 "Chess (#1208)")
Koneru Humpy who has dropped one spot to 3 in the women's rankings, leads the Chengdu Grand Prix with 3.5 points from 4. Humpy is followed in the 12-player round-robin by Dronavalli Harika (3). Bela Khotenashvili, Ju Wenjun and Antoaneta Stefanova (all 2.5) share third spot.
The Russian "Higher League" was won by Grigoriy Oparin (6.5 from 9) ahead of a pack of eight players who shared second place. The top five from this 9-round Swiss qualify for the "Russian Super Final" which is a round robin. The qualifiers are Oparin, Vladimir Fedoseev, Dmitry Kokarev, Alexander Riazantsev, Alexsey Goganov (all 6). They join Sergei Karjakin, Nikita Vitiugov and Evgeny Tomashevsky in the Super Final.
These events were overshadowed in sheer strength by the 22nd World Computer Championship at Leiden University (Holland). It was a double Round Robin with six programs. Komodo10 running on a mere 48-core Intel I-7 tied for the title with Jonny running on a 2400- core AMD-X86 machine. Both scored 7.5/10. Komodo won their individual mini match and also won a six game play off at reducing time controls.
While the computer championship invokes sheer awe because of flawless play, the World Seniors. which ran concurrently at Dresden evoked sheer nostalgia. Germany edged out Armenia in the generic (50+) event while Russia stormed the 65+ category. Star participants included John Nunn, Jon Speelman, Rafael Vaganian, Artur Yusupov, et cetera.
Meanwhile two little controversies cropped up in India. First, there was the case of the fallen queen in the Maharashtra Chess League (MCL) and more recently, there is the case of the unrated Challengers.
In the MCL, GM S.P Sethuraman of Pune TruMasters played GM Abhijeet Gupta of Mumbai Movers in an Armageddon. Gupta was winning. He was two pawns up in an endgame with 83 seconds to Sethuraman's 42 seconds. Gupta played Qa6, released the piece, pressed his clock. A nanosecond after the clock press, the queen fell down. By the rules, this is a loss: A fallen piece must be replaced on the player's own time. But it just looked ridiculous in this case.
The other controversy is just brewing. The 2016 Challenger will reportedly be unrated because the high-rated participants don't want to risk rating.
The diagram, BLACK TO PLAY ( White: Maxime Vachier Lagrave Vs Black: Anand, GCT Rapid Leuven , 2016) features a nice trap. Anand, (who has just been awarded a Pd by IIT Kanpur) played 26...Nxf2! 27.Kxf2 Qh2+ 28.Ke3 [ Or 28.Kf1 Nh4-+] 28...Qg2!! This is deadly [ Obvious tries fail 29.Rf1 Ne5! 30.Qe2 Rxf3+ 31.Rxf3 Bxd4+!-+;.29. Nf5 Re8+ 30. Ne5 Rxe5+ ]White tried 29.Qe2 Rxf3+ 30.Qxf3 Bxd4+! 31.Kxd4 Qxf3 32.Nf5 Qf2+ 33.Re3 Qxb2+ 34.Kc5 Qb6+ 35.Kd6 Qd8+ 36.Kc5 d4 (0-1).
The Russian "Higher League" was won by Grigoriy Oparin (6.5 from 9) ahead of a pack of eight players who shared second place. The top five from this 9-round Swiss qualify for the "Russian Super Final" which is a round robin. The qualifiers are Oparin, Vladimir Fedoseev, Dmitry Kokarev, Alexander Riazantsev, Alexsey Goganov (all 6). They join Sergei Karjakin, Nikita Vitiugov and Evgeny Tomashevsky in the Super Final.
These events were overshadowed in sheer strength by the 22nd World Computer Championship at Leiden University (Holland). It was a double Round Robin with six programs. Komodo10 running on a mere 48-core Intel I-7 tied for the title with Jonny running on a 2400- core AMD-X86 machine. Both scored 7.5/10. Komodo won their individual mini match and also won a six game play off at reducing time controls.
While the computer championship invokes sheer awe because of flawless play, the World Seniors. which ran concurrently at Dresden evoked sheer nostalgia. Germany edged out Armenia in the generic (50+) event while Russia stormed the 65+ category. Star participants included John Nunn, Jon Speelman, Rafael Vaganian, Artur Yusupov, et cetera.
Meanwhile two little controversies cropped up in India. First, there was the case of the fallen queen in the Maharashtra Chess League (MCL) and more recently, there is the case of the unrated Challengers.
In the MCL, GM S.P Sethuraman of Pune TruMasters played GM Abhijeet Gupta of Mumbai Movers in an Armageddon. Gupta was winning. He was two pawns up in an endgame with 83 seconds to Sethuraman's 42 seconds. Gupta played Qa6, released the piece, pressed his clock. A nanosecond after the clock press, the queen fell down. By the rules, this is a loss: A fallen piece must be replaced on the player's own time. But it just looked ridiculous in this case.
The other controversy is just brewing. The 2016 Challenger will reportedly be unrated because the high-rated participants don't want to risk rating.
The diagram, BLACK TO PLAY ( White: Maxime Vachier Lagrave Vs Black: Anand, GCT Rapid Leuven , 2016) features a nice trap. Anand, (who has just been awarded a Pd by IIT Kanpur) played 26...Nxf2! 27.Kxf2 Qh2+ 28.Ke3 [ Or 28.Kf1 Nh4-+] 28...Qg2!! This is deadly [ Obvious tries fail 29.Rf1 Ne5! 30.Qe2 Rxf3+ 31.Rxf3 Bxd4+!-+;.29. Nf5 Re8+ 30. Ne5 Rxe5+ ]White tried 29.Qe2 Rxf3+ 30.Qxf3 Bxd4+! 31.Kxd4 Qxf3 32.Nf5 Qf2+ 33.Re3 Qxb2+ 34.Kc5 Qb6+ 35.Kd6 Qd8+ 36.Kc5 d4 (0-1).
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player