China's Dragon Chilling Leads World Rapid and Blitz Championship

Dragon Chilling is an unfamiliar chess name, but the squad from China led the field of 48 after the first day’s play at the World Rapid and Blitz in Hong Kong. Teams of six include a woman, a junior and an amateur who has never achieved a 2000 rating. The strong performance by Asian teams at the start highlights a boom in chess, with enthusiasm sparked by successive world champions from China (Ding Liren) and India (Gukesh Dommaraju).

The time control for rapid is 15 minutes for the whole game, plus a 10 seconds per move increment from move one; while for blitz it is three minutes plus a two seconds per move increment. There is no repeat of the attempt in London last year to play without increment, which caused chaotic conclusions to several games.

Magnus Carlsen leads WR Chess, who were the pre-tournament favourites along with India’s MGD1 and China’s Dragon Chilling. WR had an early setback in round two when Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Aleksandra Goryachkina both lost, and at the end of the first day the team were four points behind the front runners.

In round six, Carlsen lost to MGD1’s Arjun Erigaisi, as India’s world No 8 demolished the No 1 as Black by a raging attack culminating in a queen sacrifice. Carlsen very rarely loses two games in a row, but it happened in round seven against the 24-year-old Armenian Shant Sargsyan. After that loss, Carlsen decided to sit out round eight.

England’s only representative at the championships appears to be the former world title challenger Nigel Short, now 61, whose team is Qatar but contains several other Fide officials. Short began with 5/8 and a 2540 performance rating, showing that he retains his skills.

After eight of the 12 World Rapid rounds Dragon Chilling led with 14/16, followed by MGD1 on 13 and Barys (a Fide/Russia/Kazakh team) on 12. Carlsen’s top seeded WR were only in 11th place on 10 points, with little chance.

Live commentary by England’s Olympiad gold medallist David Howell is at fide.com, starting at around 7.15 am BST on Friday (rapid), Saturday and Sunday (blitz).

Prior to Wednesday’s start, WR Chess won a battle of rival press conferences. While the official edition offered only the Fide president, Arkady Dvorkovich, plus two GMs in support, the WR podium fielded Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, special guest Javokhir Sindarov and even a former prime minister, Mongolia’s Zandanshatar Gombojav, who was announced alongside WR’s founder and sponsor, Wadim Rosenstein, for the U2000 amateur board. After drawing his round one game, Gombojav was beaten in round seven.

A new chapter has been added to the Hans Niemann v Ian Nepomniachtchi feud reported earlier this month. The American and the Russian, whose 4-4 tie in their match in Belgrade was followed by a dispute about the prize fund, were paired again at the UzChess Cup in Tashkent, where Nepo finished third out of 10 with 5/9 and Niemann seventh with 4/9 in a round robin won by the local GM Mukhiddin Madaminov.

At the pre-event technical meeting, Nepo shook hands with all the players bar Niemann, and said afterwards: “He has to learn how to behave.”

Nepo later won their eighth round game, using some leftover prep in the Ruy Lopez a4 anti-Marshall which he had hoped to unleash during his 2021 world title defeat by Carlsen. They reached a knight ending where Nepo was able to sacrifice his knight for united passed pawns and threats on both flanks. Objectively, though, the pair remain closely matched, with both in the lower half of the world top 20.

Niemann has his own team, named Endgame AI, in the World Team Rapid/Blitz, which he began by winning his first four games on top board, all of them against grandmasters, then drawing four against elite opponents including the Candidates winner, Sindarov, and former world champion Ding.