Chess (#1185)

The Chennai International was won by Vladimir Belous, who scored 8.5/10. The most stunning result was Vijayalakshmi Subbaraman's tie for second-third with Boris Grachev (both scored 8/10). Subbaraman is now a full GM-elect. But her rating (2351) is well below the threshold of 2500 for the title award.

Indian fans will now switch some attention to the Mount Litera School Open, Mumbai, which is sponsored by IIFL Private Wealth. This has a prize fund of Rs 15 lakh with an Open section and a separate under-13 tournament for juniors.

In Gibraltar, Viswanathan Anand, Maxime Vachier Lagrave and Hikaru Nakamura are among the top seeds at the Chess Festival, where Harikrishna, Surya Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, and other Indians are also playing.

In his first open game in 23 years, Anand drew a shocker with Hungarian IWM Vajda Szidonia (2357). This was a little reminiscent of Magnus Carlsen's start in Qatar where the world champion drew the Georgian IWM Nini Batsiasvili before going on to win the tournament.

The big news is being generated at the Tata Steel. Carlsen started with four draws but he's won four of the next six. After 10 rounds, Carlsen leads with 7/10. Behind him is Fabiano Caruana (6.5), who was pegged back by a loss to David Navara. Anish Giri, Wesley So, Ding Liren and Pavel Eljanov are tied in 3-6 places with 5.5 each.

In the Tata Challengers, Baskaran Adhiban leads with 7.5/10. Adhiban has beaten the second-placed Alexey Dreev (7) and third-placed Eltaj Safarli (7) but he's lost to Dutch youngster, Jorden Van Foreest (6). Every player in the Challengers has lost at least one game.

A leading Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa banning chess as "the work of Satan". It's yet to be seen how seriously this will be taken. Quite apart from targeting the livelihoods of chess players from that region, it could impact sponsorship if complied with. The Saudi Chess Association has responded with a letter that seems to say it will continue to function regardless.

The religious politics of the Kingdom are too murky to analyse in this space.

The diagram, WHITE TO PLAY (White: Wei,Yi Vs Black: Navara, Tata Steel 2016) illustrates Wei's talent for spectacular king hunts. White played 15.g5!! fxg5 16.Nxg5 Nd4 17.Qd1 hxg5 18.Bxg5 Be7 19.Be3 Bf6. In effect white is a piece or two up (Bc8, Ra8).

Play continued 20.h6 Re7 21.hxg7 Rxg7 22.Qh5 Be6 One deadly line is [23.Qh8+ Kf7 24.Rxg7+ Bxg7 25.Nxe5+! Bxe5 26.Rh7+ Kg6 27.Rh6+ Kf7 28.Qxe5] but white chose 23.Bh6 Bf7 24.Bxg7 Bxh5 25.Bxf6+ Kf8 26.Bxd8 Ne2+ 27.Kb1 Nxg1 28.Bxc7 (1-0). White will be a piece up soon.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player