CHESS#1279

Fabiano Caruana won the London Classic and Magnus Carlsen won the overall Grand Chess Tour. Only Maxime Vachier-Lagrave could have caught Carlsen and MVL had to take clear first.

Caruana tied with Ian Nepomniachtchi (both 6 /9). MVL, Carlsen and Wesley So shared 3rd-5th (all 5/9). "Don Fabiano" won a tiebreak blitz match against Nepo. Incidentally, Caruana is now world #2 and blitz #11 — a year ago, he was outside the top 100 in blitz. 

Both leaders played excellent chess. The world champion was visibly ill and in poor form, losing to Nepomniachtchi with a blunder, drawing a dead-lost position against Hikaru Nakamura and winning another dead-lost position against Michael Adams. Viswanathan Anand, who celebrated his 48th birthday in London, was also in terrible form. He lost three games and shared last.

Carlsen takes the GCT overall with wins in Paris and Lieven, second at the Sinquefield and shared third  here. That's worth just under $250,000. MVL picked up $207,000 for his second place. Anand took $75,000 even though he trailed. 

In Ahmedabad, "India Green" is among the top-seeds at the Under-16 Olympiad. The team is Aryan Chopra (the sole GM in the event), Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, P Iniyan and Vaishali. As hosts, India plays several teams. "Green" lost to Russia in Round 4 after three match wins and drew Iran 2-2 in Round 5. 

 More on the Alphazero match. As Stockfish programmer, Tord Romstad, pointed out, SF has a time management algorithm. The engine takes more time to assess positions it thinks critical. Also, all engines use "hashtables" written into RAM to store analysed positions. This way, they save time (and calculate deeper if the same position must be analysed again). So, the more RAM, the better. The time control was 1 minute/move, an unusual control which obviates SF's time-management algorithm and the RAM allocated was a pathetic 1Gb. It would be great if Deep Mind published all 100 games with logs. 

The Diagram, White to Play (White: AlphaZero Vs Black: Stockfish8 Game 3) is another example of AI domination. Black is two pawns up with the Qh8 almost kaput. Most engines think it's about equal.
 

Zero played 47. Rxc5! bxc5 48. Qh4! Rde8 49. Rf6! Black is dead though the engines take a while realising this. Key factors: relative space control and f7. Black defended 49.-- Rf8 [Groveling with 49.-- Kf8 50. Qf4 Qg8 51. Qc7 d5 52. Qxc5 is as bad. Also 49. --Re6 50. Bxe6 dxe6 51.g4 is similar. ] 

The game ended with 50. Qf4 a5 51. g4 d5 52. Bxd5 Rd7 53. Bc4 a4 54. g5 a3 55. Qf3 Rc7 56. Qxa3 Qxf6. Desperation or else, white wins with a4-5-6 etc.]. 57. gxf6 Rfc8 58. Qd3 Rf8 59. Qd6 Rfc8 60. a4 (1-0). 
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player