CHESS #1409

Monday is International Chess Day, which means a broadcast event where various officials and chess stars will speak about using chess to promote inclusion, social cohesion, etc, with a focus on responses and recovery from the current pandemic. This has been celebrated since 1966 (Fide was founded on July 20, 1924), but 2020 presents unique challenges.

Meanwhile, the Biel Festival starts this weekend and it is a landmark event, with physical play. It’s the 53rd edition and the organisers have decided to take a calculated risk. There’s a 960 event followed a day later with the eight-player GM round-robin (RR) and an open. The RR is a triathlon, with rapid, classical and blitz. The lineup is P Harikrishna, Radoslaw Wojtaszek, David Guijarro, Michael Adams, Salem Saleh, Romain Edouard, Noel Studer and Vincent Keymer. 

More than the RR, the 150-player Open will involve logistical jugglery. It’ll be interesting to see how that many people travel from across the world, for one. And, keeping them in a hall with sufficient anti-cheating measures and social distancing measures will be a challenge of large dimensions. 

While online play is fun and tournaments involving established players seem to have migrated with reasonable comfort, these have all been officially unrated. Fide is understandably cautious about handing out titles and ratings under these circumstances because the scope for cheating and collusion is just too high under online conditions.

In Leg 4 of the women’s online GP, Koneru Humpy is in the semi-finals after beating Valentina Gunina. Humpy faces  world no 1 Hou Yifan. Hou took several years off to complete her Phd in International Relations from Oxford but she’s making a comeback now. The 26-year-old has also just become a full professor at Shenzhen University.

The Diagram  White to Play (White: Fabiano Caruana Vs Black: Raunak Sadhwani, Chess.com tournament) is the setting for a huge upset.  Sadhwani was referred to as “ridiculously underrated” a few months ago by Viswanathan Anand, who beat him in an over-the-board game at Isle of Man.

Here , he takes down the world no 2. Caruana has a big edge and he played 36. Rxa2 Nxa2 37. Rf6 Qxe4 38. Rxg6+ Kf7 39. Rg7+ Ke6 40. Bc5 Re8 and although white is still winning it was  0-1,( 60 moves) after Caruana misplayed a winning attack and subsequently blundered in a drawn endgame.

Instead, white can win immediately with 36. Rf6!! ef6 37. Qxg6+ Kf8 38. Bc5+ or 36. —Qxf6 37. Bxf6 ef6 38. Qxg6. The hanging rook on e2 guards the vital e4 square. 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player