The Chess Mind

The first two games of the Anand-Karpov rapid match are now history, and they've gone about as one would expect: Anand won with White, then drew with Black. Games 3 & 4 will be on Monday. (The games can be replayed here.)

Interestingly, both Anand and Karpov are not only past (and in Anand's case, present) world champions, they are also former world junior champions as well. Whether any of this year's world junior participants will have a career of that sort is hard to say, but the inside track to at least win the junior title is currently held by Sergei Zhigalko, who defeated Michal Olszewki with Black and now has 8.5/10. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave only managed to draw, so he's half a point back, and Eduardo Iturrizaga is another half point back at 7.5. Another half point back are six other players, including Americans Ray Robson and Alex Lenderman, who both won their games.

Tomorrow's top pairings look like this:

Zhigalko (8.5) - Andreikin (7)
Vachier-Lagrave (8) - Lenderman 7
Grigorian (7) - Iturrizaga (7.5)
Robson (7) - Popov (7)
Margvelashvili (7) - Rodshtein (6.5)

(Full round 10 results here; full pairings for round 11 here.)