SuperUnited Croatia: Caruana goes into blitz section with 3-point lead

by Carlos Alberto Colodro
7/13/2024 – Fabiano Caruana continues to impress at the SuperUnited Tournament in Croatia. The US star entered the third day of action as the sole leader and scored three consecutive wins to win the rapid section and go into the final two days of blitz with a 3-point lead over Wesley So. The remaining US representative, Levon Aronian, stands in sole third place. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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The Delayed Zagreb

Fabiano Caruana seems to particularly enjoy participating in Grand Chess Tour events. After convincingly winning the 2023 series, he won the Superbet Classic in Romania and is now the clear leader at the SuperUnited Tournament in Zagreb (Caruana did not participate in this year’s inaugural tournament in Warsaw).

The former World Championship challenger collected 3 wins and 3 draws on the first two days of action in Croatia, and impressively ended his strong run in the rapid section of the event with 3 consecutive wins. Caruana thus extended his lead to 3 points before entering the final two days of play, when 18 rounds of blitz will decide the winner of the tour’s third event.

On Friday, Caruana grabbed wins over Gukesh, Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. In his game against Giri, the tournament leader even got to play a novelty on the seventh move. Out of a Sicilian Defence, Caruana surprised his opponent with 7.g3, and during a post-game interview with podcast co-host Cristian Chirila, decided to christen the variation as the “Delayed Zagreb”.

Caruana ended the 9 rounds of rapid with 15 points (wins are worth 2 points in the rapid). Standing second and third are the two remaining US representatives, Wesley So and Levon Aronian respectively. So remains undefeated with 12 points, while Aronian has already lost twice in Zagreb, but has compensated for his losses by scoring 4 wins — going into the blitz, Aronian has 11 points to his name.

Ivan Saric, Wesley So

Wesley So showed great tactical skills to beat Ivan Saric with the black pieces in round 8 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Levon Aronian, Dommaraju Gukesh

Levon Aronian beat the 2024 World Championship challenger on Friday | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Caruana 1 - 0 Giri

Fabiano Caruana

Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Final standings - Rapid (win = 2 pts, draw = 1 pt)

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Carlos 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.
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