CHESS#1284

Top seed Arkady Naiditsch won the Delhi Open comfortably. Naiditsch scored 8.5 points from 10 games (three draws, seven wins) and was always ahead of the pack. Zia-ur-Rahman shared 2nd-4th with Nubairshah Sheikh and Adam Horvath (8 each). It was the first GM norm for 19-year-old Nubair. The Chennai Open follows and will feature many of the same top players. 

The Tata Steel chess tournament is underway at Wijk aan Zee. This is the 80th edition of the Wijk tournament, which continued through World War II. It is sponsored by the local steel plant, which has been owned by different groups at different times. The lead in the Masters is shared by Anish Giri, Viswanathan Anand and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (all 3.5 from 5 games). Vladimir Kramnik, Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So are all on 3. 

Anand has started 2018 in good form, with two impressive wins including one lovely finish against Fabiano Caruana. Unfortunately, Baskaran Adhiban had a terrible start with three losses. The other former world champion, Kramnik, appears to be in good nick, too, with a positional strangulation against Peter Svidler and strong pressure against Magnus Carlsen.  Carlsen has been solid rather than spectacular. But he does have that ability to win several games in a row on demand. 

In the Challengers, Anton Korobov leads with a score of 4.5 from 5 games. Vidit Gujrathi is in second place with 4. This tends to be a high-scoring event with the big payoff being an entry to the Masters next year. It’s likely to be a race between Korobov and Vidit with both players trying to score as many wins as possible. This is not an ideal situation for Vidit — he’s instinctively a solid player who dislikes taking the risks required to blast out very high scores against decent opposition. 

The DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY (White: Anand Vs Black: Caruana, Tata Steel Masters 2018 ) is an object lesson in retaining control and refuting an unsound attack. White’s better but black is looking for counter-play. 

White played 34.Ra2! Qd1+[Anand realised that the second rank is important, black doesn’t have play on the first rank.] The game continued 35.Kh2 Rc1 36.a4 f5?! 37.Qb7 f4 38.Bxf4 Rxc5. Now white hits back with 39.Rd2 Qxa4 40.Qf7 Rg8 41.Be5 Qc4.

In the post-mortem, Anand said a) he hadn’t seen Qc4 as a possible defence b) He looked at 42. Bxg7+ ? Rxg7 43. Rd8+ Kh7 44. Ng5+ Rcxg5! 45. Qxc4 Rxg2+ as a sort of humorous turnaround. 

He actually played the gorgeous 42.Rd6!! (1—0) — the double exclamation marks are from Carlsen by the way. Since 42.—Qxc4 43. Rxh6# Or 42. — Kh7 43. Ng5+ hxg5 44. Qh5#.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player