Chess #1253

The Moscow Grand Prix ended in triumph for Ding Liren and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Ding scored 6 points from 9 rounds in the 18-player Swiss. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov scored 5.5 to take clear second. Third to ninth places were shared by a pack on 5. That group included Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura, Alexander Grischuk, Anish Giri, Peter Svidler, Hou Yifan and Teimour Radjabov. Pentala Harikrishna shared 10-12 with Boris Gelfand and Evegeny Tomashevsky (all 4.5).

Half-way into the GP circuit, “Shakh” leads with 280 points (clear second at Moscow and shared second at Sharjah), while Ding is second on 240. MVL and Grischuk share third-fourth spot (211 each). Each player gets to play three GPs. The top two in the four-tournament set will get Candidates spots (apart from the prize money in each event and overall). 

It looks as though this route to the Candidates is closed to Nakamura (141), Giri (71) and Svidler (71) among prior Candidates. They all have mathematical chances, only if they win big. Giri and Svidler have two GPs to play while Naka has one. Harikrishna is out   he must try to qualify via the World Cup. 

The Asian Continental Championships ran concurrently at Chengdu.  There were five World Cup slots at stake and Wang Hao (7 points/9 rounds) Bu Xiangzhi (7), Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (6.5), Yu Yangyi (6.5) and Batchuluun Tsegmed (6) slid in. China therefore took three slots. 

Baskaran Adhiban, Surya Ganguly and Wei Yi were unlucky in that, they all scored 6 but with lower tiebreak scores than the Mongolian GM, Batchuluun. The World Cup 2017 will be held in Tbilisi, Georgia in September. A total of five Indians are qualified, including Viswanathan Anand, Pentala Harikrishna, S P Sethuraman (Asian champion 2016), Deep Sengupta (fifth place at Asian 2016) and now Vidit Santosh Gujrathi.

On the distaff side, three slots were available for the women’s title cycle at the concurrent Asian Women’s Championship. Thi Kim Phung Vo (Vietnam) led throughout and won (7.5/9) while Guliskhan Nakhbayeva (7, Kazakhstan) and R Vaishali (6.5, India) took the other slots. The 16-year-old Vaishali has jumped a level with the tensions of Class X exams behind her   she also won the Asian Blitz Championship. Mary Ann Gomes, Swati Ghate and Padmini Rout (all scored 6) missed medals and qualification slots by 

a whisker. They did not do quite well enough.

At the Diagram, BLACK TO PLAY (White: Nguyen,Thi Thanh An Vs Black: Vaishali R, Asian Chps Chengdu 2017)  Vaishali has a winning position. How does she convert? 

Black played  30.— h5! (This targets weak dark squares near the king) 31.Nd1 h4 32.Kf1 Ne4! 33.Kg2 Ng3 34.Re1 Re3! 35.Nxe3 Rxe3 36.Qd1 Ne4! 37.Kf1 Qh2 38.fxe4 Rg3 (0-1).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player