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Valentina Gunina from Russia and Levon Aronian from Armenia are leading the blitz tournament after day1.
Compare to rapid tournament it's more dynamic part of the event. Players have 3 minutes for the whole game plus increment of 2 seconds after every move.
It means that good opening preparation and intuition are really important, because there is no time to calculate very deep lines during the game. Usually better chances has who can put opponent under pressure, some positions are easy to evaluate in classical chess, but in blitz they might be still unclear. In blitz we can see more blunders which are rare in classical chess, but it's definitely more interesting for the spectators.
Playing system is also different: double round-robin, it means players are meeting each opponent twice, playing both colours.
In women section Valentina Gunina from Russia (gold in rapid tournament) is uncompromising, so far she didn't make any draw.
8 wins and only 2 lost games gives her a half point advantage on Anna Muzychuk.
Third place is held by Hou Yifan (silver in rapid).
Levon Aronian from Armenia won 8 games, lost only one and made one draw.
He is clearly leading with 1 point advantage. With 7,5 Ian Nepomiachtchi of Russia is on the second place. Third in the crosstable is Shakhriyar Mamedyarov from Azerbaijan (6,5).
It's to early to make any prognosis, there are still many rounds to go, but of course we can expect that leaders will try to keep their positions on the top.
After next two days we will know the medalists.
Lets take a look on most interesting games of today:
Mamedyarov - Wang Hao
It looks like black is getting back the pawn and position should be equal.
White found a fantastic way to win the game:
34. Bxg6!! hxg6 35.Rxg6+ Kh8 36.Rh6+ Kh8 37. Rhh7!
Now black has no defence, white wants to take on e7, Rxf7 doesn't help because of exf7+ followed by fxe8. Black took the pawn:
37.... Rxe6 38.Rfg7+ Kf8 39. Nf5!
Black can't prevent Rh8 mate. 1-0
Wang Yue - Ponomariov
31... Rg5?! 32. Ne6 Bxe5+ 33.Kg2
Now black could have played 33...g3!! with winning position. But it's almost impossible to find such move with only one minute on the clock, especially when the queen and both rooks are hanging. The game continued with: 33... Qxe7 34.Nxg5 Qxg5 35.Bxe5 Qxe5 and after few moves they agreed for a draw.
Paehtz - Kosintseva
White found a nice mate attack:
21. Nxh6+! gxh6 22. Qxh6 Bf6 23. Rg3+ 1:0
Black can't escape. After 23... Kf7 white has winning move 24.Qh7+
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