Abidjan: Day 1 of the Blitz: MVL on Fire

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won his last three games to close out the rapid portion of the Grand Chess Tour event in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, but even so he entered the first day of the blitz four points behind Magnus Carlsen.

Not for long. Carlsen got off to a slightly disappointing start, surrendering a draw to Bassem Amin in round 1 while MVL defeated Wesley So to close the gap to 3.5 points. Round 2 was an even bigger deal, as Vachier-Lagrave won with Black against Carlsen himself to come within two and a half points. Nor was the Frenchman finished after this, either: he continued by defeating Hikaru Nakamura, Amin, and Wei Yi to make it a grand total of eight in a row! When Carlsen drew with Ding Liren in the third round, his lead slipped to two points, but that was as close as MVL got, as Carlsen also won in rounds 4 and 5 (against Veselin Topalov and Sergey Karjakin). Both players drew in round 6 (Carlsen against Nepomniachtchi, MVL against Ding), and both players slowed down after that, going winless the rest of the day. Unfortunately for Vachier-Lagrave, one of his non-wins was a loss to Topalov in round 7, and the players' other five games were drawn. Thus Carlsen leads MVL by two and a half points going into the last day. (Incidentally, MVL's performance leapfrogged him ahead of Carlsen in the blitz ratings; for now, he is #1.)

While the focus of the preceding paragraph was on Carlsen and Vachier-Lagrave, it was Nakamura, not MVL, who started the day in second place. Unfortunately for the American, he had a poor day by his standards, starting with a draw with Wei Yi in round 1 and a loss to Amin in round 2 and, as noted, to MVL in round 3. He made it back to 50% on the day with wins over Ding in round 4 and Wesley So in round 8, but that still meant that he lost half a point on the day in his pursuit of Carlsen.

After Nakamura there's a further gap of 1.5 points to Ding and 2 points to So, which suggests that barring a collapse from one of the top three or an amazing comeback from someone in the trailing group, the podium places are set - particularly if Carlsen and Nakamura play more like their usual selves in Sunday's games. Still, all the places are important, as the ultimate aim of the Grand Chess Tour events is to finish in the top four overall, in order to qualify for the final when the finalists fight for first starting with a clean slate. All the players therefore have something to play for; money, pride, and rating points, of course, but also to stay in the hunt for the Tour final.