CHESS #624

At the Curacao Candidates 1962, Tigran Petrosian, Paul Keres and Effim Geller were neck and neck in the battle to become the challenger. With two rounds to go, Petrosian cold-bloodedly drew his last two games. Keres and Geller lost one game each. Iron Tigran duly became the next champion.

At Corus, Magnus Carlsen was playing for smaller stakes. But he followed a similar strategy, throttling back the aggression to focus on not losing. In round 11, Carlsen beat Lenier Dominguez. In round 12 and 13, Carlsen drew with careful play. Meanwhile leader Vladimir Kramnik lost a beauty to Viswanathan Anand and thus Carlsen edged ahead.

Early leader Alexei Shirov could have caught up but he drew a totally won position with all of 2 seconds left for 10 moves. At an increment of 30 secs/ move, this is not impossible but Shirov simply hadn’t seen the win.

Carlsen confirmed no.1 status with 8.5 points from 13 games. Shirov and Kramnik shared second with 8. Anand and Nakamura shared fourth with 7.5. The world champion was the only undefeated player across all three sections. Anand said he was “ridiculously lucky” and that it was nice to find some rhythm towards the closing stages.

Anish Giri won Group B with 9 /13 to qualify for 2011's A By then, the 16-year-old will be rated much higher than his current 2588. Negi and Harikrishna both scored 6.5 — this is par for Negi’s rating and underperformance by Hari. In Group C, Li Chao powered ahead to win with 10 points while Abhijeet Gupta produced a late surge to come second with 8.5. Sowmya was last with 3. The Gibraltar Open follows hot on the heels of Corus though it's nowhere near as strong of course. There was a tie for first place between four players. In a knockout tiebreak, Michael Adams beat Jan Gustafsson and Vallejo Pons beat Sandipan Chanda. Then Adams beat Vallejo.

The Diagram , WHITE TO PLAY (Anand Vs Kramnik, Corus 2010) sees complications start with 26.Bxc7 Bc2?! The engines say Black holds after 26...Bc5. There are chances to recover material on c4 or by 27.Bf4 h5 28.Ne3 Qxg3 29.Bxg3 Bxe3 30.fxe3 Rxe3 Kramnik’s attempt runs into an exchange sacrifice after 27.Rc1 Nb3? 28.Rxc2! Qxc2 29.Nh6+ Kh8 30.Nxf7+ Kg8 31.Nh6+ Kh8 32.Nf7+ Kg8 33.Nh6+ Kh8. The triple repeat is possible because the 30th move was a capture.

After 34.Be5! White is winning. The defence went nowhere with 34...Qg6 35.Bg4 Rxc4 36.Qxb3 Rxe5 37.Rxe5 Rc1+ 38.Kh2 Bd6 39.f4. Bxe5 40.fxe5 gxh6 41.Qe3 Qb1 42.d6 Rh1+ 43.Kg3 Re1 44.Qf4 Rf1 45.Bf3 (1-0). Kramnik didn't bother to try for 45. — Qe1+ 46. Kh2?? Rh1# since 46. Kg4 is pretty convincing.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player
Write to us at editorfeatures@bsmail.in