The 22-year-old, who loves unbalanced positions, finished the first day of the World Blitz with 10 points in the 13 rounds played. Except for a loss due to a blunder against early leader Jorden van Foreest in the sixth round of matches, Arjun didn’t play a wrong move. Fine wins against Magnus Carlsen and Nordibek Abdusattorov were the icing on the cake and he did what he had to do the rest of the time.
Just as impressive was Maxine Vachier-Lagrave, who but for an early loss against Pablo Salinas was just as flawless.
Fabio Caruana started off slowly but was motoring along by the end. A win over Carlsen, who once again missed a move completely, gave him a boost at the end of the day.
Danill Dubov and Lu Shanglei had a different strategy — banging out quick draws when they could and winning in other games. Both ended the day with 9.5 points. It keeps them within touching distance of the leaders.
Carlsen still lurks at 9 points. But with just six rounds more to go on Day 2 before the playoffs, he will need a pretty special run to challenge the leaders. Given that he has won the World Blitz title eight times, no one is going to put that beyond him. Carlsen’s loss to Erigaisi was on time, after his Queen slipped out of the board and he went fetching with just a few seconds left in the clock. He also missed a simple move of Caruana to cede a piece and the game to the American.
Ian Nepomniachtchi, the joint winner from 2024, is also on 9 points. An otherwise solid day was spoiled by losses to Teimour Radjabov and Pranav V.
Among the other Indian players in the Open competition, Pranesh M, Goutham Krishna H, R Praggnanandhaa, Raunak Sadhwani and SL Narayanan had a splendid day to end on 9 points.
Reigning World Classical champion D Gukesh is on 8.5 with Nihal Sarin.
In the women’s competition, Dutch GM Eline Roebers is in sole lead with 8.5 points. Trailing her by half a point are the Rapid winner Aleksandra Goryachkina, Umida Omonova and Antoneta Stefanova.
None of the Indian players had a particularly good outing with Divya Deshmukh on 6 points being the best among them.
Koneru Humpy had a disappointing day, finishing on just 5 points out of the possible 10 on the day. Five straight defeats mean that she is virtually out of the running at this point.
Day 2 will be a battle of strategy as well. All players will want to finish in the top four because that will allow them to be part of the playoffs. But blunders can flow in Blitz and soon become a flood. That is something they will all have to guard against.
