Mind Games Day 1: Leko, Gunina lead

SportAccord Mind Games will be held in Beijing, China between the 12th of December and 20th December 2012. The World Mind Games was held for the first time in 2008 and consisted of 5 disciplines: chess, bridge, draughts (checkers), go, and xiangqi (Chinese chess). SportAccord, the organizer of the Mind Games, is the umbrella organization for both Olympic and non-Olympic sports as well as for major organizers of conferences and sporting events.

Day 1: Rapid - Men

China's number one/two (Wang Hao has the exact same live rating as Wang Yue) took out Aronian in round one

Round 1

Round one started with a mountain of decisive results. Aronian fell victim to a powerful Wang Hao who converted a better position from the opening with impressive technique (albeit being a little sloppy when the game was already essentially over).

Kamsky's handling of the Sveshnikov against Radjabov was rather weird but it paid off at the end

Giri's over aggression against Nepomniachtchi did not pay off and the Gruenfeld scored a victory. The other Chinese player, Wang Yue, demolished Ponomariov's set up with a well calculated sequence. Some of the games were rather strange but all of them were exciting to the very end.

Round 2

Things cooled off a little bit in the second round but with that a few leaders emerged. Leko, Karjakin and Nepomniachtchi were the only ones to score 2.0/2. Nepo outplayed Grischuk in a long Scotch game. Karjakin took advantage of Kamsky's dubious opening:

Round 3

The duel between the leaders resulted in a draw, but Karjakin took out Wang Yue with a pretty tactic:

Tactics do not escape this man: Karjakin started with 3.0/3

This put Karjakin in the temporarily lead.

Leko won a pawn early in the game but the transition to the endgame was less than optimal. In what should have been a drawn endgame Leko danced with his knight for dozens of moves, until eventually Karjakin made a fatal mistake and allowed his opponent's king in with a decisive effect. With this Leko takes the lead of the tournament with three rounds to be played tomorrow. He will face Wang Hao with the black pieces while Karjakin will be black himself against Grischuk, who has 2.5/4 with Wang Yue, Nepo and Kamsky.

Leko is now leading after grinding out Karjakin in a very long endgame

Standings

Note: Rapid ratings used

Men Games rounds one to four

Day 1: Rapid - Women

Viktorija Cmilyte, from Lithuania, started the event with four draws!

Round 1

Round one started with a few draws. The Chinese players Zhao Xue and Hou Yifan took half a point away from each other, but Ju Wenjun won a pretty King's Indian against Lagno.

Round 2

Ushenina beat Muzychuk in round two. Muzychuk used to play for Ukraine, like Ushenina, but she switched federations some time ago to Slovenia.

The World Champion was held to a draw for the second time in a row, and perhaps more surprisingly Anna Muzychuk started with 0.0/2 while Paehtz, the only player not to have the GM title in the event, started with 2.0/2. This was slightly aided when Sebag, in a position where she was slightly worse, simply blundered a queen.

Gunina set a nice trap against Ju Wenjun, who fell for it squarely, and also led with 2.0/2.

Paehtz started off the event with two big wins

Round 3

Paehtz started off dominating Gunina and obtained a winning position, however she got into time trouble and panicked when the Russian made a simple attack. With incorrect responses she found herself in a lost position soon after and Gunina moved to 3.0/3.

The strange amount of draws meant that Gunina was leading by a full point ahead of Kosteniuk, Koneru, Sebag, Dzagnidze and Hou Yifan.

Kateryna Lagno is a strong blitz and rapid player but it took her some time to get her gears started in this event

Kosintseva beat ex-World Champion Ushenina in round four to move to +1 and keep her chances of a good rapid result

Round 4

The match between the World Champion and World's number three Koneru was surely highly anticipated, but it was not a close contest as the Chinese demolished her opponent's kingside and took an easy game.

With this victory Gunina keeps her lead and her perfect score. Tomorrow she will defend the Black pieces against Hou Yifan.

Gunina leads and will defend her position against Hou Yifan tomorrow

Standings

Note: Rapid ratings used

Women Games rounds one to four

Schedule

Photos by WGM Gu Xiaobing, taken from the official FIDE website

Links Official tournament site The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.