CHESS#1289

The Tradewise Gibraltar Open ended in a triumph for Levon Aronian. He beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Richard Rapport in tiebreaks. The tenth and last round started with five players tied on 7 points and 15 players on 6,5. It ended with seven players tied on 7.5. Hikaru Nakamura, MVL, Aronian and Rapport made the cut for an elimination. MVL beat Nakamura and Aronian beat Rapport in the first KO round and Aronian then beat MVL. Meanwhile, Pia Cramling scored 6.5 unbeaten to take the top women's slot. 

It was a good tournament for several young Indians. The 12-year-old Raunak Sadhwani made his second IM  norm. The 13-year-old Prithu Gupta completed his IM title and scored a maiden GM norm to boot. Prithu is now #3 behind Praggnanandhaa and Nihal Sarin in the India Under-14 rankings. Pragga also came close to scoring a second GM norm, and he would have done it, if he hadn't lost a key game to Sethuraman. Nihal made up lost ground after a slow start but was never really in the running for a GM norm.  At the concurrent Moscow Open, another 11-year-old, D Gukesh, scored his second IM norm. The future of Indian chess is in safe hands!

The National Blind Championships has gotten underway, thanks to crowd-sourcing. The 14-player round robin event is hosted in Andheri, Mumbai. The team for the World blind Teams in 2018 will be selected on the basis of this.

The championship needed to raise Rs 500,000 or so. The chess community responded with heart and generosity to an appeal and the required funding was raised quickly online. The event is being broadcast live with moves on the braille boards used by players being quickly replayed by volunteers on DGT electronic boards. 

The PRO Chess league is also underway and every big name is likely to play a few rounds in the global online team tournament. Viswanathan Anand made his debut on Wednesday for the Mumbai Movers in the Eastern Division. The "Movers" beat the Oslo Trolls with Anand scoring 2.5 from his four games.  Both Mumbai Movers and Delhi Dynamite are doing well in the Eastern Division and both teams are likely to qualify for Stage 2.  

In the Diagram, White to Play, (White: Nihal,Sarin  Vs Black: Georgiev,Kiril, Gibraltar Masters 2018), there's an extraordinary idea.  

25.Qd8! Qxd8 26.Rxd8 Be6 27.Rxa8 Rxa8 28.Bxb6 axb6 29.Rd6 Bc4 30.Rxc6 Bd3 [The pseudo-queen sacrifice nets a pawn. White now displays awesome technique to convert] 

31.Nd2 b5 32.f3! h5 33.Kf2 b4 34.axb4 Ra2 35.Ke3 Bb5 36.Rb6 Bd7 37.Rd6 Bb5 38.Rb6 Bd7 39.b3 Rc2 40.b5 Rc3+ 41.Ke2 Kh7 42.Rb8 Kg6 43.b6 Bb5+ 44.Kd1 Rc6 45.b7 Rc7 46.Nc4 Ba6 47.Na5 Kg5 48.b4 Kf4 49.b5 Bxb5 50.Rc8  (1–0). 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player