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The "Curse of Caruana" has become a running joke. After the world no 2 reeled off seven straight wins at Sinquefield, it was rumoured that Fabiano Caruana had done a pact with the devil to ensure his record wasn't broken. At the Qatar Open, both Anish Giri and Vladimir Kramnik lost #7 after pulling six wins in a row.
Valentina Gunina beat the curse in the Russian Women's Superfinal at Kazan. Defending champ Gunina started with two losses before winning her last seven to keep the title. The key was a last round punch-up with Alisa Galliamova. Both missed clear wins before Gunina scored to end with 7/9 while Galliamova was second on 6.
In the men's Superfinal, Igor Lysyj pulled off a stunner. The 27-year-old Lysyj has a full head of hair but he's known as "The bald" (a literal translation of "Lysyj"). At 2686, he was among the lower-rated in a field with six 2700-plus players. He won with 5.5 /9 (+4,-2,=3). Dmitry Jakovenko (5) logged second place. Remarkably, nobody else had a plus score and top seed, Sergey Karjakin (4) shared last place.
The London Chess Classic kicked off with an Open Rapid event. Hikaru Nakamura won with a fantastic 9.5/10 score. In second place came Giri (8.5). Third saw a big tie with ten players on 8. That pack included Caruana, Viswanathan Anand, Kramnik, Nigel Short, etc. Anand was the only person with a chance to overtake Nakamura when they met in the last round. But Nakamura won handily.
This was followed by a double-round-robin blitz played with Bilbao scoring. Michael Adams, Nakamura and Kramnik all scored 17 points (6/10 conventionally) to get one extra white each in the main event pairings. Caruana and Anand ended on minus scores while Giri stayed at above 50 per cent. Adams won the blitz on tiebreak with better head-to-head results versus Kramnik and Nakamura.
The "serious" Classic (round-robin, soccer scoring, long control) is into round two at the time of writing. Giri and Kramnik lead with 4 each.
The "curse" struck at the DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY ( White" Yu,Yangyi Vs Black: Kramnik, Qatar 2014). Play went 19.Qd2 f5 20.exf5 gxf5? Loosening - 20-Rxf5 is ok. Now White has an easy tactic. 21.Qc3! f4 22.Bxb6 cxb6 23.Nxc6 Qd6? Kramnik has completely lost the thread.
Yu played 24.Rxa7! Rxa7 25.Nxa7 f3 26.Qc6 Qe7 27.Nxb5 Kh8 28.g3 Qf7 Black is looking for some trick like Qh3 mate. But White coolly played 29.Ra1! Ng5 Or 29...Qf5 30.Ra8! Qh3 31.Rxf8+ Nxf8 32.Qxf3 with an easy win. The game finished 30.Ra8 Qe7 31.h4 Nh3+ 32.Kf1 e4?
33.Qxe4 (1-0). Kramnik's play was poor enough to make one really wonder about curses.
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player
