CHESS #1343

The Aeroflot Open briefly reported last week, was a pretty successful event for Indians. Apart from Krishnan Sasikiran’s third spot, five youngsters made norms — Raunak Sadhwani had his maiden GM norm, Divya Deshmukh got her second WGM norm and Aditya Mittal, Koustav Chatterjee and Sammed Shete achieved IM norms. The 12-year-old Mittal is now an IM. Sammed and Koustav scored their second norms.

The 16-year-old P Iniyan completed his GM title at the Noisiel Open, France. Iniyan had scored the three necessary norms across 2017 and 2018 (Actually he has five which is an overkill!). But he needed to push his Elo above 2,500, which he managed, to become India’s 61st GM.

Ten national teams fight it out in Astana Kazakhstan at the World Team Championships. China is top-seed (Elo average 2759), with Russia just behind (2758). India is fifth seeded with Baskaran Adhiban, Sasikiran, Surya Ganguly,  S P Sethuraman and Aravindh Chithambaram, averaging 2658.

The Indians started well with a 3-1 win versus Sweden, a 2-2 draw against the brilliant young Iranians and a win versus Egypt. Russia leads with three wins after three rounds. India shares second with the USA and England. The Americans, who are playing a second-string without any of their top four, beat China in a third round upset. In the women’s section, the Indians drew Georgia and Kazakhstan and beat Armenia. They’re sitting at the fourth spot, behind joint leaders, Russia and China and the Ukraine.

The Prague Chess Festival is a two-section round robin. Vidit Gujrathi and Harikrishna are playing the Masters (Elo average 2715) where Jan-Kryzsztof Duda (2 points from 2 rounds) leads ahead of Vidit, Nikita Vituigov, and Radek Wojtaszek (all 1.5).  Harikrishna lost in the second-round to Vituigov. In the Challengers, Praggnanandhaa is the lowest rated. The prodigy suffered a first round loss to Bartel Mateusz.

The Diagram, WHITE TO MOVE (White: Adhiban Vs Black : Grandelius, World Teams 2019) is an interesting example of shock and awe. White has several reasonable moves, like 24. a3 or a4. Adhiban played.24. Bg5! The piece must be taken since 24.—Rd5  25. Bf6 is an attack for free.

Play continued 24.— hxg5 25. Nxg5 Qc8 26. Rf4 g6 27. g4 Ne7? [Instinctively blocking e7 to prevent a line like 27.—Nh6? 28. e6 f5? 29. e7. But this is wrong.] The game concluded 28. Qg3 Kg7 29. Qh4 Rh8 30. Rxf7+ Kg8 31. Rh7 1-0. Brutal and imaginative from “The Beast” as Adhiban as known.  But 27.—Ne3!  28. e6 Qc6! keeps the balance after 29. fe3 de3 30. ef7+ Kh8 31. Qe4 e2+ 32. Kg2 Be3! 33. Qxc6 bc6 34. Kf3 Bxf4 35. Kxf4 Rde8! 36. Kf3, etc.  Grandelius may have found this, if he hadn’t been knocked off-balance by Bg5. 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player