GM Fabiano Caruana and GM Viswanathan Anand are the biggest names at the seventh Vugar Gashimov Memorial which got underway on Saturday. This year, the tournament is a combination of rapid and blitz chess.

After Christmas, it’s once again time for the traditional, final top event of the year, the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz. It’s great to see some of the biggest names in chess such as GM Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, and Ian Nepomniachtchi on the preliminary participants list.

In the week before Christmas, however, there’s a nice warm-up and it’s rapid and blitz as well. After six classical tournaments in memory of GM Vugar Gashimov, the seventh edition has seven rounds of two-game rapid matches, followed by two days of blitz. It is taking place in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku this time, and not in Shamkir.

The beautiful ⁦@FairmontBaku⁩ lit up for the ⁦@GashimovC⁩ . A lovely display against the night sky. Do zoom in for a better view! pic.twitter.com/JOSjiPtcgf

— Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) December 17, 2021

The top seed is Caruana, who traveled to Azerbaijan almost straight after leaving the Utah studio where he provided commentary on the Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi match. Five-time world champion Anand is another big star, while GMs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, GM Richard Rapport, and GM Sergey Karjakin are no outsiders either.

Further on the list are the seasoned grandmasters David Navara and Rauf Mamedov, while a fairly unknown name is GM Vugar Asadli. The 20-year-old local grandmaster is currently the 10th rated player in Azerbaijan. 

2021 Vugar Gashimov Memorial | Participants

The tournament started on Saturday, with just one round of rapid chess. Caruana, Mamedyarov, and Rapport all won their mini-matches over two games, scoring three points.

Rapport won both games against Karjakin and both were quite interesting. Here’s the first, where the Hungarian, as so often, played an opening variation that is supposed to be slightly questionable from a theoretical point of view but which turned out to be quite playable in practice. Karjakin might have been prepared for it since Rapport had played it online this year as well:

After scoring a smooth win with the white pieces (see below this report), Anand failed to hold his black game against Mamedov, who played a pet line of his in the Italian. The Azerbaijani GM had an overwhelming advantage as one of Anand’s poor knights landed on h8. Black was OK later in the game, but went down anyway:

This was the only match of the day that ended in a 1-1 tie, and therefore the only match where an armageddon was played. Anand, as White, got five minutes vs. four for Mamedov, who had draw odds. In a tense time-trouble phase, Anand was briefly winning but eventually lost on time:

Standings after day 1

All games day 1

The Gashimov Memorial starts with two-game rapid matches (Dec. 18-21) where the winner gets three points and the loser zero. In case of a tie, an armageddon game decides and the winner gets two points and the loser one. Then, a double round-robin of blitz follows (Dec. 22-23) where the time control is five minutes plus a three-second increment and the points system is back to normal.