Chess #1355

Regardless of what happens, this event introduces decent prize money to the women's title cycle, with Euro 200,000 as the prize fund

The Norway Altibox has an interesting new format. It’s a 10-player round robin featuring most of the top 10, including the world champion. Each round starts with classical games at long controls. If that’s decisive, the winner receives 2 points, with half-points for a draw. But every draw is followed by an Armageddon tiebreaker. White has 10 minutes, black has seven minutes, increment from move 61, and draw odds for black who is declared the winner if it’s drawn. The colour doesn’t switch. The Armageddon is scored at 1 point for the winner, so there’s a premium for winning classical games.  

So every round ends with five players receiving at least 1.5 points. This is obviously an experimental format and it remains to be seen how it works. In terms of details, the Armageddon controls of 10:7 may be too skewed, one way or another. Such games are usually played at 5:4 with black having drawing odds. 

It is also possible, though unlikely, that somebody could win such a format with only classical draws and nine Armageddon wins (13.5 points), even outscoring somebody who scores five classical wins and four draws (12 points).  Keeping track of the leaderboard may get complicated!  

The main event was preceded by a blitz round robin where Maxime Vachier-Lagrave outgunned Magnus Carlsen and ran out the deserving winner. The first round featured five Armageddons and the second saw Fabiano Caruana and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov winning classicals. Round Three saw Carlsen, Ding Liren, Levon Aronian and Wesley So winning classicals. 

The Women’s Candidates is interestingly poised. Nana Dzagnidze (3.5) took an early lead with three wins in the first four rounds. But she’s fallen back with two successive losses. Aleksandra Goryachkina (5) leads after six rounds, with Kateryna Lagno and Dzagnidze (3.5 each) sharing second. It’s worth pointing out that this is a pretty balanced event. The top seed, Mariya Muzychuk (2563) is in the same rating “zone” as the lowest, Valentina Gunina (2506). 

Given that it’s a double-rounder there’s plenty of rounds for changes and surprises. Regardless of what happens, this event introduces decent prize money to the women’s title cycle, with ^200,000 as the prize fund. Even the eighth-placed finisher will probably receive her single highest payoff. 

The Diagram, White to play, (White: Caruana Vs Black: Vachier Lagrave, Altibox Classical 2019) is an example of opening prep. The players blitzed out 17. Bf7+ Kxf7 18. Qd5+ Ke8 19. Qxe4 Qa5+ 20. Kd1 Qxg5 21. Rxb7 Rf8 22. Re1 Rf7 23. Rxe7+ Rxe7 24. Qxa8+ Kf7 25. Rf1+ Kg6 26. Qxa6 Qe5. White is a little better but both players must have analysed this before the game.  The game ended 1-0, 60 moves.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player