The 2022 World Open Rapid Chess Championship is played from 26-28th December at the Baluan Sholak Sports Palace in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Championship format is 13-rounds Swiss with a time control of 15 minutes + 10 seconds and the event includes most of the world’s top players.
The first day of the event featured five rounds, and Hikaru Nakamura scores 3.5 points tying for 15th place. Nakamura slipped already in Round 1 against Amin Tabatabaei. It looked that Tabatabaei goes straight-forward to a victory but Hikaru escaped into a draw. It was a similar scenario for the American in the second round. Hikaru played against Vladislav Kovalev and drew a slightly worse position. The third and the fourth game looked easy as Nakamura improved the advantage from a very early stage of the game, eventually scoring in both. It was a tense fight in the last game of the day which eventually finished in a draw, putting Nakamura on 3.5/5 and 15th-38th shared position.
Hikaru Nakamura’s Day 1 recap: “Dear YouTube, Kazakhstan is Cold“:
