week.
Dominguez and Abdusattorov never got going, and it was only a win in the last round that got Praggnanandhaa to a score of 2.5 points on the day. His overall tournament total of 6.5 points (remember that the rapid games counted double) is less than what So scored in today’s games by themselves.
Tomorrow the players repeat today’s action, but with the colors switched. Here are the standings:
Firouzja 17.5
So 16
Nepomniachtchi 16 (they’re tied - I just have it this way because of formatting issues)
Vachier-Lagrave 15.5
Aronian 15
Nakamura 13.5
Caruana 13
Dominguez 12
Abdusattorov 10
Praggnanandhaa 6.5