St. Louis Rapid and Blitz: Gukesh ends tied 6th; Aronian wins title

World champion GM D Gukesh finished tied sixth as Levon Aronian of USA convincingly won the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz that concluded here.

Gukesh raised visions of a great comeback on the final day of the event as he raced to 3.5 points from his first four games.

Conceding a draw to Aronian in the first game, the Indian accounted for Americans Shankland, Wesley So and Uzbek Grandmaster Nodirbek Abdusattorov before losing steam.

In the last five games, Gukesh drew three and lost two games to end his overall campaign on 18 points.

Aronian started the day with two points lead and won the event two rounds to spare scoring 24.5 points. Fabiano Caruana of United States finished a distant second on 21.5 points, a half point more than the French Maxime Vachier-Lagrave who finished third.

Abdusattorov ended fourth on 20.5 while Wesley So finished on 19 to finish fifth ahead of Gukesh and Liem Le Quang of Vietnam.

For Aronian, this was the second back-to-back title after the 42 years old had won the Freestyle Grand slam at Las Vegas also quite easily in the end. The winner got USD 40,000 out of a total pool of USD 175,000.

Gukesh will now train his sights for the next event that starts in just two days. The Sinquefield cup is the last event before the finals of the Grand Chess tour and Gukesh will be joined by compatriot R Praggnanandhaa for the event.

It will be time to change gears as the Sinquefield cup will be played under Classical chess rules - the forte of Gukesh.