Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Highlights: Gukesh ends Day 1 without a win, Carlsen suffers three losses

Here’s how things stand at the end of the opening day of the Weissenhaus event, which consisted of five rounds, with D Gukesh currently tied on 2 points with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Vincent Keymer.

Fabiano Caruana and Javokhir Sindarov, meanwhile, occupy the top two spots with 4.5 points each, an entire point more than the third-placed Alireza Firouzja – who handed Gukesh his only defeat of the day.

Here’s what happened in Round 5, the final round of the opening day of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Weissenhaus:

World No 1 Magnus Carlsen, meanwhile, is off to an indifferent start in the tournament that he helped create with German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, losing his final game of the day against Javokhir Sindarov by resigning after 33 moves.

Sindarov wasn’t even part of the tournament, only getting included after Viswanathan Anand decided to pull out of the tournament. And today, he ended up outshining Carlsen, Gukesh and Hikaru, the biggest names in this tournament.

D Gukesh plays out a 38-move stalemate against Hikaru Nakamura to end the opening day of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tournament with four draws and a defeat. That’s right, the reigning world champions fails to win a single game on the opening day!

Gukesh surely will be disappointed with himself, and will be hoping to come back stronger tomorrow and secure his entry into the knockouts.

D Gukesh was enjoying a sizeable advantage over Hikaru Nakamura after the first 16 moves. The balance of the game, however, suddenly tilts in favour of the Japanese-American GM after Gukesh decides to move his knight to the e file (Ne5), which promptly gets captured by his opponent’s dark-squared bishop (Bxe5).

Gukesh continues to make questionable decisions later in the game (25. Bc4, 26. g3), and after 26 moves, is trailing his opponent on the board as well as on the clock.

Meanwhile is Gukesh vs Nakamura, both players castle in their 12th move after opting for a knight exchange in Move 10. The chess engine especially likes Gukesh’s decision to capture Nakamura’s pawn at c5 with his bishop.

Nakamura responds by capturing the bishop with his pawn from b6, and the Indian GM then advances his queen to c5 in his 15th move.

Both of Carlsen’s wins today have come while playing with white pieces, and the world No 1 looked dominant while defeating Hikaru Nakamura and Vincent Keymer.

Against Sindarov, however, it’s a 50-50 battle at the moment after 12 moves – with the Norwegian GM castling in his latest move.

The chess engine is favouring D Gukesh in his fifth round clash against Hikaru Nakamura after a couple of questionable moves by the Japanese-American GM (4. g6, 7. Nd6).

Can the reigning world champion make the most of the positive start and end the day with his first victory in five rounds?

The king is placed on the ‘D’ file in this round, between bishop and knight. Gukesh, meanwhile, is playing with white pieces in this round and starts with f4, that is followed by an f5 by Nakamura.

Here’s the fixtures list for Round 5 – the final Round of the opening day of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Weissenhaus tournament:

— D Gukesh vs Hikaru Nakamura

— Magnus Carlsen vs Javokhir Sindarov

— Fabiano Caruana vs Levon Aronian

— Alireza Firouzja vs Vincent Keymer

— Nodirbek Abdusattorov vs Vladimir Fedoseev

With Vladimir Fedoseev finally winning a game, D Gukesh and Hikaru Nakamura are in danger of moving into the bottom two with 1.5 points each.

Gukesh and Hikaru lock horns in Round 5 – the final round of the day – and the loser of this game will certainly be on the back foot as far as qualification for the knockouts is concerned.

Updated leaderboard after four rounds:

Here are the results from Round 4 of the Weissenhaus tournament, in which Vladimir Fedoseev, Vincent Keymer and Fabiano Caruana win their respective games while D Gukesh and Hikaru Nakamura collect draws against Javokhir Sindarov and Levon Aronian respectively:

D Gukesh collects a third draw in four games, shaking hands with Javokhir Sindarov after the latter captures a pawn with his rook in his 47th move.

Gukesh is yet to win a game so far today, and will be hoping to sign off with at least one victory today in Round 5, which is the final round of the opening day.

Sindarov, meanwhile, collects his first draw after starting with three consecutive wins.

