CHESS #1371

The World Cup finals and the Third-place match both remain dead-locked, with tiebreaks to come. In the finals, Ding Liren opened his account with a superb win in Game Two. But Teimour Radjabov bounced back with an equally impressive effort in Game Three after Ding apparently mixed up his prep. Both are playing high-quality chess in their seventh successive mini-match.

While neither player would be at “maximum tension”, since they’ve both booked a Candidates spot, there is a fair amount of prize money at stake. The winner gets $110,000 while the runner up gets $80,000.  The third place match between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Yu Yangyi is much more about the money since neither gets a Candidates slot. The difference between Third ($60k) and Fourth ($50,000) isn’t all that much though. 

Ding was top seeded, with Lagrave seeded third. So they’ve both lived up to their ratings. Radjabov started at #10 while Yu was #12. The Great Fide Swiss Open will probably feature Lagrave as well as Levon Aronian. 

Mumbai is hosting the World Youth Championships (aka the World Age-group championships). There’s strong local representation, led by Divya Deshmukh and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. A total of 465 players from 64 countries are competing for six titles (under-14, under-16 and under-18 Open and Girls categories).  

Praggnanandhaa is second seeded behind Shant Sargsyan in the U-18. P. Iniyan and Aditya Mittal would be two other Indians with high hopes of scoring medals in the U-18, while many Indians in every age group will be gunning for medals and ratings.  Sreeshwan Maralakshikari is top seeded in the U-14 Open while Deshmukh and Rakshitha Ravi are the top seeds in the Girls U-14. Those are two other sections where there are high hopes of medals. Round 1 saw India’s current U-17 champion, the untitled Vedant Panesar beating defending champion GM Viktor Gažík. 

The Diagram, White to Play (White: Humpy Vs Black: Kashlinskaya, Skolkovo Grand Prix 2019) is a good launching pad for an attack. White went 18. Neg5! The basic idea is 18.—hg5 19. Nxg5 Qf4 - other black defences are possible – 20. Qh7+ Kf8 21. Rxe6! — The themes of Qh7-h8-g7 and Rxe6/ Ne6 will pop up in every attacking white line. 

Engine analysis indicates that white is winning. In many lines, black gets enough material for the queen but the king is hunted down. It’s hard to say how much of the following Humpy had calculated and how much she intuited, and what she had already prepared. 

It is a lovely attack that deserves to make the textbooks. Black defended with 18.—Bxf3 19. Qh7+ Kf8 20. Rxe6! fe6 21. Qh8+ Ke7 22. Qxg7+ Kd6 23. Qe5+ Ke7 24. Qxe6+ Kf8 25. Qg8+ Ke7 26. Qf7+ Kd6 27. Qxe6# (1-0).
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player