Chess (#1131)

The Masters group at the Tata Steel in Wijk aan Zee is led by the enigmatic Ukrainian genius, Vassily Ivanchuk, with 4 points after 5 rounds. Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Ding Liren share second with 3.5 each. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri share 4th-6th with 3 points each. There have been high decision ratios and few short draws. Carlsen and Caruana have each suffered a loss, to Wojtaszek. Oddly enough, both world champion and #2 played the Leningrad Dutch.

Ivanchuk has played superb chess after he received a gift in the first round when Baadur Jobava exchanged from a dead-equal rook endgame into a dead-lost pawn endgame. Liren started badly with a loss but then pulled into second place with a hat-trick of wins.

Carlsen suffered his first loss since defending the world title, to the Polish GM who is Viswanathan Anand's second. He has since pulled back, winning against Loek van Wely and Levon Aronian. The Armenian GM is the defending champion but he has been in terrible form since the Candidates in 2013. He has a minus score and he lost badly to Carlsen making an elementary miscalculation.

In the Challengers (which is itself a strong event), David Navara, Wei Yi and Erwin l'Ami are tied for top spot with 3.5 each. The winner traditionally gets entry to the next year's masters (in addition to prize money). However, the Wijk aan Zee prize money is always less than the appearance fees paid to the big stars. This is traditional at several older tournaments. It's a hangover from when Soviet players had to turn over the lion's share of prize-money to the USSR Chess Federation but they could pocket fees.

In contrast, the Parasvnath Open at Delhi offers generous prize money and low appearance fees. There is roughly $49,000 in prize money spread across three sections. The 13th Edition has over 1,200 players, with 22 GMs and 27 IM in the top section with 180 players. Going into the tenth and last round, Mikhail Mozharov leads with 7.5 from 9 ahead of Alberto David, Ivan Popov, Huy Van Nguyen, Deepan Chakravarthy and Andrey Baryshpolets who all have 7. C R G Krishna, Aniruddha Deshpande, Abhishek Kelkar and Ravi Teja have all logged IM norms.

THE DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY, (White: Ivanchuk Vs Black: Vachier Lagrave, Tata Steel Group A 2015) is a clinical finish. MVL is an acknowledged Sicilian Najdorf expert. But Ivanchuk produced a novelty on move 15. black has just made an error in a poor position.

White finished with 29.Bf2! Bxc4 30.Nb5 Qc6 31.Bxa7+ Ka8 32.Bxc4 Qxc4 33.Bb6 (1-0). A possible line is 33.-Rd7 34. g3 Ng6 35. b3 Qc6 36. Bxa5 and white picks up multiple pawns.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player