CHESS #1376

Jan Krzysztof Duda meets Alexander Grischuk in the finals of the Grand Prix at Hamburg. The Polish GM knocked out Daniil Dubov in the semis while Grischuk beat Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the other semifinal. The 16-player knockout has a ^130,000 prize fund, with the series as a whole having an additional prize fund of ^280,000 plus two qualifying spots for the 2020 Candidates Tournament. As of now, Grischuk is doing well when it comes to the Candidates qualifiers with one GP left for December.

In the concurrent Superbet Grand Chess Tour event in Romania, Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin tied for first place and Aronian took the title in a playoff. Both Aronian and Karjakin scored 10 points in each section of the 10-player event. The rapid was nine rounds scored at 2 for a win while the blitz was 18 rounds. Viswanathan Anand (19.5) came third with Le Quang Liem (19) fourth. The low winning score (20 out of a maximum 36) combined to a very high decision ratio (normal for blitz and rapids) indicates the high level of competition.  Going by the scores, Anand will need to be in the top six at the upcoming Tata Steel to make it to the London Classic finals of the GCT. The Tata Steel starts in Kolkata on November 22 and it features Magnus Carlsen and many other stars, apart from Anand.

In other news, Abhimanyu Mishra of  New Jersey has just broken R Praggnanandhaa’s record and become the youngest-ever IM. Mishra completed the title at 10 years, 9 months, and 3 days, beating Pragg’s record by 17 days. Mishra has been crowd-funded, and received support from the Garry Kasparov Foundation and he’s been coached by GM Arun Prasad, GM Magesh Panchanthan and WFM Anuprita Patil at various stages of his career. (All his coaches are US-based).

The Diagram, White to Play  (White: Dubov Vs Black: Svane, Euro Teams Russia Vs Germany , 2019) is bound to make it to the combinations of the year. White made a speculative sacrifice — how does he finish this? It’s checkmate if he finds the right moves but he’s lost if he doesn’t.

Dubov played 30. Qf3+ Kb5 31. Bxc4+! Ka5 [ It’s mate if 31.—Kxc4 32 Qc6+ Bc5 33. Rc1+) . White continues 32. Qd5+ Bc5 33. b4+ Ka4 So far so good.  But the continuation isn’t obvious by any means even at this position.

Now Dubov found 34. Qg2!! Bxb4 35. Qc6+ Kxa3 36. Bb3!! Bd7 37. Qc1+ Kxb3 38. Qc2+ Ka3 39. Qa2# 1-0. Note that White would be dead-lost if he didn’t mate and he has to see the silent killers, Qg2, Bb3 long ago. It would be interesting to know when he saw this.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player