Nakamura Ahead in Blitz, Vachier-Lagrave Expands Lead

Today, Hikaru Nakamura was the dominant blitz beast that most know him to be and that won him the 2018 Grand Chess Tour Finals. Nakamura beat his GCT Finals opponent and the leader of the tournament Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in Round 13 and put together three wins in a row to be 'only' three points out of first going into the last day of blitz. Vachier-Lagrave's mere 4.5/9 saw him fall from World #1 to World #3 in the blitz live rating list. However, his lead expanded as Alexander Grischuk, who was second going into today scored a disastrous 3.5/9. Vachier-Lagrave's 'tilt' started with an unfortunate loss against Grischuk in Round 11.

After an easy win against Fabiano Caruana, the Frenchman lost again, this time against Nakamura himself.

The two players besides Nakamura to finish on a plus score were Ian Nepomniachtchi and Caruana. The Russian reached second, alongside Grischuk. Here is one of his wins:

Caruana had a rollercoaster of a day, having all decisive games up until a final round draw against Grischuk. A loss against Anand woke up the true Fabi as he put together three wins in a row. Here is the last of those three games, against 8th-9th placed Daniil Dubov.

Another nice game was Jan-Krzysztof Duda's second win against Grischuk so far this tournament:

Unfortunately for Grischuk, he wasn't able to catch up in the crucial moments, as he only won one of the four times Vachier-Lagrave lost today. Here is the home hero's final loss in a well played Scandinavian, which caused some commotion with Chess.com commentator Eric Hansen saying "Start with your dating profiles, under pet peeves: the Scandinavian".

And here are all the games from Rounds 1-9 of blitz and the standings after 18 total rounds of play:

And last but not least, the GCT standings if the event ended one day early: