CHESS #1366

The Sinquefield Cup ended in a tiebreak. A late surge by Magnus Carlsen, who won twice in the last two rounds pulled him level with Ding Liren (both 6.5 from 11 games). This took the pair ahead of Viswanathan Anand and Sergey Karjakin (both 6) who shared third-fourth.

The tiebreak was considered a foregone conclusion. Carlsen had never lost a play-off in his entire career and he is the strongest rapid and blitz player of all time. But Ding won and won comprehensively! The Chinese GM took the blitz games 2-0 after two draws in the earlier rapids. The finish in the last game was gorgeous.

The main Sinquefield event is followed by Chess960 exhibition matches involving former world champion Garry Kasparov  versus Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So vs Veselin Topalov, Leinier Dominguez vs Peter Svidler and Hikaru Nakamura vs Levon Aronian. The Grand Chess Tour standings still have the world champion comfortably in first place with 38 GCT points after three events. Maxime Vachier Lagrave is second with 33.3 points from four events.

The Sinquefield was overshadowed by the death of eminent Grandmaster and composer Pal Benko (1928-2019) of Hungary and America. Benko first won the Hungarian championship as a teenager in 1946, when the prize was food. At that time, he was an orphan taking care of younger siblings in a grim post-war environment. He defected in 1957 after the abortive Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and received asylum in the US.

Benko qualified twice for the Candidates in 1959 and 1962 and beat several world champions. He gave up his interzonal spot in 1970, to enable his friend Bobby Fischer to play, and Fischer, of course, went all the way to the world title.

Benko won the US championship eight times in his career and he’s remembered for his popularisation of the Benko Opening (1.g3) and the Benko Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2. c4 c5 3. d5 b5) which was called the Volga Gambit on the other side of the Iron Curtain since Benko was persona non grata. Over and above this, Benko is remembered as among the most brilliant composers of all time, producing a huge number of fantastic studies and problems.

At the diagram, Black to play (White: Carlsen vs Black: Ding, Blitz Playoff, Game 2, Sinquefield 2019), Ding found 32.--- Ba8! [As it happens, white could play for a draw with 33. gf6 Qb7 34. Kf1 Qg2+ 35. Ke2 Qf3+ 36. Kf1 but Ding was ahead in the match]. So play went 33. Qxa6 Nd5 34. Ba7 Qc7 35. Rec1 Qxc1+ 36. Rxc1 Rxc1+ 37. Kh2 Bc6 38. Qxa3 Bxg5 39. Qxd6 Bf4 40. Bc5. Has white pulled it back? Ding proves his point with 40.--Ne7 !! (0-1)

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player