Chess (#1119)

The Open section of the World Juniors saw a tight finish. Lu Shanglei took the title with a last-round win. He scored 10/13 (+7,=6) with a rating performance of 2726. There was a three-way tie on 9.5 between Wei Yi, Vladimir Fedoseev and Jan-Krzysztof Duda with the latter fourth on a tie-break.

Aleksandra Goryachkina of Russia retained the title of World Girl's champion - a feat accomplished only once before in 1989 and 1990, by Ketina Kachiani (now Kachiani-Gersinska) of then USSR and Georgia. The 16-year-old Goryachkina scored 11 from 13, and won with a round to spare. Khademalsharieh Sarasadat, the talented Iranian, logged silver while Ann Chumpitaz of Peru took third with 9.5 points each. Unfortunately there were no medals for the home nation. Padmini Rout (9) and Vidit Gujrathi (9) were the best performers.

The Tashkent Grand Prix opened with top seed Fabiano Caruana suffering a first round loss to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Dmitry Andreikin also won in the first round as did Hikaru Nakamura, against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Baadur Jobava respectively. The field also includes Anish Giri, Boris Gelfand, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, Dmitry Jakovenko, Teimour Radjabov and Sergey Karjakin. Unfortunately, the broadcast arrangements are below par for this extremely strong event.

Giri and Jobava came straight from matches at the Unive chess festival in Hoogeveen. Giri beat Alexei Shirov 4.5-1.5, a sign of how strong the Dutch 20-year-old (who has a Russian mother and Nepalese father) has grown in the last six months. Jobava won by a similar margin against ageing legend Jan Timman.

Viswanathan Anand took a little time off from preparation to play the Corsica Rapid. Yifan Hou faces Sergei Fedorchuk in the Corsica final after the Russian GM pulled ff a big upset and knocked out Anand. The former world champion seemed to be in good form until he ran into an opening surprise.

The DIAGRAM, BLACK TO PLAY (Indjic Vs Lu,Shanglei World Juniors, Pune 2014) is from the key last round game Shanglei won to take the world Junior title. Black got a terrible opening but white played inaccurately to let him back into the game.

20...Be8! Perhaps white should just go 21. O-O-O Rxf4 and look for the attack but he played 21.Qc1 Ng3! Now if 22.Rg1 Qh4 So 22.Rh2 g5! 23.Bd3 Rxf4 24.Qd2 Ba4! Black's winning now. The white K is trapped in the centre and Ra8 coming into play.

White tried the desperate 25.b3 Raf8! 26.Qe3. Obviously not 26.bxa4 Rf1+ 27.Bxf1 Rxf1# nor 26.0-0-0 Rf2 with Qa3+ on. But Qe3 is just as ineffectual after 26...Nf1! 27.Qg1 Nxh2 28.Qxh2 Qc7! This prevents Rc1 with a threat of Rxd4. After 29.Kd2 Rf2+ 30.Be2 Rxe2+ 31.Kxe2 Qxc3 (0-1). The threats include Qxa1, Bb5+ etc.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player