Javokhir Sindarov appeared set for a fourth victory in as many outings after finding himself in an advantageous position against D Gukesh. The reigning world champion, however, hasn’t thrown in the towel yet and has managed to stretch the remaining time past half-a-minute after he was left with a few seconds.

At the moment, it’s a rook endgame on the board and Gukesh has a solid chance of walking away with a third draw in four rounds.

After losing all three games so far today, Vladimir Fedoseev finally opens his account! And open his account he does in style by defeating the world’s top-ranked player in dominant fashion!

Magnus Carlsen has now won and lost two games each after four rounds! It’s been a bittersweet day for the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour co-founder so far today! What’s worse is the fact that it’s not even time pressure that got the better of him, as he had nearly half of the total time allotted to him left on the clock.

Things go from bad to worse for Magnus Carlsen as Vladimir Fedoseev finds himself on the verge of victory against one of the greatest players of all time. Carlsen gives Fedoseev a check, first with his queen followed by a rook, placing both on d1 in consecutive moves.

Fedoseev retreats his bishop to e1 to block the rook’s path to the king and then castles. The two later play out a knight exchange in Moves 15 and 16.

After a dominant performance against Vincent Keymer in Round 3, world No 1 Magnus Carlsen finds himself struggling against Russian-Slovenian GM Vladimir Fedoseev.

The engine leans heavily towards Fedoseev after Carlsen opts for a castle in his eighth move, which is followed by Fedoseev moving his knight to b2.

The fourth round of the Weissenhaus tournament is underway with the king placed along the ‘F’ file between bishop and knight. Sindarov, playing with white pieces against Gukesh, opts for a c4 opening that is met with a c5 response. Both players gallop their knights forward in the next move before exchanging pawns by Move 4.

Both Sindarov (e4) and Gukesh (castle), however, make a couple of questionable calls in Move 5. Gukesh’s move accuracy even falls below 80 at one point.

Here’s the fixtures list for the fourth round, which will be the penultimate round of the opening day:

— D Gukesh vs Javokhir Sindarov

— Magnus Carlsen vs Vladimir Fedoseev

— Hikaru Nakamura vs Levon Aronian

— Fabiano Caruana vs Alireza Firouzja

— Nodirbek Abdusattorov vs Vincent Keymer

Javokhir Sindarov currently is the sole leader after winning all three rounds so far today, with Fabiano Caruana and Alireza Firouzja trailing him with 2.5 points each.

D Gukesh, meanwhile, is currently eighth with just one point after drawing two and losing one in the first three rounds. What is important, however, is the fact that he will have to avoid finishing among the bottom two if he is to participate in the knockouts that get underway from Sunday.

Here’s how Round 3 of the Weissenhaus tournament panned out, with three out of five games ending in a draw:

Gukesh Dommaraju plays out a second draw in three rounds at the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, shaking hands with American Grandmaster Levon Aronian after 64 moves in Round 3.

Though they both had plenty of time left on the clock, both Gukesh and Levon were reduced to their kings, and couldn’t have done much at that point.

Magnus Carlsen rarely suffers back-to-back defeats. After getting outplayed by Fabiano Caruana, the world No 1 roars back in style by defeating Vincent Keymer in 50 moves in Round 3, collecting his second win in three games as a result!

Also ending up on the winning side is Javokhir Sindarov, who has now win three in three so far on Day 1 at Weissenhaus!

Levon Aronian was enjoying a massive advantage over D Gukesh on the chess engine after a series of solid moves (36. Nd3+, 38. b5, 39. Kb4) by retreating his rook back to e1 in his 40th move. Gukesh responds by moving his King to d6 that helps restore parity.

Gukesh, however, continues to trail his opponent on the clock.

After being stopped on his tracks by Fabiano Caruana in the second round, world No 1 Magnus Carlsen finds himself in an ideal position to collect two wins in three matches, especially after the engine greatly appreciates his decision to capture the German’s pawn with his rook (Rxf5) in response to a questionable move from his opponent (Ng4). Carlsen also has the better move accuracy of the two players.

