CHESS#1270

Levon Aronian won the World Cup, beating Ding Liren in a tiebreaker. Three of the four classical games were drawn without much excitement. Aronian had chances to win Game #2 where he had failed to negotiate a delicate minor piece ending in extreme time pressure. Aronian crashed through in the first rapid tiebreaker and pulled off a swindle to win the second tiebreak from a dubious position.

Everyone except perhaps Magnus Carlsen will be happy that the Armenian GM gets a crack at the Candidates while all of China must be celebrating Ding’s ascendancy.

The top two finishers in the Grand Prix have slots. There are four “possibles” in Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Alexander Grischuk, Teimour Radjabov and Maxime Vachier Lagrave. The last two would have to do very well in their final GP event while “Shakh” and Grischuk have finished their GP quota.  

Two more slots are by highest Elo averaged across the 2017 monthly lists. Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Vladimir Kramnik have the best Elo averages through January to September. Finally there’s a wild-card for the organiser (Agon) — this player must have hit 2725 or more sometime in 2017.  

The Isle of Man Open (IoM) is one of the events that could influence Candidate qualifications. IoM features a decent prize list with first at £50,000. Carlsen, Kramnik and Caruana are playing, along with Hikaru Nakamura. Viswanathan Anand leads a large Indian contingent including Vidit Gujrathi, Baskaran Adhiban, S P Sethuraman, Harika Dronavalli and the prodigies, Nihal Sarin, Aravindh Chithambaram and R Praggnanandhaa.

IoM featured an unusual innovation. The first round pairings were random. Among other weird match-ups, Caruana met Kramnik in round 1 and the American won. Kramnik subsequently blew a winning position to lose to 65-year-old James Tarjan. After five rounds, Carlsen (4.5 points) shared the lead with Pavel Eljanov (4.5). Eleven players including Vidit and IM Harsha Bharathakoti shared 3-13 with four each.

In the World Youth Championships in Montevideo (Uruguay), D Jishita won the Under-14 Girls, Arjun Ergiasi took silver in U-14 Open, while Sakshi Chitlange took silver in the U-18 girls.

The Diagram, WHITE TO PLAY (White: Aronian Vs Black: Ding, Tiebreak Game 1, Tbilisi, World Cup 2017) is where complications started.  White has the safe 19. Re2. But he played 19.Ng6! Qd2 20.Ne7+ Kg7 (20. — Kh8 21 Qf3 Qf4 22. Qa3 Bxe1 23. Nd5! is strong) and now 21.Qb3 Qf4. There’s a simple win with 22. Ngf5+ Bxf5 23. Nxf5+ Kh8 24. Re7. But play continued 22.Rd1  Bb6 23.Ngf5+ Bxf5 24.Nxf5+ Kh8 25.g3 Qg4 26.Nxh6 Qxh5 27.Kg2! d3 28.Qc3! Kg7 29.Nf5+ Kg6 30.Rh1 (1-0).
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player