FTX Crypto Cup: Caruana Jumps To 1st, Carlsen Still Struggling
Scoring 4/5 on the second day, GM Fabiano Caruana jumped to shared first place at the FTX Crypto Cup. The American GM shares the lead with 2022 FIDE Candidate GM Teimour Radjabov and GM Hikaru Nakamura. GM Magnus Carlsen, on the other hand, is in danger of early elimination.
The games of the FTX Crypto Cup preliminaries can be found here as part of our live events platform. IM Levy Rozman and IM Anna Rudolf are providing daily commentary on GM Hikaru Nakamura's Twitch channel starting at 8:00 a.m. Pacific / 17:00 Central Europe.
FTX Crypto Cup | Round 10 Standings
| # | Fed | Name | Rtg | Perf | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Pts |
| 1 | Caruana | 2820 | 2859 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 0 | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 6.5/10 | |||||||
| 2 | Radjabov | 2765 | 2860 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 6.5/10 | |||||||
| 3 | Nakamura | 2736 | 2862 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 6.5/10 | |||||||
| 4 | Giri | 2780 | 2827 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 1 | 6.0/10 | |||||||
| 5 | So | 2770 | 2839 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 6.0/10 | |||||||
| 6 | Vachier-Lagrave | 2760 | 2804 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 5.5/10 | |||||||
| 7 | Ding | 2799 | 2785 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 5.5/10 | |||||||
| 8 | Svidler | 2714 | 2801 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | 1 | 5.5/10 | |||||||
| 9 | Carlsen | 2847 | 2792 | ½ | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 0 | 1 | 1 | ½ | 5.5/10 | |||||||
| 10 | Mamedyarov | 2770 | 2774 | 1 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1 | ½ | 0 | ½ | 1 | 0 | 5.0/10 | |||||||
| 11 | Nepomniachtchi | 2792 | 2733 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 1 | 4.5/10 | |||||||
| 12 | Aronian | 2781 | 2743 | ½ | ½ | ½ | ½ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 4.5/10 | |||||||
| 13 | Firouzja | 2759 | 2696 | ½ | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | ½ | 1 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 4.0/10 | |||||||
| 14 | Dubov | 2710 | 2697 | ½ | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 0 | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 4.0/10 | |||||||
| 15 | Grischuk | 2776 | 2611 | ½ | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | ½ | 1 | 3.0/10 | |||||||
| 16 | Pichot | 2630 | 2470 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1.5/10 |
Caruana hadn't played serious online chess for half a year but only needed a day to warm up. On an excellent second day, he drew two games and won three, including against two of his rivals at the recent Candidates: GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and GM Anish Giri.
Nepo was beaten in a fairly straightforward game. Caruana managed to avoid the Grunfeld by turning it into a Pirc. Then he used ideas from the King's Indian:
Also in his game with Giri, Caruana ended with a killer of a passed d-pawn. It's interesting to see how Giri is trying all kinds of different openings (leftovers from the Candidates prep?), and he was doing OK in the opening:
Co-leader Radjabov also beat Nepomniachtchi, who finds himself in 11th place with five rounds to go. A pawn sacrifice in the opening backfired:
GM Alireza Firouzja, the youngest player in the field, had started with a solid plus-one on the first day, but then he had a bad second day with three losses. Tailender GM Alan Pichot scored his only victory so far against the Iranian prodigy with an early Nxf7. What decided the game was Firouzja self-trapping his queen:
And what about the world champion? Well, after his "awful" first day, he only did slightly better with two wins and one loss. After starting his first game with 1.b4 against Giri (a draw), he tried 1.b3 in the next. With a bit of help from his opponent, that went pretty well:
Carlsen ended the day with an unnecessary loss, where he played a few bad moves in a row in an endgame against GM Levon Aronian. The Tour leader was disgusted with himself and described his play afterward as a "self-inflicted wound."
All Games Day 2
The FTX Crypto Cup runs May 23-31 on chess24. The preliminary phase is a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advance to a six-day knockout that consists of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advance to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize fund is $220,000 with a bonus of 2.18 Bitcoin.
Previous report:
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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