Superbet Classic Underway
Caruana, Pragg lead after 3 of 9 rounds.
It has been a while since the super-GMs contested a classical tournament in standard chess, but it has happened at last. The Superbet Classic in Bucharest, Romania is underway, and while the world’s #1 and #2 players, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, respectively, are absent, it’s a very strong field nevertheless. The World Champion, Gukesh Dommaraju is playing, as is World #5 (and frequent #2) Fabiano Caruana, World #6 Nodirbek Abdusattorov, World #7 Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Alireza Firouzja (#9 coming into the event), Wesley So (#11), Levon Aronian (#13 at the start), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (#16), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (#23), and top Romanian player Bogdan-Daniel Deac.
The tournament has been hard fought so far, with almost every game making it past the time control and a reasonable ratio of six decisive games of the 15 played. Caruana and Pragg lead with 2/3, with Abdusattorov and Aronian tied for last with 1 point apiece.
Here are all the games so far, with my notes to almost all the decisive games and several of the most interesting draws.