Chess (#1205)

The Grand Chess Tour, Paris was a four-day multi-course affair. It started with a rapid round robin, followed by a blitz double-round robin. The rapid score was doubled for the count. As always, the hot favourite was the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. But for once, Carlsen failed. Hikaru Nakamura won, with Carlsen second.

Nakamura finished with 7/9 in the Rapids, followed by Carlsen on 6.5 and Wesley So, third with 5.5. The time control was 25 minutes with a 10 second increment. Unbelievably, despite the increment, Carlsen lost his first game on time to So, when he was a full queen ahead in the final position.  

Nakamura played stable chess on the whole, grinding out wins against the bottom half and holding the top half (including Carlsen) to draws. He was lucky when Fabiano Caruana dumped a winning position and lost in the last round. Instead, a loss for Nakamura would have seen Carlsen edging ahead.  

The blitz (five minutes plus 2 seconds increment) started better for Carlsen, who led 7/9 after the first half, with Nakamura on 6.5. The last round of the first set ended in dramatic fashion when Carlsen won a lost game against Nakamura.

The second half saw Carlsen falter with losses against Levon Aronian and Caruana, while Nakamura absorbed a loss against Maxime Vachier-Largave and soldiered on.  Then Veselin Topalov dropped a stupid forfeit against Nakamura. The Bulgarian GM promoted a pawn and pressed his clock without stating which piece he wanted. Nakamura was losing but rightly claimed  forfeit.

In the round of 16, Topalov did Nakamura another favour by beating Carlsen, while Nakamura beat Laurent Fressinet to take an unassailable overall lead of 2.5 points. The last round saw Carlsen beating Nakamura for the umpteenth time. But it didn’t make a difference anymore.

The blitz ended with Nakamura and Carlsen tied on 11.5/ 18 , with Vachier-Largave (11) third. The combined score saw Nakamura (25.5), Carlsen (24.5), Vachier-Largave (22), So (19.5). The first place was worth $37,500 and second, $30,000 and of course, they all get overall GCT points. The video coverage was pretty good despite the special difficulties of covering high-speed games.

Meanwhile, Viswanathan Anand won the Cuidad DeLeon matchup for the umpteenth (well, ninth) time. He beat the prodigy, Wei Yi 2.5-1.5 in a four game rapid final where both players missed chances. There are some new revelations about Kirsan Illyumzhinov in the Panama Papers that will require more space to discuss.

THE DIAGRAM (White: So Vs Black: Carlsen, GCT Paris Blitz), BLACK TO PLAY. White “should” be winning with d3 & e8 hanging but 1. — Qxd1+ 2. Bxd1 Re1+ 3. Kg2 Bf1+ (0-1) Either 4. Kf3 Ne5+ or 4. Kg1 Bh3+ is finish.
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player