Gukesh Dommaraju started his St Louis Rapid and Blitz campaign on a bad note after losing his opening round clash against veteran Levon Aronian before bouncing back with two wins to end the first day tied third in the standings. Aronian topped the standings after winning all three of his games.
While Gukesh’s primary focus over the years has been classical chess, in recent times, at least since becoming the youngest world champion in chess history, he has played in more and more rapid and blitz events. He had a remarkable rapid event at Zagreb earlier this year. In fact, he had topped the standings at the SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia tournament — which is also part of the Grand Chess Tour — after the blitz games last month. But he had a woeful blitz portion in Croatia to end third in the standings.
On Monday, in St Louis, Gukesh bounced back from the Aronian defeat by bringing down USA’s Grigoriy Oparin and Vietnam’s Le Quang Liem. On Monday, he plays his first game of the day against Sam Shankland, who is dead last in the 10-player standings.
While analysing the game with Gukesh, Aronian said on the official broadcast that he had won the game despite playing “grandpa style of chess.” Aronian meant he was playing a slow, positional style of chess.
“You’re not impressing anybody with this type of play,” Aronian said with a chuckle about his own game.
INTERACTIVE: How Gukesh lost to Aronian
Gukesh, meanwhile, said his first day had been “good overall”, despite the defeat at the start.
“The first game was like bad. I mean once I allowed this knight f3 in the opening (on move 11) it was just very (bad). I should have just played g4. I just got careless in that one moment and then it was just hard to play that but I was happy with how I came back after that. So, I’m feeling good about the last two games,” Gukesh said.
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