Page 25 - Chess

Chess (#1225)

Viswanathan Anand lost 0.5-1.5 to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the finals of the Corsica Masters

Chess (#1224)

Carlsen is #2 on the blitz rating list, behind Ding Liren. Nakamura is #3

Chess (#1223)

The national Juniors recently concluded at Rajahmundry (AP). Previous winners include Viswanathan Anand, Pentalya Harikrishna and Aravindh Chithambaram. This edition was won by Kumar Gaurav of Araria (Bihar). Gaurav is 14 years old and untitled and started as seed #42 in the under-20 tournament with multiple titled players . He's gaining 220 Elo and has one IM norm. Third place went to 11-year old Raunak Sadhwani, who's also worth watching. The girls' section was won by WIM R. Vaishali.Gaurav comes from a very disadvantaged background. He travels unreserved on trains and his father mortgaged their land to raise money to further his career. Let's hope the lad's talent carves a way out of grinding poverty, as it did for the Queen of Katwe.Incidentally, the fuss about the 2017 Women's World Championship in Iran has so far, focussed on an emotive but practically irrelevant issue. Women in Iran have to keep their hair covered in public. This doesn't really affect chess skills.The other iss

Chess (#1222)

The chess open there has gained much traction over the years. It always draws high female participation because it has decent prizes for women

Chess (#1221)

Anand beat Boris Gelfand and Shakhriyar Mamedaryov, and lost to Vladimir Kramnik

Chess (#1220)

Anish Giri won an impressive attacking game versus Gelfand and he also converted a long endgame grind against Tomashevsky

Chess (#1219)

Marcel Duchamp was an international player and Henri Matisse did a portrait of his family kibitzing a chess game

Chess (#1218)

The US came to the Baku Olympiad with a dream team, including three top 10 players in Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and Wesley So. They took the Open gold for the first time since the Haifa Olympiad in 1976 (when the USSR boycotted). But Ukraine (20) was just behind on tiebreak. Russia (18) managed third, failing to justify its top seeding yet again.By the end, the Indians were wistfully humming that old standard, "with a little bit of blooming luck". Both teams missed medals by a whisker. In the Open, they tied for 4th-11th with the best tiebreak, scoring 16 points (7 wins, 2 draws and 2 losses). The one bad loss was a 3.5-0.5 thumping from the US in a match that should have been tied 2-2. Against Ukraine, India lost by a minimum margin of 2.5-1.5. The final round draw versus Norway should have been a win, and the other draw was against Russia. S P Sethuraman is very aggressive and his instability on the fourth board was critical. Sethuraman was totally winning against Sam Shankl

Chess (#1217)

The Indian team has won six straight matches to lead the Open Section of the Baku Olympiad, despite starting as the ninth seeds. The last two matches have been tough, with a 3-1 upset of the home team, the fourth-seeded Azerbaijan A, followed by a minimum sixth round victory, 2.5-1.5, against The Netherlands, seeded 10.Vidit Gujrathi has been the star with 5.5 from 6 games.P Harikrishna won a sharp duel to take down Shakhriyar Mamedaryov on top board versus Azerbaijan A and he held Anish Giri in Round 6. Baskaran Adhiban turned an inferior position into a decisive win against Dutch GM Erwin L'Ami in a time-scramble. The other wins, against Bolivia (4-0), Costa Rica (4-0), Azerbaijan B (3-1) and Cuba (2.5-1.5) were not stressful.The #5 seeded Ukraine (10) has picked off two huge wins, versus Russia (10) and China (10), but gone down to the #2 US (11) in the sixth round. The Americans are the only team with three top 10 players but they drew against the #17 Czech Republic, which offered

Chess (#1216)

The Olympiad kicked off on Thursday at the Baku Crystal Hall, with 176 nations, including seven debutants

Chess (#1215)

Carlsen will be more focussed on his upcoming title match against Sergey Karjakin

Chess (#1214)

Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian tied for second place with 5 each

Chess (#1213)

The top seed in the open section is 18-year-old Vladislav Artemiev from Russia, who's currently rated 2665

Chess (#1212)

The game has always had a large number of prodigies but they are getting ever-younger and there are more and more of them

Chess (#1211)

Magnus Carlsen took the Bilbao Masters with a round to spare. After suffering his first-ever classical loss to Hikaru Nakamura in the opening round, the world champion clinched the tournament with his first-ever classical win versus Anish Giri.In all, Carlsen scored +4, -1, =5, to log 17 from 10 games (double round robin) with soccer scoring. He was followed by Nakamura, (+1,=9), 5 points behind. Wei Yi and Wesley So scored one win and one loss each. Giri was obviously in terrible form (=7,-3). But the real disappointment was Sergey Karjakin who scored 9 draws and a loss to Carlsen in their last encounter before the title match. He may be protecting his repertoire.The world champion's rating barely improved (up 2.4 Elo) despite his convincing performance. Carlsen has had, by anybody else's standards, a fantastic year winning the Tata Steel and the Norway GM before he took Bilbao. For him, it's been just average.Meanwhile Maxime Vachier-Lagrave leads 4-2 in an exhibition match against

Chess (#1210)

Carlsen won the psychologically important encounter with Karjakin

Chess (#1209)

The Bilbao Masters started with a shock defeat for Magnus Carlsen

Chess (#1208)

The 2016 Challenger will reportedly be unrated because the high-rated participants don't want to risk rating

Chess (#1207)

The chess world is still coming to terms with the details of alleged deals from the Panama Papers

Chess (#1204)

Viktor Korchnoi was a title contender every time between 1962-1992