CHESS #1342

The Aeroflot Open saw Kulaots Kaido pull off a stunning victory with 7 points from 9 rounds

The Aeroflot Open saw Kulaots Kaido, who started at #62, pull off a stunning victory with 7 points from 9 rounds.  The 42-year-old Estonian GM tied with Armenian teenager Haik Martirosyan (7) and had the better tiebreak. Krishnan Sasikiran (6.5) started with five straight wins but lost to Martirosyan. This was Sasi’s second painful loss to Martirosyan, who also won a key game for Armenia in the last Olympiad. 

Among other Indians, Vaibhav Suri and Sunilduth Narayanan ( both 5.5) did well. The 13-year-old Raunak Sadhwani (2448), whom Viswanathan Anand recently called “ridiculously under-rated”, scored his first GM norm. Nihal Sarin (5) enhanced his rating and won what is likely to be the first of many encounters against R Praggnanandhaa (4.5). 

The TCEC Superfinal between Stockfish 10 and Leela Chesszero ended in the closest possible victory for Stockfish at 50.5-49.5. It was a great demonstration of how quickly a self-learning AI engine, which is entirely crowd-sourced at that, can become a competitive monster. “Leela” was developed in line with the principles demonstrated by DeepMind’s AlphaZero. It uses off-the-shelf hardware and it’s a hobby project for programmers. 

The Champions’ showdown in St Louis carried few surprises. Fabiano Caruana beat P Harikrishna, Hikaru Nakamura beat Jan Kryzstof Duda, Ruichard Rapport beat Sam Shankland, Wesley So beat David Navara, and Veselin Topalov beat Lenier Dominguez. Only the latter match was closely fought — blitz and rapid are not the former world champion’s forte. 

Incidentally, Caruana is #8 on the world blitz list and #3 in rapids after this win. He  was outside the top 100 in the blitz in 2017. In the world title match in November, Magnus Carlsen (Rapid 2880, Blitz 2939) outrated Caruana (Rapid 2789, Blitz 2767) massively at fast controls and Carlsen won the match in rapid tiebreakers. Well, Caruana is now 2819 (Rapid) and 2803 (Blitz) and since he’s started taking fast play seriously, he’s less likely to be a fast-play pushover, if he challenges again. 

The Diagram, Black to play (White: Chigaev Vs Black: Sasikiran, Aeroflot 2019) is an interesting example of keeping control in a time scramble. Black’s winning but white has that a-passer. Sasi played 30. — Qa3 ?! [ 30.—Re2! 31. Qf1 Qc2 32. a6 Nd2! (Or 32. Rc1 Nf2+ 33. Kg1 Nh3+ 34. gh3 Qg6+ ) 33. a7 Nxf1 34. a8=Q+ Kh7 35. Rxf1 Rxg2 is lovely but very hard to calculate in a few seconds). 

Play continued 31. c4 b4 32. a6 Qxa6 33. Qxb4 Qa2 34. Nd7 Kh7 35. Qb8 Rf7 36. Nxe5 Rf8?!  [Again 36. — Nf2+ 37. Kg1 Nd1! is great. but this gets the job done] 37. Qb4 c5 38. Qe1 Nd2 39. Ra1 Qb2 40. Nd3 Qc3 41. Nf4 e5 42. Rc1 Qa5 43. Ra1 Qb4 (0-1). Very pragmatic play. 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player