The 2024 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship began with quite an upset as Magnus Carlsen, the World No 1 and defending World Rapid champion, was stunned by 18-year-old GM Denis Lazavik and managed just 2.5 points out of 5.
The World Championship of the shorter versions of chess, it features the best players in the world, bar the recently-crowned champion in classical chess – Dommaraju D Gukesh. But there’s plenty of Indian interest among the 300 players battling in the open and women’s sections at the turn of the year.
Being held at New York’s Wall Street for the first time, the first day of competition saw five rounds of rapid chess and teenagers shine through in it. 18-year-old Volodar Murzin and 15-year-old Alice Lee were the leaders after the first day of play.
When @vishy64theking announced the start of @FIDE_chess World Rapid and Blitz Championships 2024! pic.twitter.com/eDGbKlMBiZ
– ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) December 26, 2024
Murzin beat Fabiano Caruana and then drew with Levon Aronian for a score of 4.5/5, jointly leading the open section of the tournament alongside Shant Sargsyan, Leinier Dominguez Perez, and Daniel Naroditsky.
From an Indian perspective, Arjun Erigaisi and Raunak Sadhwani were the top performers with 4/5 points each. Also on 4 points were big names like Hikaru Nakamura, Anish Giri, Levon Aronian and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
Arjun, who has been in great form this year and recently became the second Indian after Viswanathan Anand to reach the gold-standard ELO rating of 2800, continued his good run losing just one Round 3 game and winning the other four. He is placed 12th.
Raunak won 3 games and drew 2, including a win over Alireza Firouzja, is placed fifth. Praggnanandhaa, on the other hand, had a slow start and is on 3 points, ranked 56th.
In the Women’s event, where there were 4 rounds are held, Alice Lee emerged as the sole leader with a perfect score of 4/4. Among Indians, Harika Dronavalli had the best start with 3.5/4 points and is placed fourth in the standings.
Vaishali was the next best, placed 15th with 3 points. Koneru Humpy was tied on 2.5 points with big names such as Lei Tingjie, Zhu Chen, and Mariya Muzychuk.
The big story though was Carlsen’s struggle in the start of his fifth Rapid World Championship title defence. He called it “A very, very poor performance” afterwards, drawing with white to start and then misplaying with black to end the day. He will hope to regain some of his lost ground on the second day, currently ranked 83rd.
❗️ UPSET ALERT❗️
Denis Lazavik (2553) takes down ���� Magnus Carlsen (2838) in Round 5 of the 2024 FIDE World Rapid Championship! #RapidBlitz pic.twitter.com/oWM9VeJgfj
– International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) December 27, 2024
There are eight more rounds to be played in the next two days for the men, and seven more for the women.
Schedule – Rapid
Timings in IST December 27
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12.30 AM: Round 1
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1.50 AM: Round 2
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3.10 AM: Round 3
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4.30 AM: Round 4
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5.50 AM: Round 5
December 28 Rounds 6, 7, 8, 9 in the same time slots as above (excluding the 5.50 AM one.)
December 29 Rounds 10, 11, 12, 13 in the same time slots as above.
Schedule – Blitz
December 31
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12.30 AM: Round 1
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1.00 AM: Round 2
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1.30 AM: Round 3
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2.00 AM: Round 4
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2.30 AM: Round 5
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3.00 AM: Round 6
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3.30 AM: Round 7
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4.00 AM: Round 8
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4.30 AM: Round 9
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5.00 AM: Round 10
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5.30 AM: Round 11
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6.00 AM: Round 12
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6.30 AM: Round 13
January 1
• 12.30 AM: Quarterfinals
• 2.00 AM: Semifinals
• 3.30 AM: Final
Livestream
The tournament will be livestreamed on the official FIDE YouTube channel.
