World Blitz: Surprises left and right

The FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships take place in Dubai, from June 15th (opening ceremony) to June 21st, 2014. The Rapid event will be played from June 16th-18th over 15 rounds, at a time control of 15m+10s. The Blitz runs from June 19th-20th and lasts 21 rounds at 3m+2s. The total prize fund for the tournament is US$400 thousand with $40 thousand for the winner of each championship. There are 122 entries with nearly every elite player playing such as leading players: Magnus Carlsen, Aronian Levon, Alexander Grischuk, Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana, Nakamura Hikaru, Sergey Karjakin, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Peter Svidler, etc. Rounds are at 1pm Paris time each day or 8am New York time.

Blitz Day One

It's a strong tournament when Jobava-Grischuk is board 20...

Things are off to a great start in Dubai! Most of the favorites won their first round but the first upset of the day was Kryvoruchko's victory against Anand in round one. Blitz is a different beast than Classical chess and some players excel in this format whereas they don't so much at Classical. The toolset is somewhat different; reaction time and instinct trumps the ability to calculate a 25 move deep line in three minutes.

First surprise of the day! Kryvoruchko beats Anand.

Nepomniachtchi (left) didn't have a super clean start but he is back on the top boards

Blitz ratings are starting to reflect that. Players that are strong at both time controls keep topping both lists, but many 2700s in classical chess are not so in blitz, and likewise the other way around. A notable case is Fabiano Caruana who is 2791 Classical but only 2697 in blitz - still strong, but not top elite grandmaster!

Wang Hao is not the best scoring Chinese player on day one of the blitz!

Number one seed Nakamura started off well by beating Goloschapov

We start the report by noting that the Norway Blitz tournament was FIDE rated. This is strange because originally this tournament was not supposed to be rated. Everyone agrees that it should have, but changing the rules after the event finished seems unorthodox at best and only begs the question of wether this tournament would have been rated had Carlsen finished last. As Albert Silver points out:

The blitz starts with Hikaru Nakamura as the clear number one. Well, he was the clear number one, but for a strange occurrence a couple of weeks ago. When the opening blitz tournament of Norway Chess was played to determine the drawing of lots, the organizers had adamantly declared the blitz was not rated. This decision led to a great deal of consternation and discussion among pundits, but this was the decision. Suddenly, after the event is over the organizers had a change of heart, and decided it would be rated.

In any case, onwards to the tournament. Let us continue pointing out the differences between blitz and classical:

Nakamura accepted seven resignations today!

Openings that are not main stream also can be dangerous weapons in short time controls. There is nothing more uncomfortable than facing something you have never seen before. Look at what happened to Michalik:

Besides the loss of Anand and the Potkin's draw against Aronian the favorites did very well on round one. On round two the top players mostly did well again except for Karjakin who lost to Meier with White. Round three was a similar story and by the fourth round there were three people tied in first place.

Karjakin (right) has not been seen on the top boards much as he started with 2.5/4. He was on his way to a comeback before losing to Polgar on the last round today.

Harirkishna, Carlsen and Lu Shanglei all had 4.0/4. Carlsen beat Harikrishna in a king and pawn endgame while the top rated player Nakamura took care of the Chinese surprise. Round six saw a few surprises. The first surprise was that on the top ten boards six of them were drawn - very unusual for blitz tournaments. Le Quang Liem, the reigning World Blitz Champion beat Nakamura while Lu Shanglei kept impressing people and bounced back from his defeat on round four by beating Dreev.

On round seven the favorites kept scoring points. Carlsen beat Le Quang Liem, Nepomniachtchi beat Radjabov, Nakamura beat Polgar.

However Lu Shanglei continued to be a surprise and he dispatched Svidler with black. And on round eight the impossible happened:

Svidler mentioned yesterday that "The young Chinese dude... he crushed me completely". Today it happened twice! Wang Hao also vanquished him.

Le Quang Liem, Nakamura, Meier and Carlsen were the pack that was chasing Lu Shanglei who was sitting on an amazing 7.0/9 and an over 3000 performance. The World Blitz Champion drew the Chinese intruder while Nakamura drew Meier. On board three Carlsen beat Ragger who was having also an amazing tournament.

Fressinet-Carlsen was on round three. This time the Frenchman was indeed "too weak, too slow".

Safarli and Mamedyarov met in the Azeri derby both in the rapid and the blitz. Mamedyarov won both times.

World Blitz Champion Le Quang Liem can still defend his title

Round ten saw the titanic duel of Carlsen and Nakamura on board one. The American held an edge the entire game despite playing with black but he never had any real winning chances. Carlsen held the draw, same as Meier on board two against Lu Shanglei. Meanwhile Nepomniachtchi made a comeback to the top boards by beating Le Quang Liem.

Caruana seems mortified at what is going on the next board

The last round of day had many important results. Carlsen positionally wrecked Mamedyarov. Meier beat Nepomniachtchi while Sargissian ended Lu Shanglei's streak. Nakamura also won on board four against Tomashevsky while Le Quang Liem beat Cheparinov on the fifth. Anand made a small comeback by beating Dreev but Aronian is stuck on 6.5/11 after losing round eleven against Harikrishna.

The standings are as follows:

Meanwhile the top ten boards look like this to kick off tomorrow's marathon:

More action tomorrow when the Blitz World Champion will be crowned! Can Carlsen complete his triple crown?

Replay rounds one to eleven

Select games from the dropdown menu above the board

Pictures from the official site by Anastasiya Karlovich

Links Official tournament site All Rapid games in PGN The games are being 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.