The opening day confirmed the good and the bad of the great French-Iranian Alireza Firouzja, 19 years old.
He created and risked, despite playing with black, against the very tough Azerbaijani Teimur Radyábov, 35, but he did not go beyond a draw, and narrowly lost, after almost six hours.
The most striking thing was the poor form of the Chinese Liren Ding, 2nd in the world, clearly defeated by the current runner-up, the Russian Ian Niepómniashi.
The main favorite, the American Fabiano Caruana, prevailed over his compatriot Hikaru Nakamura in five and a half hours.
The Duda-Rapport game ended in a draw over six.
The 2nd round of the Candidates Tournament takes place this Saturday, from 3:00 p.m., at the Palacio de Santoña, in Madrid.
Chilean singer Juga, specialized in chess themes, premiered her video
Poisoned Pawn
(poisoned pawn) on Thursday during the opening ceremony of the Candidates Tournament, at the Four Seasons luxury hotel.
The song's lyrics are based on the 7th and 9th games of the 1972 historical Spassky-Fischer.
This ate the poisonous pawn in both, tied the 1st, and lost the 2nd because he fell in a sibylline homemade preparation of the Soviet.
As if to pay homage to the Andean artist, Firouzja also swallowed a poisoned pawn 20 hours later at the Santoña Palace.
And it was also the fruit of painstaking laboratory preparation.
So much so that he surprised the oldest participant, Radyábov, with an encyclopedic memory and possessor of a wide and very solid repertoire of openings.
Soon after, Firouzja sacrificed a rook for a bishop to control the light squares.
Everything seemed very promising, but then he was not up to the task, while his rival did display the toughness that defines him, forcing Firouzja, 3rd in the world, to suffer for almost six hours to get half a point.
Overview of the start of the first roundPhotoChess
Ding was clearly, at the end of 2019, the biggest threat to the current champion, the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.
But the pandemic has shattered his life with lengthy lockdowns and severe travel restrictions, which apparently persist, because he arrived in Madrid on Tuesday night, with less than three days to adjust to the six-hour time difference with China.
His performance against Niepomniashi was well below his 2019 level.
Niepómniashi (left) and Ding greet each other at the start of the first roundPhotoChess
On the contrary, the Russian, who has always distinguished himself by his irregularity and psychological instability, reaffirms himself as one of the main favorites six months after his defeat in the duel in Dubai against Carlsen.
Asked by EL PAÍS about his training since then, he replied: “Nothing special.
I took about three months off and then got to work, but without paying particular attention to any facet of the game.
The Candidates Tournament is a very different challenge than a world title final.
I have done what I always do in these circumstances.”
At the opening ceremony, Juga also sang a song in tribute to Cuban José Raúl Capablanca, world champion one hundred years ago.
He was one of the first stars to underline the important idea that, in chess - where the influence of luck and the referee is almost nil - the one who loses is the one who learns the most.
But one wonders if Ding and Nakamura have learned something this Friday that they did not know.
The Chinese knows very well that top-level chess requires pampering extra-sports details to maximize performance.
And the American is well aware that his greatest energy now is in the facet of a
streamer,
playing and commenting on his own games live on the networks.
Nakamura was very clear about this with this newspaper during the opening ceremony: “I earn much more money as
streamer
than as an elite player.
So my priority is obvious.”
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