CHESS#1282

The Blitz section of the King Salman World Speed Chess turned out to be as exciting and as the Rapids. On day 1, Sergey Karjakin led with 9 points from 11 games with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on 8.5. Magnus Carlsen was on 7/11. 

The world champion and no 1 seed’s campaign started on a weird note. In Game one, he checked Ernesto Inarkiev’s king. Inarkiev responded illegally by giving check himself. Instead of claiming a win for the illegal move, Carlsen defended and Inarkiev claimed a win. After much back-and-forth, they were asked to play on. Inarkiev declined, chucking the point. Carlsen was disturbed enough to get wiped out in Round 2 by Sanan Sjugirov. He also lost to Yu Yangyi. The relevant rule has changed on January 1. Now an illegal move leads to a time penalty, not a loss. 

On day 2, Carlsen channelled his Viking ancestors and went berserk. He started with four wins, dropped a draw to MVL and took four wins again to guarantee the title with a round to spare. He had beaten Alexander Grischuk, Karjakin, Ding Liren during the rampage. In the last round, he took a draw against Levon Aronian to hit an unassailable 16/21. 

Karjakin won a dead-lost position against Grischuk to log 14.5. Viswanathan Anand, who suffered only one loss in the event (Rapids plus Blitz) played steadily to also score 14.5. That made the Indian GM the only man to crack medals in both events. Incidentally, this was the 12th time Anand became World Rapid Champion — it’s understandable he wasn’t sure of the count. 

Despite the very generous prize fund and personal success, Carlsen was dubious about the future of this event, like many others. If the Saudis are to host again in 2018 and 2019, they will have to let Israelis, Qataris, Iranians, et al, play, or risk more players staying away. 

Meanwhile, Aravindh Chithambaram won the Sunway Open and crossed the 2600-Elo mark. He scored 7.5/ 9 to run clear of a strong field with 26 GMs. That pulls the 17-year-old into the Super-GM class. 

The DIAGRAM, BLACK TO PLAY, ( White: Bai Jinshi Vs Black: Ding,Liren, Chinese Chps 2017)  is a nominee for game of the year 2017. Black played the amazing 15.—  dxc3! 16.Rxd8 cxb2+ 17.Ke2 Rxd8 18.Qxb2 Na4 19.Qc2 Nc3+ 20.Kf3 Rd4!! This is the “stunt-move” as chessplayers sometimes call surprising killers. Mate on g4 is the threat. 

White defended with 21.h3 h5 22.Bh2 g4+ 23.Kg3 Rd2! 24.Qb3 Ne4+ 25.Kh4 Be7+ 26.Kxh5 Kg7 27.Bf4 Bf5 28.Bh6+ Kh7 29.Qxb7 Rxf2 30.Bg5 Rh8 31.Nxf7 Bg6+ 32.Kxg4 Ne5+ (0-1). Ding took several pages to annotate this game and said he had stray analysis creeping into his dreams for days afterwards. 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player