8/14/2019 – Levon Aronian won the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament despite losing his last round game against former leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The French grandmaster ended up sharing second place with Yu Yangyi and Ding Liren — the Chinese duo had a strong showing at the blitz, as they got the best scores in the last two days of action (11½ out of 18, the same score obtained by Sergey Karjakin). World champion Magnus Carlsen finished in sixth place but still leads the overall GCT standings. Express report. | Photo: Austin Fuller / Grand Chess Tour
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Fritz 16 is looking forward to playing with you, and you're certain to have a great deal of fun with him too. Tense games and even well-fought victories await you with "Easy play" and "Assisted analysis" modes.
Back in 2017, at the semi-finals of the World Cup in Tbilisi, Levon Aronian eliminated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in a thrilling Armageddon finale, thus stopping the Frenchman from reaching the Candidates Tournament. In Saint Louis, the Armenian also surpassed his colleague (and friend) in the final day of Blitz. Aronian caught up with the then-leader in round twelve and took advantage of Vachier-Lagrave's three straight losses in rounds 14-16 to take the lead.
The eventual winner of the event reached the final round a point ahead of Yu Yangyi and 1½ points ahead of Vachier-Lagrave and Ding Liren. 'MVL' in fact defeated Aronian, but Yu Yangyi only drew tail-ender Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, which meant the Armenian finished in first place half a point ahead of Vachier-Lagrave and the two Chinese players (Ding Liren also won in round eighteen).
Sergey Karjakin finished in fifth place, after scoring 11½/18 in the Blitz.
Games and commentary
The blitz tournament is a double round-robin with players receiving 5 minutes per player per game, with a time delay of 3 seconds per move.
At the airport, in the hotel or at home on your couch: with the new ChessBase you always have access to the whole ChessBase world: the new ChessBase video library, tactics server, opening training App, the live database with eight million games, Let’s Check and web access to playchess.com
Live commentary by GM Yasser Seirawan, GM Maurice Ashley and WGM Jennifer Shahade from 18:00 UTC (20:00 CEST, 14:00 EDT)
Results of Rounds 9-18
Click or tap any result to open the game via Live.ChessBase.com.
Final standings
Click or tap to expand
Final rapid standings
The rapid tournament scoring system is 2 points for a win and 1 point for a draw.
YOUR PERSONAL CHESS COACH - Whether you’re taking your first steps into the world of club chess, or already playing at a tournament level: with FRITZ, you can train more efficiently, intelligently and with a more personalised approach than ever before.
The Hyper-Accelerated Dragon is fast, from the very first moves, your bishop heads to g7, seizes the long diagonal, and turns into the most feared piece on the board.
It rewards players who love initiative and clear attacking plans.
The Hyper-Accelerated Dragon is fast, from the very first moves, your bishop heads to g7, seizes the long diagonal, and turns into the most feared piece on the board.
It rewards players who love initiative and clear attacking plans.
The Hyper-Accelerated dragon is fast, from the very first moves, your bishop heads to g7, seizes the long diagonal, and turns into the most feared piece on the board.
It rewards players who love initiative and clear attacking plans.
“Mate is great!” – Tactical training with Oliver Reeh, “The 8th rank” – Andy Woodward analyses his game against Magnus Carlsen from TePe Sigeman 2026, “A modern Nimzo-Indian” – Andrei Volokitin introduces readers to "his" system and much more!
Chess is a concrete game. There is no way around training your calculation skills. Improve your visualization, pattern recognition and learn calculation techniques such as reciprocal thinking with this course.
This compact course is designed specifically for practical play. Instead of overwhelming you with endless theory, it focuses on the critical lines, typical plans, and recurring tactical ideas.
Slav and Semi-Slav Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains a total of 11 766 games from Mega 2026 or the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 1136 are annotated.
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