Anand starts with draw against Nakamura

The game of the day was Hikaru Nakamura-Viswanathan Anand. It didn’t look as though it would provide as much entertainment as it did for about three quarters of its course but when Nakamura rashly started to launch his kingside pawns down the board in order to expose the enemy king, things started to hot up. It is debatable whether it was an objectively justified plan since Black was able to grab a pawn and hang on to it, but it required some precise play from Anand to see him through the complications. 

In particular, his brinksmanship in stopping the white king from moving away from the kingrook-file to reveal a deadly mate from the rook was a wonder to behold. No decisive games, then, but it was a splendid tussle. 

It was a little disappointing that Google’s state-of- the-art City venue could not have been rewarded with some more exciting headlines for its generosity in hosting the opening round of the Classic but that is often the way with our game when played at its most stratospheric level. The same thing happened in round three of August’s Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis, which featured nine of the ten players who now line up in London. It wasn’t for the want of trying, at least on a couple of the boards. Look closer and you’ll find the latter stages of one of them was a humdinger.

The game between Wesley So and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was the first to finish. The US player opted for a sort of unambitious English Fianchetto system in which the queens came off early and the pawn structure more or less symmetrical. The game soon petered out to a draw. 

Nepomniachtchi versus Aronian took longer in time but lasted fewer moves (28 – not a breach of the 30move rule as it involved a repetition). Magnus Carlsen opted for a draw against Fabiano Caruana in a position in which he might have held a slight advantage. Adams-Karjakin ended on move 30 by which time the position reached a rook and two knights ending.