Tata Steel Chess 2022: Vidit, Duda, and Foreest lead after R1.

Tata Steel Chess 2022: The first round of the 2022 edition Tata Steel Chess tournament went underway on Saturday. Three leaders emerged including the defending champion Jordan van Foreest.

Unfortunately, for the World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen is not having the best of times after defending his classical title. The Rapid and Blitz championship was a disaster from his point of view, especially the Blitz section.

Here too, he starts with a quick 21 move draw against Russian GM Andrey Esipenko. The match took over two hours and 40 minutes of playtime.

GM Magnus Carlsen: “I think we were both trying to play, trying to win, but it became clear that although it looks like White had some interesting possibilities and good activity,” Carlsen explained afterward. “Black can sort of side-step it and he runs serious danger of being worse if he’s not careful. He found this idea with 18.Ba5 and 19.Bc3 back and I couldn’t find a good way to avoid the repetition. I think overall it’s just what happens.”

The second result of the day came after nearly an hour and a half. Daniil Dubov was playing aggressive chess, for which he is known, got into trouble against GM Shakriyar Mamedyarov. However, he managed to get his way out aided by some sloppy play from his opponent.

The first game of the night to get the result was played between Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Richard Rapport. It was a London system and white got the open d-file for the majority of the game. Rapport was playing it passively and that squeezed him in the endgame.

The next conclusive game was played by the defending champion Jorden van Foreest. It was the same result against the same opponent with the white pieces. Still calling the game shaky afterward as he thought he had many chances to capitalize.

The two Indians had a fine day at the Tata Steel Chess 2022. Praggnanandhaa R managed a draw against Anish Giri with the black pieces. On the counterpart, Vidit Gujrathi was even better against Sam Shankland. After battling for over six and a half hours of play Vidit was able to get rid of Sam to grab the joint lead with Duda and Foreest.

Vidit felt that the problems for Black started after 25…c5, although the engine still thinks it’s OK for Black there but not a few moves later. The Indian player also thought he could have won quicker but his technique let him down a bit: “I really had to get down and start thinking.”