Chess (#1206)

Magnus Carlsen started the Leuven (Belgium) leg of the Grand Chess Tour (GCT) badly. He magically returned to form to finally win with a lot to spare. The first day saw Viswanthan Anand taking a narrow lead in the Rapid section (25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment).

The Indian Grandmaster (GM) was ahead with 3.5 from five rounds. Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So shared 2nd-3rd on 3 each. The winner of the Paris Grand Chess Tour (GCT) Hikaru Nakamura, started with three losses and was placed last on 1.5! At that, Nakamura was lucky. He received a gift from Carlsen, who blundered a piece on move 11! That was one reason why Carlsen was sharing 8th-9th place with Vladimir Kramnik (both 2).

Day two saw Carlsen storming 4/4 to take the Rapid. One of these wins was a key encounter against Anand. So was second with 5.5. Anand (5) shared third with Levon Aronian (5). Nakamura and Kramnik remained at the bottom (3.5 each).

The first leg of the blitz (5 minutes and 2 seconds increment) on Day 3 saw Aronian leading with 5.5/ 9 followed by Carlsen, Kramnik, So and Nakamura (all 5). Anand and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave kept an even score (4.5 each).

Day four saw Carlsen hit a solid 6/9 in the second blitz set to pull ahead of Aronian who only managed 4.5 /9 in the second leg. Overall Carlsen won the blitz with 11/18, ahead of Aronian (10). Anand, Nakamura, So (all 9.5) shared the 3rd-5th spots. In the combined standing, Carlsen won by a mile with 23/ 36 (doubling rapid scores), ahead of So (20.5), Aronian (20) and Anand (19.5). Nobody else had a plus score. It was a triumph of the will for the world champion after a terrible start.

Concurrently, Vassily Ivanchuk won the Capablanca Memorial in Havana for the seventh time. He scored 7 in the six-player double round robin to lead Yuri Kryvoruchko (6), Zoltan Almasi (5) , Ivan Cheparinov (5), etc.

Blitz specialist, Farrukh Amonatov who is Tajikistan's only GM, won the Eurasian Blitz in Almaty, ahead of a very strong field. Amonatov scored 16 / 22 in a 12-player double round robin final and bagged US $30,000. Ian Nepomniachtchi (also 16) lost out on tiebreak and got US$ 20,000 with Baadur Jobava (15.5) third, ahead of Alexander Grischuk, Le Quang Liem, Dmitry Andreikin, Boris Gelfand,etc.

The Diagram, WHITE TO PLAY, ( White: Aronian Vs Black : So, GCT Blitz Leuven 2016) is the prelude to a light-square theme. White played 16.Nxf7! Kxf7 17.Bg6+ Kg8. Now all white needs is a check on the a2-g8 diagonal. 18.Rd1 Qe5 19.Bf4 Qa5 20.Bf5! g5 21.Bxc8 Kg7 [Or 21...gxf4 22.Qg6+ Bg7 23.Be6+ Kf8 24.Qf7#] and white finished with 22.Be3 (1-0)

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player