CHESS#1275

The Khadi National Premier in Patna is coming to a close. Lalith Babu and Aravindh Chithambaram share the lead with 8.5 points from 12 games with one round to go. These two can't be caught. Third spot is shared by Murali Kathikeyan, S Nitin and Arghyadip Das (all on 7). Aravindh lost to Lalith in their personal encounter. Lalith has white against Swapnil Dhopade in the last round while Aravindh is playing black against Debashis Das. 

Azerbaijan won the European Teams championship. Russia took silver and Ukraine took bronze. Azerbaijan won their key match against Russia in the penultimate round. Russia won the women's event with Georgia, with the Ukraine taking silver and bronze, respectively.  

Meanwhile, St Louis is due to host a curiosity — in the form of four rapid-blitz matches involving the world's best. The time control reverts to the 1980s in which there's no increment. This is supposed to make things more exciting. It will place greater stress on all players since everybody uses increments nowadays. There's a fair amount of money at stake — so they will all make their peace with this. Each match carries $100,000, to be split 60-40. 

The matches are 30 fast games each, at varying time controls, spread over four days. Magnus Carlsen plays Ding Liren, Wesley So plays Leinier Dominguez Perez, Fabiano Caruana plays Alexander Grischuk and Hikaru Nakamura plays Veselin Topalov. 

There's nobody in this field from the pre-increment era. Topalov (born 1975) would have been in his teens when increments were adopted. It's worth noting that there are excellent technical reasons why the increment was adopted back in the early ’90s. Bobby Fischer and David Bronstein were the first advocates but everybody immediately recognised that increments made a great deal of sense. Blitz games without increments often lead to travesties. The diagram, BLACK TO PLAY (White: Bai Jinshi Vs Black: Ding Liren, Chinese Teams  2017), is from a recent game that's being called the Chinese Immortal. On move 15, Ding thought 35 minutes and sacrificed his queen. He has obvious compensation but what does he do now? 

Black played 20.— Rd4!! exploiting the Kt fork to threaten mate on g4. White's subsequent play is forced and it went  21.h3 h5 22.Bh2 g4+ 23.Kg3 Rd2! (Fork again!)  White tried 24.Qb3 Ne4+ 25.Kh4 Be7+ 26.Kxh5 Kg7! 27.Bf4 Bf5 28.Bh6+ Kh7. 

29.Qxb7 Rxf2 (threat Ng3#). This leads to a super finish after 30.Bg5 Rh8 31.Nxf7 Bg6+ 32.Kxg4 Ne5+! (0-1). The end could be 33. Nxe5 Bf5+ 34. Kh5  Kg7+ & 35. Rxh6# or 33. Kh4 Kg8+ 34. Nxh8 Bxg5#. A most impressive example of coordinated minor pieces + rooks. 
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player