Duda On Track For Title After Undefeated Rapid Run

Duda’s stellar run continued in front of a home ground in Warsaw, and with four wins and five draws under his belt, the pertinent question is whether or not he can keep his form rolling into the blitz portion. If 2022 is anything to go by, Duda is certainly capable of putting together a tournament-winning score in the blitz—as he had to do so to wrest the title from the grasp of legendary GM Viswanathan Anand.

The Polish GM had to work hard to draw his first game of the day against GM Kirill Shevchenko with White, a matchup that Duda would have felt was important to win given his opponent’s 1.5/6 score heading into the round.

With two Whites in a row to start the day, Duda saved his best chess for the eighth round, where he knocked over Vachier-Lagrave in the Queen’s Gambit Accepted: Central Variation, McDonnell Defense. Sacrificing his queen for a rook, knight, and two pawns, Duda had all the pieces he needed to confirm the result. Staring at his opponent’s connected passed pawns threatening to barrel down the d- and c-files, Vachier-Lagrave resigned, perhaps prematurely.

A comfortable 50-move hold against GM Levon Aronian capped off another successful day for Duda, who also moved into the number three position on the FIDE rapid leaderboards behind Carlsen and GM Ding Liren.

Duda will immediately be tested in the blitz with a round one pairing against the person GM Daniil Dubov dubbed the “rock-and-roll player,” GM Richard Rapport. If he is not shaken up by the volatility of Rapport, the game should help to settle his nerves.

Despite his loss to the leader, Vachier-Lagrave had a fine day in Warsaw and was responsible for knocking GM Wesley So off the top of the standings in round seven. So opted to play the Petrov Defense, an opening he is famously solid when playing Black, but panicked with 26…Rxg5? and never recovered from the material deficit.

A round nine win over Shevchenko and his Sicilian Defense: Dragon Variation propelled him into equal third and just two points shy of the lead. The game itself was a monstrous performance from the Frenchman, who blitzed out the opening and put his opponent under immense pressure.

A brilliant queen check from Vachier-Lagrave was the breaking point for Shevchenko, and he resigned soon after with only 30 seconds on his clock against his opponent’s eight minutes. The speed with which he won the game was an ominous sign for his competitors heading into the blitz portion. Vachier-Lagrave’s win was a worthy contender for our Game of the Day, and you can enjoy GM Rafael Leitao‘s annotations below.

Another player who benefitted from So’s loss against Vachier-Lagrave was Aronian, who managed to score 2/3 on day three and move into clear second place. The veteran’s grinding effort against GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek in round seven was the most important result for him on Tuesday and proved to be an instructive look into how to extract a long-term advantage from your opponent’s doubled pawns.

One player who can never be ignored is the former world champion Carlsen, and while his -1 score after the first two days left him in a disappointing seventh place, two wins and a draw saw him bounce right back into contention. Now only three wins off the lead, the six-time world blitz champion will no doubt be back with a vengeance and still feel optimistic about a late run against the field.

The first of Carlsen’s wins on day three was against GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac, who enjoyed a good run of form on the second day but only managed to score one point on day three. A vintage Carlsen endgame lesson was on the cards in round seven, and in an endgame that many GMs would have drawn, the virtuoso ground out the win.

Not even brilliant moves could save Shevchenko from Carlsen’s wrath in round eight, and in a Scotch Gambit-turned-Italian Game: Two Knights Variation, the classical world number one slowly outplayed his Romanian opponent, eventually claiming victory on move 60.

The only player who could stop Carlsen’s rampant run on day three was Rapport, who used brute force with Black to stop his opponent from claiming his third consecutive victory.

Four key frontrunners in Duda, Aronian, So, and Vachier-Lagrave have emerged as the chief contenders heading into the blitz. With 18 rounds to play, anyone in the top half of the field still has realistic chances of winning the event, and the early rounds will go a long way to setting the tone of the denouement of the 2023 Superbet Poland Rapid & Blitz.

Round 1 Pairings

Standings – Round 9

All Games – Day 3