CHESS #1367

The Champions Showdown at St Louis, Missouri consisted of four C960 matches at rapid and blitz controls with delays. The 9LX, as the Americans style it using a mixture of Arabic and Latin numerals, consists of 960 randomly scrambled initial positions with the proviso that bishops must be on squares of both colours and kings must be in-between rooks (castling exists). The normal position (#518) is excluded. Fabiano Caruana beat Garry Kasparov, Wesley So beat Veselin Topalov, Peter Svidler beat Leinier Dominguez and Hikaru Nakamura beat Levon Aronian. 

Pentala Harikrishna had a pretty good season in the Polish team championships, Extra League, (the Extra indicates non-Poles can play). Hari started 2019 in poor form and dropped to a “low” Elo of 2723. He’s back at 2754 now, which makes him #16 on the Live Rating list.  Incidentally the new sponsorship by Coke means that players have free, unlimited soft drinks. 

Speaking of sponsorships, there has been good news for India. Nihal Sarin has signed a long-term deal with Bengaluru-based organic milk company,Akshayakalpa. Sarin will be their brand ambassador. The 15-year-old Sarin will debut in the World Cup 2019 and he’s also scheduled to play the Grand Swiss in October. So he has two, admittedly long shots, to qualify for the Candidates.

Another Indian company, Microsense, which is a Chennai-based IT services provider, sponsored a training camp for six youngsters with former world champion, Vladimir Kramnik in France. It was an incredible learning experience for Prithu Gupta, Leon Mendonca, D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa, P Iniyan and Raunak Sadhwani. The extensive videos on Chessbase India are worth watching for the insights they offer. 

Meanwhile, there’s an unseemly controversy brewing between the West Bengal Chess Association (WBCA) and the All India Chess Federation. Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua has made multiple allegations against the WBCA secretary Atanu Lahiri. These include allegations of monetary conflict of interest, delayed elections to the state body, unofficial boycotts of top local players like GM Barua, GM Deep Sengupta and GM Suryasekhar Ganguly, and boycotts of several state players, including a nine-year-old girl. The AICF is taking this seriously as it must. 

The Diagram, White to Play (White: P Harikrishna Vs Black: Wei Yi, Chinese Team Chps 2019) is a fine example of Hari’s endgame skills. He played 49. f5+! Kf650. h6! Ne7 [50... ?xd3+51. ?e4 ?d152. g5#is mate] 51. Ke2 Ra2+52. Ke3 Rh253. Rxh7 Nxf5+54. gxf5 Kxf5.This is not easy. White’s rook is tied up and there’s only one pawn. Play continued 55. Nf4 Kg556. Ne6+ Kf657. Nf8 Rh458. Kf3 Rh3+59. Kg4 Rh160. Rh8 Rg1+61. Kf3 Rh162. h7 Kf763. Ne6 Rxh7 [63... Kg664. Ng5!] (1-0)
 

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player