Chess#1320

Both Indian teams are doing reasonably well at the Olympiad, though both have suffered minor setbacks. The women drew a match versus Serbia, which they should have won on the basis of superior rating on all the boards. However, they have won their other three matches, to score 7 match points after 4 rounds. This leaves them sharing sixth place in the 11-round team event with five teams having perfect scores (8/8). The surprise so far has been Mongolia, which is in the leader group. 

The men started with three wins but they lost their key fourth-round encounter to the defending champions, USA. Fabiano Caruana won a sharp top board encounter against Viswanathan Anand while the other three games were drawn. This leaves the men sharing 14th spot, with 6 points, in the Open event. The real shock was the Russians going down to Poland 1.5-2.5, with Vlad Kramnik blundering into mate against Jacek Tomczak and Kamil Dragun beating Dmitry Jakovenko in a long game. 

There will be few easy matches from here onwards. Some worries about form have been addressed. Anand, who’s playing his first Olympiad in 12 years, started with two smooth wins and a loss to world #2 Caruana is hardly a disaster. Humpy, who also played her last Olympiad in 2006 and, more importantly, hadn’t played for two years, has started with three wins. 

The Olympiad is seeing hectic campaigning with the promise of a new political order. There are two camps with maverick candidate, Nigel Short playing spoiler. The Makropoulos ticket seems likely to have more support, but the other candidate, Arkady Dvorkovich, has chances.  The Indians are in the Makropoulos camp with AICF supremo D V Sundar standing for General Secretary. Short may align with Dvorkovichand; it’s possible the vote will need two rounds. 

The Diagram, Black To Play (White: Caruana Vs Black: Anand, USA vs India, Olympiad 2018) is the key position from the fourth round battle. Black obviously has to deal with the threat to his bishop e5. Less obviously, his bishop g6 can also be hit with a potential double attack. 

The only move is 20. — Bxd4+ 21. Rxd4 Rad8 22. Rxd8 Rxd8 and if 23. Qe2 black survives by hitting the pawn e4 with 23. — b5! 24. a3 a5! Instead, Anand played 20. — gxf4 ? 21. Bxe5 Qxe5 22. gxf4 Qc5+ 23. Kh1 Nxe4 !? This loses but so do other moves - f5 followed by Qxh6 is a deadly threat. Play continued 24. Nxe4 Rxe4 ( One problem is 24. — Bxe4 25. Bxe4 Rxe4 26. Qg2+). Now white killed it with 25. Rg3! Rd4 26. Qe3 (1-0). The threats include f5 and hitting the pinned rook. White wins at least a piece.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player.