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American chess is celebrating the return of the native. Brooklyn-born Fabiano Caruana, World #3, will play under the Stars and Stripes again. Caruana's mother was born in Italy and he has represented Italy for the past decade while retaining two passports and paying US taxes.
The Americans will gun for gold in the 2016 Olympiad at Baku, given their three Top Ten players in Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura (#4) and Wesley So (#9). Rex Sinquefield reportedly picked up the tab for transfer fees to Fide, and for compensating the Italian Chess Federation for Caruana 's contract-switching, and also for whatever fees Caruana has been offered.
Italy was paying Caruana a basic of euro 80,000 per annum and Azerbaijan is said to have offered him euro 400,000. Those numbers seem pathetic for football fans but it is an individual game with few team events.
Nakamura and Caruana are both playing the Khanty Mansiysk (KM) Grand Prix that started on Thursday. This is the fourth and final leg of the 2015 GP. The website Chess24.com pointed out, a little tongue-in-cheek, that everybody playing the tournament had a theoretical chance of making the Candidates. (Tai Pruce Zimmerman did the calculations at goo.gl/r8q92y)
Qualification for the Candidates is complicated (not to mention hard!) . Viswanathan Anand is in as the loser of the 2014 title match. Two players come in from the GP - each GP participant plays three of the four GP events. Two players qualify from the World Cup, the 128 player Knockout extravaganza.
One will be a wildcard (with at least 2700 Elo ) selected by the host nation of the Candidates. Two come in on the highest average rating over calendar 2015. Caruana may make it on rating alone. If say, Caruana qualifies from the GP, the next player by high rating comes in.
The "Professor", Evgeny Tomashevsky, is best placed in the overall GP, though he is only the 7th seed in the 12-player KM. Caruana, Nakamura, Alexander Grischuk, Aneesh Giri, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Sergey Karjakin are higher rated and 12th seed Jobava (2699) is the only player rated below 2700. This is very strong and indeed, multiple players have a shot at the Candidates. An outright win (which means 170 GP points) could propel many players in.
India did not do well at the World teams but the DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY, (White: Vidit Gujrathi Vs Black: Ortiz Suarez, World Teams 2015) saw Gujrathi demolishing a Cuban GM. White played 29.Nf5! Qf8 30.Rh4! Bc8 31.Qd2 Bxf5 32.exf5 Qg7 33.fxg6 Qxg6 34.g4 Ng7 35.Rxh6 Qd3 36.Qf2 Qxc4 37.Bxe5 dxe5 38.Qh4 f5 39.Rh8+ Kf7 40.Rh7 Kg8 41.Qh6 (1-0). At best, black can try 41. - Re7 42. g5 Kf8 43. Rh8+ Qg8 44. Rxf5+ Rf7 45. Qd6+ Re8 etc.
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player
