CHESS #572

The Corus tournament that starts today (Jan 17) in Wijk An Zee, Holland, could, at a stretch, be claimed as the strongest and most prestigious Indian tournament, since Corus is owned by the Tata Group. However, if one doesn’t indulge in sophistry, the most prestigious Indian tournament is the Parsvnath Open.

The current edition offers 18,000 euro in prize money and has a field of over 400 including 15 GMs. After five rounds, the lead is shared by Parimarjan Negi, Mikhail Ulibin, Petr Kostenko and Safir Shukhrat who all have perfect scores. Yuri Kuzubov and five Indian IMs are tied on 4.5 points while top seed Alexander Areshchenko and the highest-rated Indian, Surya Sekhar Ganguly are lower down with 4 each.

Anybody from this group could end up champion. The sensation has been 9-year-old Hetul Shah from Ahmedabad. Hetal is rated only 1817 though that’s decent for his age. In the opening round, he beat GM Nurlan Ibrayev (2407) fair and square in a very impressive game. This is probably an age record for GM-defeat.

Speaking of defeats, one of the cheekiest books of the year is Kasparov: How His Predecessors Misled Him by Tibor Karolyi and Nick Aplin. Hungarian IM Karolyi has analysed 70 games that Kasparov lost and attributes the mistakes to weaknesses in the style of previous champions. Billed as The Unofficial 6th Volume of the Great Predecessors Series, it is a humorous satire on GK’s monumental My Great Predecessors series, where he looked at the contributions of previous title-holders.

It’s a truism in chess that one learns more from defeats than victories. It is true in the technical sense though the psychological dimensions may be more complex. Studying the losses of world champions isn’t a new idea.

Russian GM Eugene Znosko-Borovsky wrote a book on Capablanca’s defeats and GM Edmar Mednis penned the grandiloquent “How to beat Bobby Fischer”. Not coincidentally, EZB had beaten Capa and Mednis had beaten Fischer. Capa always claimed that loss occurred because his mistress and his wife walked into the tournament hall together on that fateful day and this led to a regrettable but understandable lapse in his concentration. Karolyi’s not in the same August league of players who have beaten world champions but he’s an excellent analyst. The book has received good reviews for both its style and its substance.

WHITE TO PLAY, (Ibrayev Vs Hetul Shah, Delhi 2009) shows that the Gujarat youngster won fair and square. Black is on top with material advantage and raking bishops threatening Re4 and Nf4. White continued 38.Qc1. Qb7 39.Re1 Bxg2+ 40. Nxg2 Rxc1 41. Rxc1 Bf4! 42. Rc3 d2 43. Rd3 h6 44. Kg1 Qb6+ (0-1). After 45. Kh1 Qf2, white has nothing left to play for.