London Chess Classic, Day 2: Two More Draws

Today's games were again drawn, so we'll have to rely on the faster games tomorrow to see some blood. Levon Aronian did have his chances today against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, but the combination of MVL's fine defense and Aronian's hasty play allowed the Frenchman to survive. In particular, Aronian missed 28.Rc2!, with the idea 28...Kxe6 29.b3 and White picks up the knight without allowing as much counterplay as Black got in the game. Even after that Aronian had good chances, but didn't make the most of his chances.

In the game between Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana, there were no chances. Nakamura took a page out of Magnus Carlsen's book and played a speedy and absolutely bloodless draw with White, counting on his chances against Caruana in the faster games. Nakamura is a great rapid and blitz player, and Caruana is going to have work hard to bring his rapid and blitz play closer to his classical level. The number of rapid and blitz events is increasing, not to mention the number of hybrid events, so Caruana has to do something about this. Being almost the co-number 1 in the world in classical chess doesn't matter if players like Carlsen, Nakamura, and Aronian can pummel him in rapid and blitz.

Today's games - sans annotations - are here.