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More than half the games played on Wednesday finished decisively at the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament. However, there were no big changes in the standings, as most players finished the day with a 50-percent score. The exceptions were Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura - who obtained a +1 - and R Praggnanandhaa, who finished with -2.
These results left Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave tied for first place with 11 points each. Levon Aronian remains in sole fourth place 1 point behind, while five other players have 8 or 9 points to their names. With 18 rounds of blitz to go, this means anything could still happen in Saint Louis. The one player who is having a mix of bad form and bad luck is Pragg - but we all expect him to recover in the final two days of action.
Regarding the race for Grand Chess Tour points, things are looking good for Firouzja, who entered the event in second place in the tour standings, only behind Fabiano Caruana, who won both the Superbet Classic in Romania and the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz in Croatia.
Alireza Firouzja | Photo: Lennart Ootes
The round-9 encounter between Firouzja and Aronian saw both kings remaining uncastled out of a French Defence. Aronian got a clear advantage in the tricky middlegame, but made a crucial mistake on move 30.
Black's active pieces and safer king (which was transferred to g8 'manually') grant him a major advantage. Aronian's 30...Bc6, however, was not the way to go here.
The path to victory begins with 30...Rxc2+, trading White's one active rook, and after 31.Kxc2 Ra8 32.Qb7 Ba4+ 33.Kd3 Rb8 34.Qa7 Rb3+ Black would have managed to bring his rook and bishop tandem to the attack while White is only defending with the knight.
Instead, after the text, it was White who traded rooks with 31.Rxc4, gaining one key tempo to bring his other rook to the defence - i.e. 31...dxc4 32.Rc1 Rb2+ 33.Rc2, and Black has lost most of the momentum he had a few moves ago.
A draw was agreed 8 moves later.
Levon Aronian | Photo: Lennart Ootes
By Kostya Kavutskiy
