Panchanathan Magesh Chandran led the Third Orissa KiiT Cup going into the last round but a loss to Alexsej Aleksandrov of Belarus pegged him back. Aleksandrov took clear first with 9 points from 11. Magesh tied for 2-4 with Abhijeet Gupta and Tigran L. Petrosian (all three on 8.5).
Meanwhile, Anand won the Leon Masters match versus Alexei Shirov with 4.5-1.5 logging three victories and no defeats. The match featured spotty play by Shirov, who made at least two opening blunders. One of those was in a 17-mover when he failed to counter a stunning sixth-move novelty. This is Anand’s eighth win at Leon.
The German national championship, which is always hard-fought, made news for unsavoury reasons. There was a scandal in the last round. Christoph Natsidis, a 23-year-old law student, was caught using a Smartphone to consult an engine, versus GM Sebastian Siebrecht. Natsidis had already completed an IM norm before his result was cancelled. Igor Khenkin clinched the title on tiebreaks, ahead of Jan Gustafsson, after both scored 6.5 from 9 in a Swiss. Sarah Hoolt took the women’s title.
Leung Weiwen, an economics student from Singapore, has done an interesting, if simplistic regression analysis to judge correlations between the chess strength of nations and respective per capita and population. He took the average rating of the top 10 players in each country.
The model shows a positive correlation between population size, per capita and chess prowess. But this can explain only 17-40 per cent of chess success. Prominent outliers include small nations like Armenia, Georgia and Iceland. Presumably a strong chess “culture” explains more. India has a higher rating (+69 points) than the model expects and China (+3) is an almost exact fit. Even if Anand is replaced by the Indian no.11, the average India rating is higher than the prediction.
The diagram, Black to Play, (Shirov Vs Anand, Game 3, Leon Masters 2011) appears after 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.g4 Bd7 5.c4 e6 6.Nc3. Black responded 6.-- c5! A strong novelty. Black loses time (c6-c5) and offers a pawn to open the position — white has big holes due to g4.
Shirov continued 7.cxd5. exd5 8.dxc5 Bxc5 9.Bg2. Maybe he should bite the bullet and take with 9.Qxd5 Qb6 10.Bc4 Be6 (10...Bxf2+ 11. Ke2 Be6 is also possible) 11.Bb5+ Nc6 12.Bxc6+ bxc6 13.Qf3 when black’s bishop pair and strong attacking chances compensate for a pawn.
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9...Ne7 10.h3 Qb6 11.Qe2 0-0 12.Nf3? This is a losing error 12...d4! 13.Ne4 Bb5 14.Qd2 Nbc6 15.a3 Ng6 16.b4 Be7 17.Bb2 Rfd8 (0-1). White can play on. But his king is trapped and Rh1 is missing in action. Black will just win the e5 pawn and breakthrough.
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player