Held in the spectacularly beautiful surroundings of the Grootbos Private Natural Reserve, the final leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam got underway on Monday. It is the fifth and last tournament of the Tour this year, after victories for Vincent Keymer in Weissenhaus, Magnus Carlsen in both Paris and at the Grenke Open, and then Levon Aronian in Las Vegas.

The first day of play here in South Africa consisted of a round-robin among the eight participants. All seven rounds were held on a single day, possible thanks to a 10+5 time control. As always, before each round a new position was randomly picked and players got 10 minutes to analyze it until the start of every new round.

The tournament started with a bang as FIDE World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov started his 20th birthday celebration with a win against none other than Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian superstar, who leads the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam before the finals, once again seemed rusty from the beginning, but this time it only lasted one round.

Another moment from that very first round begs to be mentioned here as Grenke Open runner-up Parham Maghsoodloo had Grand Chess Tour winner Fabiano Caruana on the ropes, but in just two moves the position changed from winning for White to winning for Black. It was a painful start for Maghsoodloo, who would somehow continue the day completely luckless.

Whereas it sometimes took longer in earlier events, this time Carlsen got back to his usual form as early as the second round. Well, so it seemed!

As it turned out, Carlsen had been under the weather the day before and still wasn’t feeling great on Monday. “It’s fun to play Freestyle and to get some fresh positions but I am quite aware that I am just not able to think anything close to as clearly as I need on a day like this,” he said after all games were over. “That’s just the way it is in the end. I think the fact that I scored as well as I did is a bit of a miracle. I just didn’t feel like I was much in control in any games today. I’m glad to be done with the day and then try and recover as well as possible for the next few days.”

In a middlegame position with both sides having castled queenside, Carlsen demonstrated that his opponent lacked coordination among his pieces. With just a few powerful moves, Carlsen maneuvered his opponent, currently his biggest rival in the overall Grand Slam standings, into a losing position. Could it be that Carlsen was playing better today than he himself felt he was?

After also convincingly beating Weissenhaus winner and world number four Vincent Keymer, Carlsen won his third consecutive game in round four. The always spicy clash with Hans Niemann was a bit of a one-sided affair as Carlsen played with more space and then got a winning advantage following a strategic mistake from his opponent.

Arjun Erigaisi was the last player to arrive in South Africa, traveling straight from Jerusalem, Israel, where he won a rapid tournament just a few days ago by beating the legendary Vishy Anand in the final. Arjun beat another world champion in round five in Grootbos, outplaying Carlsen with the white pieces:

Sindarov has little to prove after his tremendous World Cup victory last month — and also after doing quite well at the first leg of the Grand Slam in February in Weissenhaus. Therefore, it’s not that much of a surprise anymore that he topped the round-robin standings. He joined Aronian in the lead in round five with a very convincing win against Caruana with the black pieces. Castling kingside was probably not a great choice by the American player, who suffered from a lack of space and a weakened kingside.

Caruana definitely seemed rusty today, after he hadn’t been sitting behind a chess board for a month. “I played terribly,” he said. “It was very bad. I can’t say that I found my footing today at all.”

Sindarov continued in impressive manner as he grabbed the sole lead in round six with a good win against Niemann, his third win in a row.

Soon after, Aronian split the point with Carlsen and eventually, the Las Vegas winner would come in second place today. “Things worked out; I got lucky in some games… So far, so good,” he said. “This day doesn’t really decide much so that’s why I was relaxed and tomorrow is where the hard work starts.”

Niemann scored a nice win in the final round against Keymer:

Maghsoodloo will want to forget this day as soon as possible as he ended up losing all his games. Luckily for him, everything is still open, and he will play the quarterfinals like everyone else. The second day of play once again starts at 1 p.m. local time. More tomorrow!