Vachier-Lagrave Wins Rapid, Grischuk Right Behind

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave completed another solid day in first, as Alexander Grischuk scored 2.5/3 to take sole second. As Grischuk put it: "A stick shoots once a year". Grischuk first beat his compatriot, Ian Nepomniachtchi, then US #1 Fabiano Caruana after a quick draw in Round 8. However, he wasn't so happy in the Round 7 post-game interview, referring multiple times to his last Grand Chess Tour Rapid and Blitz event in St. Louis almost a year ago, saying: "...In St. Louis, I won zero [games], so any number is better than that". Today's number of was wins was two, both very impressive, so Grischuk can definitely forget about St. Louis.

Grischuk's success was partly due to both Viswanathan Anand and Jan-Krzysztof Duda getting negative scores today. Anand missed a simple tactic in a double-edged middle game against Mamedyarov. See if you can find what Anand missed:

However, Mamedyarov later fell to some tactics himself against World Rapid Champion Daniil Dubov. In the final position, Mamedyarov resigned because of a study-like mate in 2. Can you spot it?

Here is the whole game, along with the rest of the games of the day.

Thanks for reading!