STL Rapid & Blitz 3: Nakamura triumphs in rapid

Blitz world no. 1 Hikaru Nakamura goes into the 18 rounds of blitz in Saint Louis in the sole lead after defeating Leinier Dominguez and Fabiano Caruana on the 3rd and final day of rapid chess. Hikaru is the only unbeaten player, but Fabi is still just a point behind despite also losing to the player with whom he shares 2nd place, Richard Rapport.

There were dramatic blunders in many of the games, with few players managing to achieve consistency. 

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

Hikaru Nakamura has been telling everyone who’s asked that there’s not too much difference between online chess and over-the-board chess, giving the examples of Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So for players who’ve managed to combine success in both. Hikaru provided evidence of his own by emerging from a quiet first two days to win the rapid section of the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz. “I’ve played a lot on the internet, so I assume it transfers over-the-board,” he commented afterwards. 

He put his success on Day 3 largely down to preparation, with Leinier Dominguez looking doomed in Round 7 when 10.d5 appeared on the board.

It wasn’t Hikaru’s move as much as the fact that Leinier spent a huge 14 minutes and 34 seconds on his reply. Even if he found the right moves he was going to be in trouble, but in fact after 10…Nxd5 11.Rd1 Qb8? (11…Be7!) 12.Bxd5 Black was close to lost. Hikaru commented:

Leinier’s game it was just computers. You look at the position as a human, it’s very scary, but if you look with a computer the computer just laughs at you and shows five different ways to equalise, but over-the-board, if you don’t know, it’s very difficult.

Hikaru then took a solid draw against Wesley So (but notably not one of their instantly played out draws that we’ve become accustomed to) before taking down Fabiano Caruana in the final round of rapid chess. It was more of the same, with Hikaru this time explaining he’d prepared the first 17 moves.

Hikaru said 17…Rhe8 instead of 17…Rg8 was a slight inaccuracy, but for another nine moves it seems Fabiano was walking a computer tightrope to safety… until he slipped. 

Hikaru explained that Fabi not falling into this preparation a couple of years ago may have changed the course of popular chess history! 

I think as far as the Fabiano game it would have been nice if he could have done this in the Isle of Man in 2019 rather than playing here today, because this is the line I looked at even back then. In the game he played a Petroff, it was a draw, I didn’t qualify for the Candidates and I became a streamer instead! Things could have gone a lot differently, but yeah, I had this idea from 2019. I think for Fabiano he didn’t know exactly how to play it, and it was just very unpleasant, and eventually he kind of just cracked because he had no time.  

That game cost Fabiano the sole lead, which he’d regained after losing to Richard Rapport by coming back to defeat Shakhriyar Mamedyarov — after a draw in Round 1 all eight of Fabi’s remaining rapid games were decisive! 

There were other heroes on Days 3, however, with Rapport joining Fabi in second place. He admitted the way he’d won their head-to-head clash had been “very lucky”, since he’d been absolutely busted, but it’s still not every day you get to give checkmate against the world no. 2. 

Richard also won a fine game against Jeffery Xiong, but the 20-year-old could celebrate himself after picking up two wins. He managed to crush Liem Quang Le in just 20 moves with the black pieces, and picked up a dramatic win over Sam Shankland. Sam had been holding on for a long time, but 50…Ka8? was the wrong square for the king!

51.Qxe4+! brought resignation — the point is of course 51…Qxe4 52.Bg2! and White emerges with a completely won pawn endgame. 

Jeffery talked about the game afterwards:

It was a very typical mess. I think it was quite riddled with mistakes, but in the end basically both of us were just low on time and I was just making random checks to see if I could trap him somehow, and it worked out for me, so I guess it was pretty fortunate to win, to be honest. 

It was the kind of day when many who suffered could also celebrate, however, with Sam pulling off a win against Liem Quang Le from what should have been a drawn position. 55.Re4! was a trap. 

Liem fell for it with 55…Rd7?, when after 56.Re8! Black can’t take the d5-pawn due to the e4+ fork. When White managed to play e4 shortly afterwards it was game over, with the connected passed pawns winning the day.

So the standings look as follows before the blitz — Hikaru Nakamura is now the clear favourite, but with 18 rounds to follow almost anything could happen!

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

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