CHESS#1264

The ChessMine Rapid/Blitz in Bengaluru drew massive participation. The Rapid had over 450 participants, including 50-odd titled players. It was played at 15 minutes plus 10 seconds increment and went into a four-way tie on 8.5/10. Abhijeet Gupta emerged champion, ahead of G N Gopal, Girish Koushik and Sai Krishna. The blitz (3 minutes plus 2 seconds increment) attracted 250 participants. It was won by Vidit Gujrathi (10/11) ahead of a 3-way tie between Shardul Gagare, S P Sethuraman, and Deepan Chakravarthy (all 9). This event was a great initiative with excellent prize money. The total prize fund was Rs 6.2 lakh with Rs 4.5 lakh for the Rapids and Rs 1.7 lakh for the blitz.
 
The Sinquefield Cup in St Louis, USA, is in a different league, of course, with a field of elite players and $300,000 in prizes. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian and Viswanathan Anand are tied for first with 4.5 each after 7 rounds. Vachier-Lagrave and Anand are unbeaten while Aronian suffered a loss to Fabiano Caruana. Anand found a fantastic counter-combination to win from an apparently desperate situation against Caruana. His other win came in a rook endgame versus Ian Nepomniachtchi. Magnus Carlsen (4) is just behind the leaders after a loss to Vachier-Lagrave. 
 
In another interesting event, Ding Liren (Elo 2776 and World #12) is playing Anish Giri (2772 & World #13) in Wenzhou, China. This is a 4-game classical match and the Dutch GM leads 2-1. The pairings for the World Cup are out. The WC starts in Tbilisi, Georgia on September 2, which gives players plenty of time to prepare for their first opponent.
 
An amazing 19 of the top 20 are playing in the format of KO mini-matches with shortening controls. The pairings for the Indian contingent are Anand vs Yeoh Li Tian (Elo 2478), P Harikrishna vs Yuri Vidal Gonzalez (2543), Gujrathi vs Neuris Delgado Ramirez (2614), Adhiban Baskaran vs Nguyen Ngoc Truongson (2629), Sethuraman vs  Ruslan Ponomariov (2692), Deep Sengupta vs Wang Hao (2702) and Karthikeyan Murali vs Francesco Vallejo Pons (2717). Sethuraman, Sengupta and Karthikyan are all underdogs. 
 
In the Diagram, White to play (White: Anand Vs Black: Caruana, 5th Sinquefield Cup 2017) , black has played Bg4. White played the risky 20.Bxc6 bxc6 21.fxe5 f6 ? This is an error but black thought he was winning.
 
White played 22.exf6 Rxe2 The threats include mate on h2 and Rxd2. So how does White defend? Simple enough if you’ve seen move 26. He plays 23.f7+ Kf8 24.Bxg7+! Kxg7 25.Qc3+ Re5 ( The best defence is 25.— Qe5 26. Rxe2 Qxc3 27. Re8 Qd4+! 28. Rf2 Qxb4 29. f8=Q+ Qxf8 30. Rfxf8,. White should win but it’s tough.) Now white has the spectacular 26.Qd4!! Qg5 27.Rc5 Rxd4 28.f8Q+ Kg6 29.Qf7+ (1–0).

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player