Wesley starts with a center pawn thrust!
Wesley goes for the classic strategy in open games: the central offensive with a pawn thrust!
You can always rely on a strategically sound player like Wesley to stick to the basics and play the best strategic moves. Whatever the format, blitz is a format where one sticks to the style that one plays best at.
The classification of the openings according to the nature of the pawn structure is a useful tool to understand the nature of the contest. So, we have a typical opening setup where White controls the centre by occupying it with pawns, while Black contest it pieces rather than pawns.
Just like the Kings Indian Defense in classical chess, or the Kings English variation of the English Opening, the game has early vibes of a semi-open or semi-closed opening setup. We can expect lots of tactics from such an opening, but the pieces being on different squares, we do not know what to expect now.
Especially with Black's bishop and queen staring down at the kingside, this gives Black an early chance to start an offense on the kingside.
With the pawn thrust, Hikaru shows his willingness to play dynamically from the beginning of the game. With this pawn thrust, Black aims to take advantage of the early weakening of White's kingside.
Early dramatics today!
Another puzzling move by Wesley!
This looks like a puzzling knight move by Wesley. By allowing a deadly check by Black's dark-colored bishop, White is already on the backfoot.
Having moved once already, the white monarch will not be allowed to execute the castling move on the board anymore. This makes the subsequent play interesting: Black may soon open up the center to attack the white king, who will be struck in the center for a long time.
White's idea behind the queen move aren't very clear. He could have concentrated on bringinghis other pieces out of the barracks, after all.
This just doesn't look like the best day for both the players. There wasn't any need for Nakamura to allow the exchange of queens. In order to exploit the early dislocation of the white king, it was taken for granted that Nakamura would pursue the stranded white king.
Wesley has turned a corner with his play after the exchange of queens and even stands slightly better in the endgame. After all, White has more space, and his twin towers in the center of the board cover the center very well.
Generally, this is the kind of position that Hikaru excels in playing: gradual deployment of pieces with a solid pawn structure. However, he has not been in his element in the game here today. With a passive pawn structure, which doesn't really challenge White's domination in the center, it has not been a solid performance by Hikaru so far.
An unfortunate decision by Wesley
By exchanging the dark-colored bishops, White creates a mild dark-colored weakness for himself in the position now. Also, in the long run, He allows the black pieces to develop better coordination among them. All in all, Hikaru has wrested the initiative now.
With both the players entering their final two minutes on the clock, this was a premature liquidation of pawns on the kingside by Hikaru
White could have tread slowly on both the flanks, where his rooks had all the time in the world to decide the further course of action.
Now, with the opening up of the kingside, White should be able to hold equality in the coming endgame stage of the game.
White fails to take advantage of Black's previous move. Now, Black will be able to achieve near equality in the position.
Blacks has achieved equality now, and there is no advantage for White to play for.
With three-fold repetition of the position, the players settle for a draw here.
The tone of the game started energetically in the beginning. But Hikaru changed the contours of the game early, settling for a queen exchange, which was not wrong but not called for.
The queenless middlegame soon liquidated further into an endgame, where Hikaru seemed to have slightly better chances thanks to his advanced pawns in the queenside, providing good 'hooks' at his disposal.
However, Nakamura surprisingly liquidated his pawns in the kingside, which led to further liquidation of the position and a peace treaty soon enough.
Perhaps Hikaru wanted to end the game early with a draw, looking forward to the second game, where he will have the white pieces and hence the initiative.
A surprising factor of today's game so far is that, Hikaru is taking his time to play his moves, which is quite unlike him. He is one of the quickest player in the world known for his fast moves, after all.
Hikaru heavily outweighs Wesley both in Freestyle rating and Freestyle Chess Tour ranking; hence, he can be considered the favorite to win this match. Also, after getting knocked out by Aronian - who is having one of his best performances in recent years here at Las Vegas - he outlasted Dominguez in straight games in the quarterfinals to reach this match stage.
Comparatively, Wesley has had a rough tournament so far. Having not qualified for the winner's bracket from the group stage, he defeated Sevian in the pre-quarterfinals and Abdusattorov in tiebreaks in the quarterfinals to have reached this stage. So, Nakamura has undoubtedly had a better run in the tournament so far too.
However, what stands out as an important detail of this current match is the time control. The combatants will be playing with a time control of 10 minutes plus 10 seconds each per game, which makes it difficult to decide on a clear favorite to win the match.
Based on that one, we might predict to have a good match in our hands today!