Caruana, Gukesh Score In Opening Round Of Superbet Chess Classic Romania

The Superbet Chess Classic Romania, the second leg of the 2024 Grand Chess Tour, started on Wednesday in Bucharest with wins for GMs Gukesh Dommaraju and Fabiano Caruana. In his first classical game since winning the Candidates, Gukesh defeated wildcard GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac. Caruana was in trouble vs. GM Alireza Firouzja but managed to turn things around.

The first day of the tournament, held in the Grand Hotel Bucharest for a $350,000 prize fund, saw draws in the games Nodirbek Abdusattorov vs. Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs. Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Anish Giri vs. Wesley So.

Round two starts Thursday, June 27, at 8 a.m. ET / 14:00 CEST / 17:30 p.m. IST.

Superbet Chess Classic Romania Round 1 Results

Superbet Chess Classic Romania Standings After Round 1 

We have arrived at the second leg of the 2024 Grand Chess Tour, a month and a half after GM Magnus Carlsen's grandiose victory at the Superbet Rapid and Blitz in Warsaw, Poland where the Norwegian star overtook GM Wei Yi on the final day thanks to a 10-game winning streak.

Alongside six wildcards, that rapid and blitz event in Warsaw had only four of the full Grand Chess Tour participants—Abdusattorov, Giri, Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa—who were joined with five more in Bucharest: Caruana, Firouzja, Nepomniachtchi, So and Vachier-Lagrave. Deac, back to being the Romanian number-one now that GM Richard Rapport is poised to play for Hungary again, is the wildcard in this tournament.

The first round was on Wednesday, but the day before, the players were already involved in some activities. Besides giving interviews for the tournament broadcast they also played simuls against local chess fans, which is always a nice idea. GM Viswanathan Anand was involved as well:

The Grand Chess Tour came to Bucharest, and after the traditional opening ceremony and drawing of lots, the players participated in a simultaneous exhibition for the local fans. They signed autographs and gave interviews to the local media. Out of 20 games, two ended in draws,… pic.twitter.com/QUawo5olF2

— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) June 25, 2024

The organizers of the Superbet tournaments continue to value on-site spectators in a world that's increasingly shifting to online. It is clear that cities like Warsaw and Bucharest, and also Zagreb as another location for the Grand Chess Tour, still have many chess fans, just like some decades ago when several major events were taking place in Eastern Europe, then still linked to the Soviet Union. GCT ambassador GM Garry Kasparov noted in a recent interview:

Considering the overall development of chess and the other GCT host cities—Warsaw and Zagreb—Eastern Europe has now recovered its place in the world of chess, which was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now it is clearly the most vibrant part of the chess world in Europe. In contrast, Western Europe has very little left of the activities that were thriving when I was playing some 20-25 years ago. Now we have the Bucharest-Warsaw-Zagreb orb, and maybe a few more cities could join. If I lived in Bucharest, knowing that every year I could watch and meet the world's top players live, I would be delighted.

... Eastern Europe has now recovered its place in the world of chess, which was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

—Garry Kasparov

Gukesh-Deac 1-0

Gukesh turned 18 a month ago and played his first classical game since he won the Candidates. He won a somewhat topsy-turvy game against Deac, who played strongly and kept up with his opponent's level of play for long. In fact, the 22-year-old Romanian player was close to winning for a brief moment, something that players and analysts missed.

Former Romanian football player Ilie Dumitrescu made a symbolic move in the first round of the #SuperbetChessClassicRomania #GrandChessTour match between Gukesh and Bogdan Deac!#chess #football #Dumitrescu #Gukesh #BogdanDeac pic.twitter.com/TJxganEDNH

— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) June 26, 2024

As the game went beyond move 30, with a rather complicated middlegame position on the board, the clock started to play a role and continued to do so after move 40. The Tour is using a new time control this year for its classical events: 120 minutes for the whole game, with a 30-second increment per move. It was also used at the recent Cairns Cup.

It means that as soon as a player gets into serious time trouble, there's no way out of it anymore (and a visit to the restroom will have to wait until after the game.) And it showed: with 35 seconds left on his clock, Deac blundered his position to shambles, but as soon as Gukesh went under a minute, he allowed a tactic that would have led to a draw. As Deac missed it, Gukesh ended up winning convincingly after all.

Firouzja-Caruana 0-1

Caruana is defending his title from last year in Romania, and started his campaign well—unlike what he did in his game. Firouzja, who came to Bucharest with back-to-back online victories in the Champions Chess Tour (beating Carlsen twice) and the Bullet Chess Championship (beating GM Hikaru Nakamura twice), was simply much better out of the opening.

The game started with a London System with 2.Bf4, apparently once dubbed the "Lazy Tromp" by the English GM Mark Hebden. Caruana didn't feel like repeating the sharp continuation from their game at Norway Chess last month and instead chose to "freestyle" with 2...b6!?, a Queen's Indian type of setup.

Firouzja's 3.c4 meant he was ready to play against a Queen's Indian with his bishop on f4, but Caruana then switched to a more King's Indian type of structure with 4...d6 and 5...g6. That allowed his opponent to grab space in the center, and soon Caruana was looking at a "disgusting" position, as he called it afterward.

Whereas commentator GM Yasser Seirawan had called it "dodgy," Caruana was more critical on himself: "It was much worse than dodgy. I thought I was, like, close to lost. I wasn’t sure. I don’t know what I was doing."

It was much worse than dodgy. I thought I was, like, close to lost.
—Fabiano Caruana

Caruana couldn't understand why Firouzja didn’t block the queenside with 17.a4 followed by castling queenside and Rdg1, when White can attack and Black cannot. "Maybe it’s not so easy to break through, but it’s probably winning in the long run," said Caruana.

Firouzja had another chance to go for the same setup if he had taken on g5 with his knight with check. Taking with the bishop allowed Caruana to break with 18…b5 and get counterplay. Firouzja soon lost his advantage and then got outplayed in the remainder.

In our Game of the Day, GM Dejan Bojkov provides a detailed analysis in his annotations:

Three draws

The first game to finish was MVL-Nepomniachtchi. The Russian GM was fine with a draw as he played the Petroff while the French GM tried but failed to shoot holes in that opening. He entered a different alley than what Nakamura and Praggnanandhaa had tried against the same opponent in the Candidates, but Nepomniachtchi remembered everything. From start to finish, all the moves were part of both players' preparation and the first 20 or so were blitzed out on the board.

Nepomniachtchi took about four minutes on move 22 to double check everything, as he had to play an important queen move there, and then took some more time on move 24. He spent about 50 minutes in total vs. 41 for MVL. Afterward, the Frenchman thought his approach was quite logical since it's Black who can go wrong at several moments. But Nepo was up to the task once again.

Not long after, Giri and So also called it a day. These players had an old line of the Catalan on the board where the Dutchman might have been confused a little by So's unusual 11th move. The American GM continued in solid style, as he is known for, and Giri didn't find a way to get much play.

Time for autographs! #grandchesstour #anishgiri pic.twitter.com/PgqTGVRBfS

— Grand Chess Tour (@GrandChessTour) June 26, 2024

Abdusattorov, too, failed to get anything in the opening against Praggnanandhaa, who went for a Moller Defense in the Ruy Lopez (5...Bc5, played before ...b5). By move 20 the game looked completely equal, but somehow Pragg ended up with an extra pawn, which was of little value.

Note that the three draws all ended with a move repetition, because in this tournament draw offers are not allowed during the entire game.

The 2024 Superbet Chess Classic Romania is the second leg of the 2024 Grand Chess Tour. The event is a 10-player round-robin with classical time control (120 minutes for the entire game, plus a 30-second increment per move). The tournament runs June 26-July 5 and features a $350,000 prize fund.