Chess (#1184)

The Delhi Open ended in a three-way tie with Ivan Popov, Attila Czebe and Valeriy Neverov all scoring 8/10. However, Popov who has started with 7/7, had done enough to ensure he had the best tiebreak, despite his final round loss to Neverov. The top ten finishers included GM Lalith Babu, IM Sayantan Das and GM Vaibhav Suri. Das will be the happiest for he scored his second GM norm. Many of the participants have moved onto Chennai for the international open there.

The Tata Steel is hotting up. After four rounds, Fabiano Caruana leads the masters, with 3/4 while Wesley So, Hou Yifan, Sergei Karjakin, Pavel Eljanov and Ding Liren are all at 2.5. Hou won a lovely game against David Navara in Rd 4 with a sequence of delicate moves backing up an exchange sac. The world champion, Magnus Carlsen, is stuck at 50 per cent with four draws. The prodigious Wei Yi won the Challengers in 2015 and he's also stuck on 2/4 in the Masters with four draws including a half-point gleaned in a long-awaited clash with Carlsen.

In the Challengers, Alexey Dreev and Baskaran Adhiban share the lead with 4.5/ 5 (and extra round has been played). Apart from cash, the big reward for the winner of the second section is an invite to the Masters of the subsequent year. The Challengers is traditionally a very high decision affair and this edition has maintained that tradition.

In the Masters, Caruana was within inches of going 3.5/5 before he messed up and drew a winning endgame versus Anish Giri. That was Giri's second stroke of luck because Navara had failed to finish off a possible masterpiece after finding a lovely breakthrough with a rook sacrifice. There have been other strange errors - for example, Shakhriyar Mamedaryov hung a rook in a totally won position against Eljanov.

The diagram, WHITE TO PLAY, illustrates how good Hou is at converting when there is a tactical solution. (White: Hou,Yifan Vs Black: Navara, David, Tata Steel Chess Masters).

She played 20.Rc6 Rc8?! Black can grovel with Bf7. This move sets a trap and Hou "falls" for it with 21.Rxe6 Bf7 22.Rd6 Be7. Rook trapped. 23.Bd3! Bxd6 24.Bxf5+ Kh8. Now Black has defensive chances with [25. ed6 Rg8]

But white has a quiet intermezzo 25.Qg4! Rc7 26.Qh3 h5 27.exd6 Ra7. Two pawns for the exchange plus bishop pair, king exposure means that white is probably winning anyway. But the finish is very accurate.

28.Be6 Nf6 29.f5 Qxd6 30.Bf4 Qd8 31.Be5 Bg8 32.Qxh5+ Rh7 33.Qg5 Qe7. Now white just activates the Kt with 34.Nc1! Qg7 35.Qxg7+ Rxg7 36.Nd3 Rg4 37.Nf4 Kh7 38.h3! Rg3 39.Ng6 Rxh3+ 40.Kg2 (1-0). White wins a lot of material.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player