The world number one continued to play in imperious form throughout the day, eking out a half-point advantage over his closest rivals while some of the biggest name in the online chess community continued to falter.
The World Rapid Championship is played in a 15+10 time format, meaning fifteen minutes of starting time with ten seconds added per move. After the three-day Rapid tournament is concluded, the World Blitz Championship follows in the same venue, which is a two-day affair with even faster time controls.
Carlsen is now alone on the top in the open section, having ended the second day of play with 7.5 points out of 9. After defeating his teammate and world championship preparation assistant Jorden Van Foreest, he drew with Vladimir Fedoseev and Daniil Dubov before defeating Georgian GM Giga Quparadze. Scoring three points out of the four on offer was enough to garner a half-point lead over the rest of the field with four rounds still to be played on the final day.
Lower down the pairings, Hikaru Nakamura played five draws in a row to fall out of medal contention and Hans Niemann missed an incredible opportunity to surge onto the top boards after both he and his opponents overlooked a checkmating combination.
Niemann went on to draw the game and lost in the following round, which means now Fabiano Caruana, currently in tenth place and a whole point behind Carlsen, is the best-performing American player so far at the tournament.
Carlsen’s first opponent on the final day will be Vincent Keymer. The 18-year-old German has performed extremely well on the second day, defeating Fabiano Caruana, Yu Yangyi, and Arjun Erigaisi before drawing with Vladimir Fedoseev to close out his session.
