CHESS #1358

The Asian continental saw Indians take four out of five spots for the World Cup 2019. The open was won by GM Le Quang Liem, (7.0/9). Dinara Saduakassova (7.5/9 ) won the women’s event. Murali Karthikeyan, Sunilduth Narayanan and SP Sethuraman shared second- fourth (6.5/9 each). Abhijeet Gupta was the other qualifier. R Vaishali finished fifth in the women’s.  Nihal Sarin won the blitz. 

By round nine of the ten-round Goa Open, nine norms had been scored by Indians (K Priyanka scored three). The tally was six IM norms, 1 WGM norm and 2 WIM norms. In the A Group, Manuel Petrosyan leads with 7.5 points, with a pack of six sharing second-seventh (7 each). One interesting story is that of IM P Konguvel (6.5), who’s in his late 40s. Konguvel has three GM norms but his Elo is down to 2,293 and he needs to push it to the 2,500 level. He’s gained 30 Elo so far. 

The norm scorers included Anuj Shrivatri (2nd IM norm), K Priyanka (IM, WGM, and second WIM norm), V S Rathinavel (IM norm & chances for a GM norm), Aaryan Varshney (IM norm), Saina Salonika (2nd WIM norm). Neelesh Saha and Mitrabha Guha also scored redundant IM norms since both have completed their titles. In Llucmajor, Mallorca, Spain, Girish Koushik has just become India’s 63rd GM.

The AICF’s Vision 2020 Document includes plans for seminars for trainers and arbiters, plus training camps for juniors, special programmes for girls, etc. Fide has also announced a new sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola for two events in Latvia and Poland. 

Magnus Carlsen is entering chess politics with an attempted coup at his home federation. After threatening not to play the 2020 world championship match if Norway hosts, he’s set up a chess club, with free membership to the first 1,000 members. Carlsen will pay the federation affiliation fees. This would offer major leverage in an upcoming vote, where the Norwegian Chess Federation decides if it wants to accept a $5.9 million sponsorship offer from casino operator, Kindred Group. There’s a strict anti-gambling law in Norway and a monopoly gambling operator. Kindred may be looking to use chess sponsorship to get its foot in the door. 

Last week’s game featured an imaginative queen sacrifice by Rathnakaran. This week, it’s another queen sacrifice. The Diagram, Black to Play (White: Alireza Firouzja Vs Black: Murali Karthikeyan, Asian Continental 2019) arose after 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. h3 O-O 6. Be3 c5 7. Nf3 ·a5 8. Nd2 cxd4 9. Nb3 and now black played 9... ·xc3+!!? After 10. Bxc3 de3 11.f3 Nh5, black has super compensation with grip on the dark squares, and targets c4,f3 plus the open c-file. (0-1, 52 moves). 
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player