CHESS #1357

Goryachkina and Carlsen won the Women's Candidates and the Altibox Super GM, respectively, with a round to spare, with both losing their last game

Aleksandra Goryachkina and Magnus Carlsen won the Women’s Candidates and the Altibox Super GM, respectively, with a round to spare, with both losing their last game. Goryachkina went down to Mariya Muzychuk, while Carlsen lost an Armageddon to Fabiano Caruana.

This is a breakout for the 20-year-old Russian who will challenge Ju Wenjun for the title. She and Ju get the biggest-ever payoff in women’s chess thanks to the generosity of the new Fide boss. Goryachkina scored 9.5 from 14 rounds, with one loss, to log a 2666 rating performance. Anna Muzychuk (8) was second but that doesn’t count at the Candidates.  

Given her age, Goryachkina could have jumped to a new strength level. She received 50,000 euros, while Anna took 40,000 euros, and Tan Zhongyi and Kateryna Lagno collected 27,500 euros each after sharing third-fourth. 

There are more nuanced ways to look at Carlsen’s performance, though the world champion won his umpteenth tournament in a row. On his own admission, he didn’t play well in classical terms, relying on his blitz skills to score two classical wins and six Armageddon wins coupled to seven classical draws and that loss.

In classical terms, Ding Liren (two classical wins, six Armageddon losses) did as well though the Chinese GM only ended sixth. Levon Aronian and Yu Yangyi shared second (10.5 each, with 50 per cent classical scores).  The knockout format proved popular. So it’s worth persisting with, probably with some tinkering, maybe to weight the Armageddon score lower, for instance.

World Chess (formerly Agon) tried another experimental format in its “World Chess Armageddon”. Eight super GMs, including Vladimir Kramnik, who came out of retirement, wore branded clothing and played blitz for a prize fund of $50,000, against an entirely digital backdrop. The format was double-elimination, with preliminary matches creating “winners” and “losers” brackets. The winners of the two brackets — Sergey Karjakin and Ian Nepomniachtchi — played a final which Karjakin won. All matches are available with Russian commentary on YouTube.

The Indian “monsoon” circuit is running with the Mayor’s Cup in Mumbai followed by the Goa Open, which has just started. This always attracts big fields because it’s the school holidays. Farrukh Amonatov won the Mumbai event.  As always, there are dozens of Indian youngsters shooting for rating and norms.

The Diagram, Black to Play (White: Mchedlishvili VS Black: Rathnakaran, Goa Open 2019) has been played at least eight times, Black going 8.—Qxd5 routinely. One of India’s most imaginative players unleashed 8. — Nxd5!! 9. Bxd8 Nxc3 10. ?b3 ?xe2+!  11. ?d1 Nexd4 6 12. Qe3 Be6! It’s hard to assess this. After 13. Bxc7 Rc8 14. Bf4 O-O White has huge material advantage but the king is trapped.  White tried 13. Bf6!? (0-1, 47 moves).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player