Chess (#1113)

Chess players often post dramatic things on Twitter. For example, there are ingenious variations on ice-bucket challenges involving fast deployment of umbrellas and heroic efforts to drink beer without spillage while being inundated. Last Sunday, Magnus Carlsen tweeted a pic captioned "It has been a pleasure signing autographs for the fans in St Louis. After the tournament I found the time for 1 more". This showed him signing the world title contract.

So the title match is on. It has also been clarified that there won't be a problem with European Union sanctions. Sports events like the chess world title match and the F1 race scheduled for Sochi are exempted.

The Sinquefield Cup saw Fabiano Caruana setting all sorts of records with his score of 8.5 from 10. He performed at 3100-plus and gained 35 rating points. It could have been 9.5, if he had not missed clear wins against Hikaru Nakamura and Carlsen. Caruana missed qualifying for the Candidates by a whisker and the new world #2 is obviously a credible future challenger. He has a pretty decent head-to-head record as well with 4 wins and 5 losses.

The Sinquefield was Carlsen's last event before the title match. He logged second place with 5.5. Veselin Topalov got a 50 per cent score (5). Levon Aronian (4), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (4) and Nakamura (3) had minus scores. Anand plays at Bilbao in an event starting this weekend in his last "tune-up".

Meanwhile, Hou Yifan confirmed her dominance of the women's game. She tied for first-second at at the Sharjah GP with Ju Wenjun. Both scored 8.5 from 11 with Ju ahead on tiebreak (NB: Ju/ Hou are their family names Chinese style) . Harika tied for 3-6 on tiebreak with 6.5 alongside Anna Ushenina, Batchimeg Tuvshintugs and Zhao Zong-Yuan. Humpy Koneru was seventh.

Hou is the reigning world champion and she's won the GP series, with Humpy second. The format for the women's title cycle is as follows: a 64-player KO will be won by a "world champion" who must play Yifan. However the KO is reportedly in trouble, with no venue or sponsors.

THE DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY (Caruana Vs Aronian St Louis, 2014), illustrates Caruana's imagination and courage. He found an unusual decoy sacrifice on a5 ina position where engines prefer 29. h4. 29.Na5!? Nxa5 30.Nxe5! Nb7 31.Nxg6 Qd8 32.e5 Rf5 33.f4 c5 White clearly thinks he has enough. The computers agree.

Play continued 34.Nh4 Rh5 35.Nf3 Kh7 36.Qg4 Rhf5 37.Nh4 Kh8 38.Nxf5 Rxf5 [39.Qg6 Qe7 40.g4 Rf8 41.f5 Qe8 42.Qxe8 Rxe8 43.f6 Bf8 44.f7 Re7 45.Rf6 Nb6 46.Bxh6 Nd7 47.Ref1! cxb4 Ruthless technique. If 47...Nxf6 48.Bxf8 Rxf7 49.Rxf6 wins. The game ended 48.axb4 Bxh6 49.Rxh6+ Kg7 50.Rh5 (1-0).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player