8/13/2024 – Day 1 of the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament saw Maxime Vachier-Lagrave grabbing the lead after collecting a draw and two wins for a 5/6 score (wins are worth 2 points in the rapid section). Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian and Leinier Dominguez stand at a 1-point distance in shared second place. | Photo: Crystal Fuller
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Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's resourcefulness helped him grab the sole lead after 3 rounds of rapid chess at the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament. The French GM first escaped with a draw against Hikaru Nakamura and then scored back-to-back wins over R Praggnanandhaa and Nodirbek Abdusattorov to end the day with a 5/6 score (wins grant 2 points in the rapid section of the Grand Chess Tour events).
In round 1, Nakamura failed to find the pawn break that would have allowed him to grab the initiative in a tricky position - MVL had just faltered with 34...Bh8
Despite having 1 minute and 13 seconds to MVL's 19 seconds, Nakamura quickly played 35.Rb3 instead of 35.h4, when 35...gxh4 is not playable due to 36.Bxh6 - otherwise, the engine's 35...h5 leaves White with a clear advantage after 36.Nxg5.
In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.
In the game, MVL placed his bishop back on g7, and a draw by repetition was soon agreed.
Hikaru Nakamura taking a stroll during the first round | Photo: Austin Fuller
Sharing second place are Ian Nepomniachtchi, Levon Aronian and Leinier Dominguez. The latter beat defending champion Fabiano Caruana in the second round - in an equal position, Caruana played a one-move blunder.
38.Rb1 simply leaves the e5-bishop undefended (38.Bb2, for example, keeps the balance). Dominguez played 38...Nxe5, which was followed by immediate resignation.
Before this game, Caruana had drawn with Wesley So, while in the third round of the day, he was defeated by Nakamura in a thrilling encounter. Caruana is now tied for last place with Pragg, but will get a chance to bounce back in style in Tuesday's first round, when he will play white against sole leader Vachier-Lagrave.
Leinier Dominguez | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Always in a good mood - Levon Aronian | Photo: Lennart Ootes
In this video course, GM Surya Ganguly joins IM Sagar Shah and drawing from his colossal experience, shares some uncommon endgame wisdom. The material mostly features positions with rook against rook and a pawn, and starts by covering the fundamentals.
Carlos Alberto ColodroCarlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.
How do you play the Queen's Gambit Accepted? Does White have promising variations or can Black construct a water-tight repertoire? The Powerbook provides the answers based on 300 000 games, most of them played by engines.
The Queen's Gambit Accepted Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 11827 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 240 are annotated.
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The greater part of the material on which the Rossolimo/Moscow Powerbook 2025 is based comes from the engine room of playchess.com: 263.000 games. This imposing amount is supplemented by some 50 000 games from Mega and from Correspondence Chess.
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