Chess (#1135)

Another super tournament, another splendid performance by Magnus Carlsen who won the Grenke Classic, Baden-Baden, albeit by the most difficult route. The world champion shrugged off a third round loss against Arkadij Naiditsch to log successive wins against Viswanathan Anand and David Baramidze. That was enough to help him tie Naiditsch - both had 4.5 from 7 with the German player unbeaten.

The last round proved hair-raising. Naiditsch drew with Levon Aronian without much fuss or bother. Carlsen missed winning chances against Étienne Bacrot where a win would have clinched the tournament. Fabiano Caruana missed a win against Baramidze -the full point would have enabled him to tie Naiditsch and Carlsen.

After that, Naiditsch and Carlsen played a tie-breaker blitz match. It should have been a complete mismatch given the rating differential between Carlsen 2865, and Naiditsch 2706 and the fact that Carlsen is the world blitz champion. But the German GM presents some sort of stylistic challenge for Carlsen. Game one went to Carlsen, game two went to Naiditsch, followed by two draws.

So it boiled down to an Armageddon game where Carlsen had white, and the extra minute, while black had the draw odds. Finally Carlsen put it across in an extremely error filled game.  Apart from Naiditsch, who started seeded #7 in a field of 8, Michael Adams and Caruana managed to score 4. Caruana dropped to #3 in the ratings with Alexander Grischuk moving up to #2.

Aronian managed 50 per cent and he edged out of the top ten, dropping to #11. Anand had a horrible tournament and dropped to #9 with blunders marring games against Carlsen, Aronian and Adams. Anand lost all three games from positions where a win against Aronian, and two draws would have been the expected results.

Caruana, Anand, Aronian join Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura and Sergey Karjakin at the Zurich Chess Festival which starts this weekend with a blitz, followed by a classical round robin, followed by a rapid. The blitz has prize money and decides pairings. The classical and rapid will be rated for an overall championship, with the classical section being weighted more highly.

The Moscow Open coincided with the Grenke and Ernesto Inarkiev won with 8/9 ahead of Anton Korobov second, with the best tiebreak among a quartet that scored 7 points.

At the diagram (Carlsen Vs Adams, GRENKE 2015 Baden-Baden), white is better and he takes over with 34.Rb5 Bc7 Holding with 34.-- Qc8? 35. a6 is not an option. 35.Rxb7 Qa8?  White "should" win after 35...Bxa5 36.Rb8 Bd8 37.Bh4 Rd7 but how? Even the engines can't find a killer.

But now it becomes a technical task with 36.Rb5 Re8 37.Qd5 Qxd5 38.Rxd5 Rb8

39.Bg3 g6 40.h4 Ra8 41.Be1 and (1-0) in 64 moves.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player