GM Vladislav Artemiev leads the preliminary stage of the Aimchess U.S. Rapid after two days. The 23-year-old Russian grandmaster scored 7.5/10, half a point more than GMs Levon Aronian and GM Magnus Carlsen, who is back in the field for what is the final leg of the Champions Chess Tour.

We’ve reached the final leg of the Champions Chess Tour before September’s Finals. The good news for many fans is that the world champion returned to the virtual chessboard after he had to skip the previous leg due to his FIDE World Cup participation.

The tournament is mostly about which players will make it to the Finals, besides the already qualified Carlsen, GM Teimour Radjabov, GM Anish Giri (as Tour Major winners), Aronian, GM Wesley So, and GM Ian Nepomniachtchi (who already secured their spots on points). As the Finals will also include two wildcards, two more players have a chance to qualify based on their result in the final leg.

At the moment, GM Hikaru Nakamura (not playing in this final leg) and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave are set for qualifying but they’re not certain yet—especially if Artemiev, who started strongly in the preliminaries, ends up winning the tournament.

The Russian player won five and drew five so far. In one of his wins, he tricked Aronian with a typical tactic in isolated queen’s pawn positions, and in fact, it had been played before. This was Aronian’s only loss so far.

Carlsen also suffered just one loss in these first 10 rounds. The new French GM Alireza Firouzja continues to be a dangerous opponent for him, although Carlsen was doing well in the early middlegame in what was a Scandinavian Defense. But at some point, things turned around completely and the game ended with checkmate on the board: 

A spectacular game from the first round was Aronian’s win over the Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem, who did so well in the Chessable Masters where he eliminated the Armenian GM in the semifinals. Aronian got his revenge in a wild, topical and fascinating line of the Moller Ruy Lopez:

With this event having a focus on North America, we see more participants from this content than usual. GM Daniel Naroditsky, a regular commentator at Chess.com, showed to be a fine force himself as he managed to beat his great compatriot So:

Five more rounds will be played on Monday, after which the top-eight finishers will qualify for the knockout phase.

Aimchess U.S. Rapid | Round 10 Standings

All Games Day 1-2

The Aimchess U.S. Rapid runs August 28-September 5, 2021 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a six-day knockout that consists of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advance to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize fund is $100,000, including a $30,000 first prize.