CHESS#1336

Last week, D Gukesh completed his third and final GM norm at the Delhi Open to gain the Grandmaster title at the age of 12 years, seven months and 17 days. This makes him a mere 17 days older than the record-holder, Sergei Karjakin. Gukesh is profiled on page 2, where you'll find more details about the Chennai-based youngster's career and life. 

The Delhi Open was won by Levan Pantsulaia of Georgia. He was the best placed in terms of tiebreak after a seven way tie with Mosadeghpour Masoud (Iran), Kirill Stupak (Belarus), Farrukh Amonatov (Tajikistan), Diptayan Ghosh, Abhijeet Gupta, and Narayanan S L (all 8/10).

There were multiple norms scored by Indians. Apart from Gukesh, Visakh N R got a GM norm while Aditya Mittal, Saurabh Anand, Bharat Kumar Reddy and Neelash Saha scored IM Norms. B Mounika Akshaya scored a WIM norm. Aditya is worth a special mention — the 12-year-old was playing out of a wheelchair after a serious accident and this was his second IM norm on the trot after the IIFLW at Mumbai. 

The Delhi Open is bigger in terms of sheer participation than even the Tata Steel festival at Wijk Aan Zee but, of course, it pales in comparison to Tata Steel in terms of strength. The Masters at Tata is wide open after five rounds. Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren share the lead with 3.5 each. Magnus Carlsen, Vidit Gujrathi, Viswanathan Anand and Anish Giri are in joint third (all 3). 

The world champion broke a 21-game drawing streak (classical) with a win against Jorden Van Foreest. Nepo has two wins, versus Vladimir Kramnik and Giri. Giri also has two wins. The former world champion, Kramnik seems to be in terrible form since he's trailing on 1.5, just ahead of Foreest. Vidit came within an ace of beating Vlad Fedoseev to share the lead. 

The Challengers is equally intriguingly poised. Vlad Kovalev and Anton Korobov (both 3.5) share the lead ahead of five players including Andrey Esipenko, Maksim Chigaev, Evgeny Bareev Erwin L'Ami and Parham Maghsoodloo (all 3).

Praggnanandhaa is on 2 after a first round loss to Bareev. The veteran Russian GM and former World #3 is now playing for Canada. At 42, he still has a pretty respectable 2650 rating.

The Chessbase poll had surprising results. Ju Wenjun was a shoo-in for woman of the year with her two world titles. But Caruana pipped Carlsen for player of the year, despite Carlsen retaining his title and winning the Blitz title. 

In the Newcomer category, Vincent Keymer outpolled Maghsoodloo, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Nihal Sarin and Pragg. As the Hamburg-based website admitted, this must have been biased by the Indian vote being split, while German readers voted solidly for Keymer, who is admittedly brilliant in his own right.
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player