The April rating list has Veselin Topalov firmly on top. His dominance of Nanjing and the win versus Kamsky takes his rating to 2812. That puts him 29 points ahead of Anand (2783) who lost 8 points from Linares.
At #3 and #4 are Magnus Carlsen (2770) and Vladimir Kramnik (2759). After that, it ‘s tight with #9 Leko (2751) and #10 Grischuk (2748) Sasikiran (2682) has fallen back from above 2700. Harikrishna (2686) is now India’s no:2. Surya Ganguly (2625) and Humpy (2612) remain above 2600 with Negi (2592) just below 2600.
Last week was slow though Baden Baden (Anand, Carlsen, Shirov, Svidler, Adams. Movsesian) wrapped the Bundesliga. Much fun was had on International Geeks Day aka April 1. Stories ranged from “Bobby Fischer is alive and faked his own death”, to “Kasparov’s comeback”, to arcane rule changes (deferring pawn promotions, for instance).
Chessbase put together an entire series. It featured a crazy game played by GMs Ken Rogoff and Robert Hubner. Prof Hubner of Cologne University is the greatest living expert on deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics while Dr. Rogoff was chief economist at the IMF. Both were top-notch professionals before being unfortunately distracted.
There was a piece on Ethiopian chess. Also a scholarly article by Ivanchuk explaining the potential for making the queen a “virgin” (invulnerable). Finally breaking news: Fide has dumped doping tests. That triggered the unveiling of a whole new range of hitherto-illegal aids including a genetically-modified, “GM-squared” pill to elevate chess IQ. I’ll leave it to readers to figure out which of these stories were true and which merely entertaining hoaxes.
The diagram, BLACK T0 PLAY (Stellwagen Vs Anand, Bundesliga 2009) features an interesting sacrifice. Normal in this Najdorf Poisoned Pawn variation, if such lines can be termed “normal” is 13. — hxg5 14. Rb3 Qxa2 15. Qc3 axb5 16. Qxc8+ Ke7 17. O-O Qa7 18. Rd3 Nxe5 19. Nc5 Nbd7 20. Nf5+ exf5 21. Rxd7+ Kf6 22. Rxf7+ Kg6 23. Qxf5+ Kh6 and draw by perpetual. The Dutch GM must have been hoping to hold the world champion with this “book draw”.
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Instead Anand played 13.—axb5!? 14. Nxb5 hxg5 15. Nxa3 Rxa3 16.O-O Nc6. The computers say this is equal but it’s very dynamic. Three minor pieces balance the queen. Both kings are unsafe. Play continued 17. Rb5 Ra4 18. Nxg5 Ndxe5 19. Rxe5 Nxe5 20. Qc3 Nc6
21. Rxf7 Ra5 and Anand won after 22. Rxg7 Bc5+ 23. Kh1 Rf8 24. Qd3 Rxa2 25. h4 Ra1+ 26. Kh2 Bd4 27.Qg6+ Kd8 28. Rf7 Rxf7 29. Qxf7 Bg1+. There were several inaccuracies by both players in a bewilderingly complicated position. (0-1, 52 moves). The queen sac revitalises something written off as a drawing variation.