Onus on Anand, Aronian to deny top seed Nakamura blitz honours

KOLKATA: By virtue of his triumph in the rapid section, Hikaru Nakamura of the United States starts as the favourite in the blitz section of the Tata Steel Chess India 2018. And he isn’t going to relinquish it without putting up a big fight. Nakamura is ranked third in the world and thus the top seed here.

However, unlike in the rapid section, Nakamura might face a tougher battle in blitz from players like Levon Aronian of Armenia (World No 4), Sergei Karjakin of Russia (World No 6) and Viswanathan Anand of India (World No 11), all of whom have been the World Blitz Chess champions. Nakamura’s best in that competition has been a third place in 2014. Karjakin won the title in 2016, and Anand had finished second and third respectively in the 2017 edition of the competition.

Throw into the mix the likes of Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (World No 9), Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (ranked 29th in the world), Pentala Harikrishna, who is in the top 50s and the unpredictability of the shortest format of chess, Nakamura will have his task cut out in the 10-player, double round-robin tournament i n which players will get five minutes each to complete their game with an increment of three seconds per move from the first move.

Nine rounds each will be played on Tuesday and Wednesday to identify the winner.

While the 30-year-old American takes the spotlight, Aronian is smarting from his third-place finish in the rapid section and is hoping to make up for that by winning the blitz title.

Aronian, who won the World Blitz Chess Championship title in 2010 at Moscow, was sharing the lead till he lost to Harikrishna in the seventh and penultimate round. He will run into his Indian nemesis in the fourth round and will hope to extract revenge.

It will also be an opportunity for Anand to salvage something for himself after he finished a poor seventh in the rapid section with eight successive draws and a lone defeat to Surya Shekhar Ganguly. He will get a chance to avenge his defeat when he takes on Ganguly in the fourth round v on Tuesday. Anand has to go out and take some risks in the next two days as he is playing at home for the first time after three decades.

This will also be an opportunity for young Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, the second youngest Grandmaster in the history of the sport, who will be joining the field in place of fellow teenager Nihal Sarin who was here to play the rapid section.

Sarin had impressed with the composed manner in which he tackled moves by some of the biggest stars he faced in his first super tournament and now it is for the other wunderkind of Indian chess to showcase his talent.