Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz: Gukesh slips to sixth after poor start in blitz

GM Gukesh Dommaraju had a poor start to the blitz program, having won just one game and scored only three points from the nine blitz games at Saint Louis Rapid  & Blitz 2025 in the USA, on Thursday.

This result pushed Gukesh back to joint sixth position alongside Liem Le of Vietnam with 13 points out of 18 games, trailing behind the top three by a big margin of 3.5 points.

Gukesh had a decent start to the Blitz round, playing two consecutive draws, firstly with the Current Leader Levon Aronian and then Sam Shankland of the USA in the 11th round.

But after that, he lost a bit of momentum and lost two consecutive games against Wesley So of the USA and Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan.

He registered his first win of the blitz tournament against Leinier Dominguez after converting an equal position in the final minutes, and then a solid draw against Fabiano Caruana of the USA.

Gukesh failed to build up from this small momentum and lost two back-to-back games against Liem and then Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France to drop further back in the standings.

With just one more day of competition left, having nine more Blitz Games, Gukesh will be hoping to end the tournament on high and gather some crucial tour points from the fourth leg of the Grand Chess Tour.