St. Louis Rapid and Blitz: Gukesh slips to tied sixth

Highlights

St. Louis (USA): World Champion D Gukesh scored one win and four draws to slip to joint sixth spot in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz chess tournament,...

St. Louis (USA): World Champion D Gukesh scored one win and four draws to slip to joint sixth spot in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz chess tournament, a part of the Grand chess tour.

Gukesh needs to score massively in the second half as only nine blitz games are left for him to stage a comeback.

Levon Aronian of the United States took the sole lead scoring 6/9 and is sitting pretty in the event ahead of overnight leader and compatriot Fabiano Caruana.

While Aronian has a total of 19 points

Caruana is two points behind him and only a half point ahead of third placed Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.

Uzbek Grandmaster Nodirbek Abdusattorov made a comeback of sorts, matching Aronian on points in the blitz and jumped to joint fourth place along side Wesley So of United States with both having 15 points each.

Gukesh is a distant sixth on 13 point with Liem Le Quang of Vietnam and these two are three points clear of another

American Leinier Dominguez Perez. Grigoriy Oparin improved his position a bit and moved to ninth spot on 9 points, 1.5 ahead of Sam Shankland.

For Gukesh the victory came over Dominguez but the four losses in all cost him dearly. Caruana lost three and went winless in blitz after a dazzling show in the rapid section while Aronian lost one won four and drew four enroute to regaining the lead.

Vachier-Lagrave was the most solid of them all scoring two wins

and seven draws and became the lone player to remain undefeated on the penultimate day of this 175000 USD prize money tournament.

Standings with nine rounds of blitz remaining:

1. Aronian 19; 2. Caruana 17; 3, Vachier-Lagrave 16.5; 4-5. Abdusattorov, Wesley 15 each; 6-7. Gukesh, Liem 13 each; 8. Dominguez 10; 9. Oparin 9; 10. Shankland 7.5.