CHESS #1375

Wesley So is the first official World Champion at Chess960 or Fischer-Random, whatever you prefer to call it. So beat Magnus Carlsen comprehensively in the finals held in Bærum, Norway. The Filipino-American GM needed just seven of the scheduled 12 games to build an unassailable lead. (The games had different weights depending on time controls).
 
So scored three wins in the four “Slow Rapid” games (45 minutes for first 40 moves, followed by 15 minutes, no increment) and followed up by with two draws and a win in the “Fast Rapids” (15 mins + 2 secs/move increment). Ian Nepomniachtchi took the bronze beating Fabiano Caruana in the losing semi-finalists match.

 
So’s victory indicates his great natural talent — like Viswanathan Anand, he was already in the World Top Ten before he acquired his first coach, Vladimir Tukmakov. On his part, Carlsen has had an incredible run with over 100 classical games without loss, and logged a series of tournament victories that started after the World Title defence in November 2018.
 

Russia took both titles at the European Teams. Ukraine took second in the Open while England took third. Georgia took silver in the  women’s event, while Armenia took bronze. Ukraine came within an ace of taking gold — a last round win versus Croatia (the match was drawn) would have tied for gold with Ukraine having the better tie-break.

 
The Hamburg Grand Prix has started. At the time of writing, four of the first round matches are due to go into tie-break. Jan-Kryzysztof Duda, Veselin Topalov, Peter Svidler and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave are through to the second round. Daniil Dubov-Teimour Radjabov, Alexander Grischuk-Radek Wojtaszek, Nikita Vitiugov-David Navara and Dmitry Jakovenko-Yu Yangyi play tiebreakers.
 
The Grand Chess Tour event, The Superbet Rapid & Blitz in Bucharest, also has a pretty strong field. This is a triple round-robin, with the rapid games counting for 2x as the blitz games. This is part of the Grand Chess Tour. After three Rapid rounds, Anish Giri (2.5) leads, with Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand and Anton Korobov (all 2) sharing second place.

 
The Diagram, WHITE TO PLAY (White: So Vs Black : Carlsen, Fischer-Random Chp 2019)  indicates how even the best falter under pressure. So played 25. Bxg7!? Nd2. This is the first of several “only moves” Carlsen must find.
 
Play continued 26. Rxf7 Nxf1 27. Rf8+ Kh7 28. Be5! Rc1 29. Rh8+ Kg6 30. Ne7+ Kf7 31. Rh7+ Ke6 32. Nxc8 Rxa1 33. Bxa1 Ng3 34. Rxa7 Nf5 35. Bh8! Re2 ? Carlsen proves he’s human — he had to play 35.—Re1+ 36. Kf2 Rc1 to hold on. Now So played 36. g4! hxg4 37. hxg4 Ne3 38. Re7 and won (1-0, 72 moves).

 
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player