CHESS#1334

Daniil Dubov and Ju Wenjun won the Open and Women’s section of the World Rapid Championships while Magnus Carlsen and Kateryna Lagno won the Open and Women’s sections of the World Blitz Championship. Rather surprisingly, none of the events required a playoff for gold.

In the Rapids, Dubov scored 11 points from 15 rounds, and ran through unbeaten. There was a four-way tie on 10.5 with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov having the best tiebreak and Hikaru Nakamura taking third in front of Vladislav Artemiev and Carlsen, who recovered from a start of 0/2. In the blitz, Carlsen scored 17/21 rounds unbeaten to retain the title. Jan-Krzysztof Duda took silver with 16.5 and Nakamura (14.5) came clear third. Carlsen is actually blitz champion for the third time. 

In the women’s Rapids, Ju scored an incredible 10 from 12 rounds to retain the Rapid title she won in 2017 at Riyadh. This is a great feat to round off a terrific year since she also retained the Classical title. In the Women’s Rapids, Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, took silver in front of Aleksandra Goryachkina (both 9). 

In the blitz, Lagno made 13.5 from 17 rounds while Khademalsharieh (13) repeated her silver medal performance. The Iranian IM received a special prize for the best all-round performance. Lei Tingjie (12.5) took clear third in the Blitz. 

India’s best performance in the Rapids came from defending champion Viswanathan Anand (9.5). But Anand couldn’t break free from a long sequence of draws to challenge for medals. He drew his last five games, and a couple of the draws were very short affairs so he may have run out of steam, or motivation. In the women’s Rapid, Harika Dronavalli (8/12 ) and Humpy Koneru (7.5) placed 14th and 20th respectively but neither ever had very realistic medal prospects. 

In the blitz, 14-year-old GM Nihal Sarin (13.5) produced a fantastic performance to reach 11th spot on tiebreak. He gained over 150 blitz rating points. Sarin also gained 100-odd Elo in the Rapids where he scored 7/15. Iranian prodigy Alireza Firouzja (10/15), who’s just a year older than Sarin, was another youngster who recorded a terrific result, bagging sixth spot in the Rapids with a 150-point rating gain.  

This being New Year, the usual lists of the best games, etc, are being churned out with the usual controversy since of course, these choices are subjective. The Diagram, White to Play (White: Tiger Hillarp Persson Vs Black: Tomas Laurusas, Sweden Vs Lithuania, Chess Olympiad | Batumi 2018) is from the game chosen as #1 by Chess.com. 

White played 30. Kf4!! Qxf2+ 31. Kg5 Kg7 32. Rf4 Qxh2 33. Qf6+ Kh7 34. Qxg6+! Kh8 [It’s mate after 34.—fg6 35. Re7+ Kg8 36. Bd5+ Rf7 37. Re8+ Kg7 38. Rxf7#] 35. Kh6 (1-0) . It’s mate on g7/h7, or on f8.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player