CHESS #1387

Jan Timman analysed the upcoming Candidates in Yekaterinburg in mid-March. He believes Ding Liren has the best shot with Fabiano Caruana second-favourite. He also thinks the inclusion of Kirill Alekseenko as the wild card could lead to higher scores. The 22-year-old Alekseenko at just above 2700 is rated much lower than the other seven.  

Timman’s assessment was written before the Tata Steel where Caruana had a terrific result and pushed his rating up to 2842. However, Ding (who’s also rated above 2800) has taken January and February off. A good result can be inspirational but rest and prep may trump that. 

In the last title cycle, Caruana was challenger with Ding just a step behind. Since then, Ding has moved up a level in terms of solidity and of depth, while Caruana has maintained his strength at classical and started taking rapid and blitz seriously.  

Of course, the rest of the field cannot be discounted. A streak of good form could put any of the other Candidates into pole position as the challenger. Whoever wins through will however, be the underdog. Magnus Carlsen continues to look like a dominant force. It’s worth noting though that Carlsen has needed to drag his matches versus Sergey Karjakin and Caruana to tiebreakers. An over-reliance on his ability to win at short controls could be a potential weakness. 

In other news, the online availability of 7-piece tablebases will lead to a better understanding of the endgame. It also brings chess a inch closer to being “solved”. Essentially all positions with a total of seven pieces on the board can be instantly assessed as win / draw / loss and the tablebase will spit out the variations 

on demand. Presumably, correspondence players will now be allowed to claim results when it reduces to 7 pieces (claims with 6 pieces are already allowed). It’s worth noting that 7 piece bases need more storage than all the other bases combined. This illustrates the exponential difficulty of solving chess but breakthroughs in quantum computing could lead to advances. 

The Diagram, White to Play (White : Anna Muzychuk Vs Black: Ori Kobo, Gibraltar 2020) led to a combination that won the best game prize. 

White played 23. Bxf5!! Qxf5 24. Rd7 ?g6 ( the queen grab leads to mate 24... ?xh3 25. ?xg7+ ?h8 26. ?g6+ ?f6 27. ?xf6#) 25. Qb3+ Kh8 26. Rxb7 Bf2 27. h5! Rg3 ( If 27... Qxh5 28. Qf7! Rg8 Or  27... Bxe1 28. hxg6 Qxg6 29. Rxg7) 

Now white continued 28. ?d5 h6 29. ?e2 ?g1+ 30. ?d2 ?h4 31. ?d4 ?c8 32. ?xg7+ ?g8 33. ?xg1 ?xc2+ 34. ?e3 ?h3+ 35. ?d4 ?f2+ 36. ?xf2 ?c4+ 37. ?d5 ?f5+ 38. ?e5+ ( 1-0). 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player