CHESS #1351

Magnus Carlsen won his fourth classical super GM tournament in a row with a round to spare. There's been a turnaround in form for the world champion since he retained his title in October 2018. At that point of time, his Elo was 2,839 and he was experiencing a prolonged slump. 

Since then, as mentioned above, he's won the world blitz title and four classical Super-GM tournaments. He's played 58 classical games without a loss and pulled his live Elo to 2,875. That's within touching distance of the all-time record of 2,882, which he achieved in May 2014. He's also played incredible chess in terms of quality. 

Carlsen was awesome in Grenke, scoring 7.5 from 9 games, for a 2,990 performance. Fabiano Caruana (6) was second with Arkadi Naiditsch and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (5) sharing third. Viswanathan Anand (4.5) started well but fell away after losses to Naiditsch and Georg Meier (2). The 14-year-old Vincent Keymer (2) impressed with his uncompromising fighting style. 

In the concurrent Shenzhen Super GM, Pentala Harikrishna came within an ace of winning his first Super GM. Anish Giri (.65/10) won ahead of Harikrishna (6) and Ding Liren (5.5). Harikrishna conceded just two draws and won five games, while losing three. 

True to campaign promises, Arkady Dvorkovich is shaking up the world title cycles. The next Candidates will have a minimum prize fund of 500,000 euros, and the title match will have a minimum fund of 2 million euros, net of taxes. The title match will have 14 classical games before tiebreaks. The time control will be 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves and 15 minutes for the rest, with a 30-second increment from move 61. No agreed draws before move 40 in either Candidates or Title match. 

The Candidate qualifiers will be Caruana (as last challenger), the World Cup finalists (or No 3 and 4 if Carlsen-Caruana play the WC Final), the winner of the Grand Swiss (a new initiative), the top two from the Grand Prix, one wild card and the highest rated player not qualified above, (using averaged Elos of Feb 2019 to Jan 2020).

The Women's Candidates, which starts on May 28, in Kazan (Russia) will be a double-rounder with Kateryna Lagno, Mariya Muzychuk, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Anna Muzychuk, Valentina Gunina, Nana Dzagnidze, Tan Zhongyi and Alexandra Goryachkina.  

The Diagram, Black to play (White: Svidler Vs Black: Carlsen, Grenke 2019) is a brutal demolition of a Super GM. Svidler had a plus score versus Carlsen before this. Black played  20. —  Qf8! —  a pawn sac that leads to a big attack. 

Play went 21. Qxd5 Rd8 22. Qf3 Ne5 23. Qe4 Ng4 24. Rce1 Ne3 25. Rf2 Re8 26. Qxb7 g5! No finesse necessary — the Kt-e3 dominates. 27. Rfe2 g4 28. Rf2 Qh6 29. Qc7 Ref8 30. h3 gxh3 31. g3 fxg3 32. Rxf6? A very sporting gesture — white allows mate h2+ 33. Kh1 g2# (0-1).