Chess (#1166)

The World Cup is throwing up its usual mixture of high drama, excellent play and low blunders. When the tension ratchets up in accelerated  control tiebreakers, errors are pretty much guaranteed. As many as 15 of the 32 second round matches went into tiebreaks. This is hardly surprising.

In terms of Elo, a rating difference of 100 points translates into an expectancy of about 55 per cent for the higher rated player. In a two-game mini match, that is a likely split of 1.1 - 0.9 between two players with an appreciable rating difference. Rounding off the points, a tie break will always be likely between players with 100 Elo differences. Tiebreakers are odds-on when two evenly rated guys play two game mini matches.

Once a match goes into rapid and blitz, utterly random results are possible. It would be a brave punter who predicted the semi-finalists or even quarterfinalists. Most of the big guns have pulled through to Round 3 but Boris Gelfand and Rustam Kasimdzhanov were two former world cup  winners, who went out in round 1. The Chilean prodigy, Henriquez Villagra, was responsible for ousting Gelfand who inexplicably accepted a draw in a totally won position in one game before he went down in "extra time".  

Only one Indian, SP Sethuraman, has survived till Round 3 - he beat Pendyala Harikrishna in Round 2 in an unfortunate pairing. Alexander Grischuk had to fight through six extra games in the first round.  Michael Adams and Sergei Karjakin both had to win on demand in Game 2, second round, to force tiebreaks after losing game one. Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov and Fabiano Caruana are among those who have not had to play "extras" yet.

Postscript: The Koneru Humpy affair has thankfully, ended. The Fide Ethics Commission is reported to have dismissed the Delhi Chess Association's complaint against the World #2. She withdrew from the Commonwealth Championships in June after suffering a loss on time because, according to her (and other players) , the arbiter in the hall ambiguously described the control time. Humpy publicly criticised the organisers in strong terms while accepting that the loss was fair. While dismissing the complaint, the Commission has also requested Humpy to exercise more restraint if she is in such a situation in future.

There is a wonderful  combination at the DIAGRAM, White to play (White: Ding,Liren Vs Black: Inarkiev,Ernesto, World Cup 2015]  28.Qh6! Qxe4 29.Rh3 Ne7 Black avoided 29...gxf4 30.Rxf4! Qb1+ 31.Rf1 Qe4 32.Rh4! Qd3 33.Bc4! Qc2 34.Ba2!! and now Bb1 is an unstoppable threat.

30.Bc2! Qxc2 31.Nd3 Black may try 31.-Qxd3 but he preferred a loss via 31...Kg8 32.Qxh7+ Kf7 33.Ne5+ Ke6 34.Qxc2 fxe5 35.Rh6+ Kd7 36.Rxf8 Rxf8 37.dxe5 Ne6 38.Rf6 Re8 39.Qh7 (1-0).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player