World Blitz Championship, Day 1
Nakamura stays hot, leads by a full point after 12 of 21 rounds.
Hikaru Nakamura entered the World Blitz Championship as the top seed (and Fabiano Caruana was the second seed; despite the pretense each year, Magnus Carlsen is not really the automatic and permanent top board), and finished the day having justified his top seeding. While the rest of the field, including Carlsen, seemed to tire in the final rounds, Nakamura finished with wins in the last two rounds, ending the day with 10/12, a point ahead of Carlsen, Anish Giri, Daniil Dubov, Haik Martirosyan, and Richard Rapport. Seven other players are another half a point back, including Vladimir Fedoseev (who, if he had defeated Nakamura in the final round of the day, would have been in clear first), Vladislav Artemiev, and Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Nakamura had a rough go of things in the rapid. He went undefeated, but only won two games in that event. Whatever his struggles in rapid, though, his fine blitz form, most recently in evidence in Chess.com’s Speed Chess Championship, continued. After wins against three “merely” strong GMs, he defeated Nihal Sarin in round 4, and after an easy draw with Black against Giri in round 5 he defeated second-seed Caruana and fourth seed Yu Yangyi in round 6. He got nothing with White against Carlsen in round 7, and they both quickly settled on a draw, and then he also drew with Dubov and Jan-Krzysztof Duda before finishing with wins against Martirosyan and Fedoseev.
Carlsen was at least tied for the lead through round 10 (and for one round - round 5 - was in clear first), but he couldn’t break out of a drawing rut at the end of the day. Like Nakamura, he had 6.5/7 before their draw in round 8, a string of victories that included such scalps as Evgeny Tomashevsky, Duda, and Giri. After round 7, however, he didn’t win a single game, drawing with Nakamura, Fedoseev, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Dubov, and finally Artemiev. As he won’t get to play Nakamura in tomorrow’s action, and as Nakamura has already played most of the absolute top seeds, Carlsen will have a tough time catching Nakamura. Still, if anyone can do it, he can.
I’ll offer a selection of games after tomorrow’s/today’s action - stay tuned.