STL Rapid & Blitz 1: Caruana and Dominguez lead

Fabiano Caruana and Leinier Dominguez lead the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz after scoring two wins and a draw each on the first day. A pandemic ravaged field for the penultimate event of the 2021 Grand Chess Tour features just three players not based in the USA — Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Richard Rapport and Peter Svidler — with Peter originally travelling to Saint Louis to work as a commentator. 

Caruana is, like many of the players, back playing in St. Louis after a 2-year break | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

You can replay all the games from the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz using the selector below.

The Grand Chess Tour standings for the nine regular participants looked as follows after the Croatia Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz event.

The regulations for the tour are that the regular players are expect to play both classical tournaments and two of the three rapid and blitz events, but from the player list for the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz we can see that Levon Aronian (who talked about paperwork difficulties during the Chessable Masters), Alexander Grischuk, Anish Giri and Teimour Radjabov were all unable to play in Saint Louis as planned.

Tour leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave has already played two speed chess events and is in fact going to be able to play the Sinquefield Cup. His travel adventures were reported on his website:

Despite the gradual resumption of tournaments, the pandemic continues to complicate the travel of professional players, who must constantly adapt to the requirements of different countries. Maxime experienced this once again at the end of the World Cup in Sochi. He stayed a few days after his elimination to support and help his compatriot and second Etienne Bacrot, who was still in the running (finally eliminated by Carlsen), and had to completely rearrange his schedule. 

Indeed, he was expected from August 15 in St. Louis (USA) to play the Sinquefield Cup of the Grand Chess Tour. But the American organizers warned him that he would not be able to enter the USA if he passed through a country in the red zone, which includes France – but not Russia 🙂. 

So they proposed him to come directly to St Louis. So, Maxime left Sochi on July 31, heading for Missouri, without going through the « home square » in Paris: a journey of more than 35 hours, via Moscow and a night stopover in New York!

Wesley So mentioned that a couple of weeks ago it seemed the tournament might be postponed, but instead it’s gone ahead with an almost US Championship feel — six of the players represent the USA and Liem Quang Le is based in Saint Louis. The starting time of 22:00 CEST is also tailored more to US chess fans than previous events in Saint Louis. 

One of the few foreign players to make it, Peter Svidler, wasn’t expecting to play. He got the biggest laugh of the opening ceremony:

As you well know, I was slated to sit alongside you and make fun of all these guys, and now you will have an opportunity to make fun of me, which is less fun for me, but more fun for you, I suppose.

How it started at the opening ceremony... | photo: Austin Fuller, official website

How it's going... | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

We should probably get Peter’s pain over with first, since in Round 2 he’d spoilt a winning position against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov but still had no trouble until disaster struck on move 54.

Peter almost played 54.Kf3??, walking into 54…Ne5+, forking his rook and king, but stopped himself in time. Alas, as he held his king and pondered where to put it his time ran out — despite the fact that every other king move was a draw! 54.Kg1 came too late. You can replay that moment below.

The heroes of Day 1 were Fabiano Caruana and Leinier Dominguez, who both won two games and drew one to score 5 out of 6 points (the rapid games are worth 2 points for a win).

Fabiano Caruana beat Liem Quang Le | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

Fabiano played the London System in Round 1 against Svidler and then impressively beat Liem Quang Le from the black side of the same opening in Round 2. Fabi felt that was a good game, while he noted his Round 3 win over 19-year-old Jeffery Xiong turned on a one-move blunder.

16…Nd6? (16…Rf7!) looks a reasonable move at a glance…

…but after 17.Nc5! it turns out Black could resign. 17…Rf7 is now too late, as 18.Nxd7 Rxd7 19.dxe5 is hopeless, but no less hopeless than 17…Nxc5 18.dxe5! b6 19.exf6! in the game. 

Fabiano said afterwards about his recent form:

I think it’s a surprise I’m even number 2/3, because the way I’ve played over the past five months I don’t even deserve that ranking. But I had a high rating and it kind of gradually fell, but hopefully I can start to improve that.

Leinier Dominguez defused some wild play by Richard Rapport | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

Leinier Dominguez, meanwhile, scored his wins with the white pieces over Jeffery Xiong and Richard Rapport after playing the Giuoco Piano. That was where the similarity ended, with Leinier noting, “I did basically nothing” about his easy positional win against Jeffery, while against Richard there was total chaos on the board but he managed to navigate to a won ending. Leinier said he’s now feeling at home in Saint Louis, despite the curiosity that he was almost unable to play chess there in the last two years.

The only other two players to score a plus score on the first day were two more US stars, Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura. 

Shortly after facing each other in the Chessable Masters final Wesley So and Liem Quang Le found themselves in action over the board | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

Wesley thanked the Lord for letting him win one game as he whipped up an impressive attack against Sam Shankland.

Sam had a difficult day at the office, after going astray on move 14 against Richard Rapport. Simply 14.Nc3 was good, but instead he opted for 14.a3?

Richard rarely lets a tactical opportunity slip and here went for 14…axb3!, which it turns out is already completely winning for Black! There was nothing better than accepting the piece sacrifice with 15.axb4, after which 15…Qxb4 is threatening both b2 and dxc4, with unstoppable passed pawns. Sam struggled on with 16.Rb1 Ra2 17.Ne1, but after 17…Nxf2! there was no way back. In the final position Richard had five pawns for the piece.

Hikaru Nakamura commented, “I consider myself a streamer more than a pro player at the moment,” but was happy to get two draws with the black pieces and then beat Peter Svidler, especially as he managed to calculate Mamedyarov’s computer preparation correctly at the board in the first game of the day.

The standings look as follows with two more days of rapid chess to go, before 18 rounds of blitz on the final two days.

You can watch the games each day from 15:00 in Saint Louis, which is 22:00 CEST, right here on chess24.

See also:

• Official website
• All the games with computer analysis on chess24