Chess (#684)

The 2011 World Teams Championship at Ningbo, China is the year's premier team event. The ten team round robin features only one pushover — Egypt. The rest — Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, China, Ukraine, Israel, India, Hungary and USA — are all capable of medal challenges.

The four-board matches are scored with match points (2-0 to the winner and 1-1 for a draw) with board-points used as tiebreakers. Armenia holds the lead after four rounds, with 6 points. Azerbaijan, China, Russia and Hungary share second place with 5 points each. Ukraine and Israel have 4 each and India and the US have 3. The results show how stiff the competition is. Armenia is the only team to have survived unbeaten so far though Aronyan isn’t in good nick.

Some of the big names, who are not at Ningbo, are playing the Biel Festival. That features a double RR top section with Magnus Carlsen, Vachier Lagrave, Alexey Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier. Biel is on the soccer system of 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, etc. There is live running commentary and live post-mortems.

Carlsen (+2,=1) leads after three rounds with 7 points ahead of Moro (+1, =2) with 5 and Shirov is on 4. Carlsen must be a favourite with a huge rating advantage over the field and the world no:1 has started pretty well. But Moro has a fantastic record at Biel and he appears to be making a comeback to form after his recent victory at the Russian Championships.

In other news, Fide has tacitly admitted the problem with the tie-breaks at the Euro and given the principal sufferer, Peter Hiene Nielsen a wild card for the World Cup, which will be held in Khanty Mansiysk in August. That 128-player KO mini-match event will qualify candidates for the next title cycle.

The diagram, (Gashimov vs Grischuk, World Teams, 2011), BLACK to PLAY, features a deep pitfall. The position is equal and black can generate ample counterplay with his active Rd2 and Bishop. For example, 25.—g6 26. Bxg6 Rxe6 is equal and 25.— Rxb2 may also be ok.

But Grischuk played 25 — Bxa2 ? 26.Ra1! Bd5! This is forced. The normal 26.— Rxb2 27. h5 is lost. Typical variations could be 27. h5 Rd2 28. Rxa2 Rxa2 29. e7 with Bg6 to come or 27. h5 Kf8 28. Rae1 Rd2 29. e7+ Kg8 30. Re6!.

Now white's initiative translates smoothly into a dominating ending with 27.Rxa6 g5 28.e7 Kf7 29.Bg4 Rxe7 30.Bh5+ Kf8 31.Rxf6+ Kg7 32.Rg6+ Kf8 33.Rxe7 Kxe7 34.hxg5 hxg5 35.b4 Rc2 36.Rxg5 Kd6. The connected passers win after 37.Rg6+ Ke5 38.Rg3 Rc1+ 39.Kh2 Rc2 40.Re3+ Kf4 41.Be2 (1-0).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player