For a second game in a row, the chess engine favours Gukesh’s opponent, especially after the world champion plays c6 in his 11th move in response to the American moving his knight to c3.

Both Gukesh and Aronian have around three minutes left on the clock at the moment.

Round 3 in the round-robin stage of the Weissenhaus tournament is underway, and the formation of back-pieces for this round has king standing along the ‘B’ file between rook and bishop, with queen standing along the ‘D’ file.

Gukesh responds to Aronian’s e4 with an e5 in the opening move and later moves his queen’s pawn (d6) in response to g3.

Carlsen, playing with white pieces against local favourite Keymer, also opts for an e4, g3 opening like Aronian.

Here is the fixtures list for Round 3 of the Weissenhaus Round Robin stage:

— Gukesh Dommaraju vs Levon Aronian

— Magnus Carlsen vs Vincent Keymer

— Hikaru Nakamura vs Alireza Firouzja

— Fabiano Caruana vs Nodirbek Abdusattorov

— Vladimir Fedoseev vs Javokhir Sindarov

Here’s what the leaderboard currently looks like after two rounds, with Fabiano Caruana sharing the top spot with Javokhir Sindarov and Alireza Firouzja, all of whom have won two games each.

Here’s how the second round of the Round-Robin leg of the Weissenhaus Tournament played out:

Nodirbek Abdusattorov collects back-to-back draws at the start of his Freestyle Chess campaign by playing out another long-drawn stalemate, this time against world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura with their second-round clash lasting 81 moves.

In other games, German GM Vincent Keymer defeats Vladimir Fedoseev while Javokhir Sindarov collects a second consecutive victory by defeating Levon Aronian.

After playing out a hard-fought 96-move draw against Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the opening round, world champion D Gukesh loses to Alireza Firouzja in just 27 moves in the second round to slide down the 10-player table at Weissenhaus.

Firouzja seized the lead after responding to Gukesh’s Rd8+ in Move 20 by moving his knight between the white rook and his king along the eighth rank.

Seven moves later, the Iranian-French GM seals the deal with a checkmate by moving his queen to d1 after Gukesh, who is under severe time pressure in this game, opts for Qe3.

After kickstarting his Freestyle Chess campaign on a winning note, Magnus Carlsen suffers a defeat as Fabiano Caruana beats him in just 25 moves in the second round on Day 1 of the Weissenhaus event!

Caruana moves to the top of the leaderboard with back-to-back wins.

Gukesh initiates a knight and a bishop exchange in Moves 9 and 10, capturing the latter with his Queen. Firouzja later advances his queen towards the 18-year-old’s king.

Additionally, both players have around a minute left on the clock and they are yet to complete 20 moves.

After starting his Freestyle Chess campaign with a defeat against Carlsen, world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura isn’t having a great time against Nodirbek Abdusattorov either, especially after his decision to move his bishop to c1 in his 13th move.

Nodirbek, however, cedes some of his advantage with a howler (Re7) in the same move.

Magnus Carlsen isn’t off to the best of starts in his Round 2 meeting with Italian-American GM Fabiano Caruana, who had occupied the world No 2 spot before Hikaru Nakamura.

Caruana’s playing with white pieces and opts to start with d4. both players castling in the third move. The engine, meanwhile, doesn’t like Carlsen’s 7. e5 while tilting the balance of the game in favour of Caruana after the latter responds with 8. e4.

Gukesh is playing with white pieces in the second round, and opts to open with c4. The king is once again between queen and rook, but along the ‘F’ file instead of ‘B’. The world champion then castles in his third move.

The engine, however, doesn’t like his fourth move (Bf4) at all, tilting the balance of the game slightly in Firouzja’s favour as a result.

After playing out a hard-fought draw against Nodirbek Abdusattorov, world champion D Gukesh faces Iranian-French GM Alireza Firouzja in the second round.

Here are the fixtures for Round 2:

— D Gukesh vs Alireza Firouzja

— Magnus Carlsen vs Fabiano Caruana

— Hikaru Nakamura vs Nodirbek Abdusattorov

– Javokhir Sindarov vs Levon Aronian

— Vincent Keymer vs Vladimir Fedoseev