2019 Wijk aan Zee, Round 1: Two Wins, Two Missed Wins

The first round of the 2019 Tata Steel tournament ("Wijk aan Zee") was a good one: there was plenty of fight, and the oddest statistic is that the two shortest games in the round were the wins. Viswanathan Anand crushed bottom seed Jorden Van Foreest, and while that might be expected on account of the players' ratings Ian Nepomniachtchi's win over Anish Giri was an upset - all the more so since Nepo, like Anand, had Black.

Two other games should have finished with a winner: Teimour Radjabov was crushing Vladimir Kramnik, but a big error on the last move of the time control let the former champion escape. Reigning U.S. champion Sam Shankland did great to outplay second seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, but his reluctance to play Kd5 at some point allowed Mamedyarov to escape.

The marquee matchup between Ding Liren and Magnus Carlsen did not disappoint: after four and a half moves the players were out of book, and a very imbalanced game resulted. Ding had an advantage at one point, but it was very difficult to prove and the lively draw that resulted was a logical result.

Vladimir Fedoseev had some advantage against Richard Rapport, but his clever 28.Bf5 let Rapport escape. Finally, Santosh Vidit had to suffer in a long game against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, but he defended well to draw.

The games, with my comments, are here. These are the round 2 pairings:

• Carlsen (.5) - Nepomniachtchi (1)
• Kramnik (.5) - Giri (0)
• Mamedyarov (.5) - Radjabov (.5)
• Rapport (.5) - Shankland (.5)
• Anand (1) - Fedoseev (.5)
• Duda (.5) - Van Foreest (0)
• Ding Liren (.5) - Vidit (.5)