CHESS#1231

Wesley So won the London Chess Classic with a round to spare and took the 2016 Grand Chess Tour. The Filipino-American grandmaster picks up $ 295,000 for winning London plus the GCT. He also pulled his rating up over 2800. Remarkably, 2016 will end with four players rated over 2800 (1. Magnus Carlsen 2840, 2. Fabiano Caruana 2828, 3. Vladimir Kramnik 2811 and 4. Wesley So 2808).
 
So is hard to nail down in terms of style. Several top players, including Carlsen and Anish Giri, have remarked on the unusual nature of his talent and his unorthodox thought process. But ultimately, good chess is all about avoiding errors. Every elite player has stylistic quirks. But they are elite only because they make very few errors.
 

So it has crossed a threshold in those terms. In his last 50 games, he has 18 wins against 1 loss. That was at Bilbao in July, to the world champion. Prior to London, So was unbeaten at the Isle of Man Open, sharing fourth (6.5/9).  At the Baku Olympiad, his unbeaten 8.5/ 10 on Board 3 bagged gold. His victory at the St Louis Sinquefield Cup (also a GCT event) was with a score of 5.5/9, unbeaten. So was also runner-up to Magnus Carlsen at Leuven in the first GCT.
 
He scored (+3=6) 6 points from 9 games in London for a rating performance of 2904. Caruana hit second spot with 5.5, also unbeaten. Vladimir Kramnik (also unbeaten), Hikaru Nakamura and Viswanathan Anand shared 3rd-5th with 5 each. Anish Giri played 9 fighting  draws and Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Michael Adams and Veselin Topalov registered minus scores.
 
Sadly for Indian fans, the teenaged Aravindh Chithambaram went off the boil in the concurrent open. Aravindh was leading with 6.5/7. But he lost his last two. Etienne Bacrot (who beat Aravindh in Rd 8), edged Sebastien Maze, (who beat Aravindh in Rd 9) — both scored 7.5. The 3rd-9th positions were shared by a bunch on 7, including Abhijeet Gupta and Murali Karthikeyan. The Rapid play was won by Valentina Gunina, who scored an amazing 9/10 and steamed in ahead of 45 higher rated GMs.
 
The diagram, BLACK TO PLAY , White: Nakamura Vs Black: So, London 2016 illustrates So's cool nerves. He punched out  13...Nxe4! 14.Bxd8 Nxd2 15.Be7 Rf7 16.Bxc5 Nxf1 17.Rxf1 b6 18.Bb4 Ba6 19.f4 Rc8 20.fxe5 Bxe5 21.Rf3 Bxc4.  Black has a huge edge.
 
Play continued 22.Re3 Bg7 23.Nf4 Rd7 24.a4 Bh6 25.g3 Bxf4!  The fear is king exposure but after 26.gxf4 Rxd5 27.Re7 Rd4! 28.Bd2 Kf8 29.Bb4, there is a simple win. So played 29.— Re8! (0–1). Now if 29...Re8 30.Re4+ Kf7 31.Rxe8 Kxe8 32.Bd2? Re4+. How deep did he calculate and when did he see 29.— Re8?

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence  chess player