CHESS#1242

As briefly reported earlier, Tan Zhongyi won the world title by beating Anna Muzychuk in a tense final, which went to tiebreakers. The two swapped wins in normal games, and then drew to head into the accelerated tiebreakers. Muzychuk missed her chances with white in the first tiebreaker and Tan converted her chances in the second to take the title. Tan is the fifth Chinese player to take the world title and she did it the hard way by knocking out the top seed, Ju Wenjun and a bunch of other higher-rated players including Muzychuk and Harika Dronavalli. 

Meanwhile, the Iranian Chess Federation ran itself into an utterly unnecessary controversy by banning the teenaged siblings Dorsa Derakhshani and Borna Dersakhani. Dorsa is only the second Iranian woman to take the men's IM /WGM title. The 18-year-old did not wear the hijab while playing in the Tradewise Open, Gibraltar (where's she based for the next year on a scholarship). Her 15-year-old brother, Borna, was also playing in Gibraltar where he was paired against an Israeli, Alexander Huzman. Borna played Huzman and even shook hands with him. Although Dorsa (and Borna) were there in their personal capacity, she's been banned for appearing in public with her hair visible while Borna broke a "core Iranian principle" by playing an Israeli. When Iranians are paired against Israelis in tournaments, they tend to withdraw or concede the game to avoid precisely this sort of problem. 

The second India-China match concluded with the Chinese winning 10-6 even though the Indians took the early lead. As in the first match, this consisted of four Chinese GMs playing four Indian GMs in a Scheveningen format (where each member of a team plays a round-robin versus the other team). The Chinese team consisted of Wei Yi (2725), Bu Xiangzhi (2711), Lu Shanglei (2624) and Zhao Jianchao (2619), while the Indians consisted of S S Ganguly (2644), S P Sethuraman (2629), Abhijeet Gupta (2624) and Karthikeyan Murali (2578). It was played at Lioacheng, China- the inaugural match in 2016 was played in Hyderabad. 

In Rd 1, Murali was the only winner. In Rd 2, the Chinese broke back with Lu and Zhou taking full points. In Rd 3, Sethuraman won for India but Wei, Bu and Lu all took full points. Rd 4 was relatively uneventful with four draws.  

The  Diagram , BLACK TO PLAY (White: Tan Zhongyi Vs Black: Anna Muzychuk, 2nd tiebreaker, Tehran Women's World Chp Final, 2017) is the point where Tan finally established a decisive advantage. Black should look at 38.— Qe6 to stop Qe5+. White has extra material but the b-pawn could be seriously dangerous. 

Play went  38.—b4? 39. Qe5+ Kh6?? (Maybe 39.—Kg8 can hang on) 40. g4! f6 41. Qxf6 Ra5 42. h4 (1-0).  Obviously mate cannot be stopped.
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player