CHESS#1261

The Geneva Grand Prix finished with a surprise winner. Azeri GM Teimour Radjabov was a teenaged star and one of the Top Ten for several years. But the 30-year-old has been woefully out of form for a long while.  He made a comeback at Geneva scoring 6 points from 9 games. Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi shared second -third (5.5 each). Harikrishna, Li Chao, Anish Giri, Peter Svidler, Michael Adams and Alexander Riazantsev shared 4th-9th in the 18-player Swiss. 

The GP overall is now led by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, with Grischuk, Radjabov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Ding Liren still in contention for the top spot. The top two GP players will get spots in the Candidates so there’s a big incentive, apart from prize money, of course. 

The Danzou Super GM saw Wei Yi outpace the field. The teenager scored 6.5 from 9 games. Liem Quang Le and Ding Liren (5.5 each) shared second, a distance behind.  As always, Wei was impressive on the attack. He also seems to have plugged some gaps in his positional understanding since he won several quiet positions.  

Dortmund is into round four and there are unexpected leaders. Top seed and World #2 Vladimir Kramnik has won Dortmund ten times and with Elo 2812, he was expected to make a bid to overhaul Magnus Carlsen (Elo 2822) in the rating charts. But he pushed too hard in Round 1 against Vladimir Fedoseev, and blundered a piece for an attack that just wasn’t there. The other top ten player at Dortmund, Vachier-Lagrave has not been able to get out of the prison of draws, while Fedoseev himself has lost to Matthias Birnbaum. So right now, Birnbaum and Radek Wojtascek (2.5 each) lead. 

The position in the diagram, BLACK TO PLAY, (White: Kramnik Vs Black: Fedoseev, Dortmund 2017) is pretty sharp and it might be used as an exercise in both calculation and judgement. White is focussed on the uncastled king.  

Black played 17.— Bf4!  Both Bc4 & Ng5 hang. It’s a hard position to work out tactically. White has multiple options. First, 18. Rc1!? Bxg5 19. Bb5+ Nc6 20. Bxc6+ Bxc6 21. d5 looks unclear. White also has 18. Qxa4+ Bc6 19. Nd5! and the engines say it’s balanced - a human, even a world champion, will need to go deeper. Even 18. Nxe6 ?! may be worth a shot. 

Kramnik got overoptimistic. He played 18.Qh5 ? Bxe3 19.Rxe3 Qxc4 20.Rxe6+ Kf8. Black’s just a piece up — f7 is covered twice over and the king is safe. It all ended quickly after 21.Re5 h6 22.Rae1 g6 23.Qh4 Kg7 24.Nxf7 Nxf7 25.Re6 g5 26.Qh5 Rhe8 27.Qg6+ Kf8 28.f3 Qxd4+ 29.Kh1 Rac8 (0-1). That “Dark Knight” does an amazing defensive job.  

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player