Alexei Shirov kicked off his Corus campaign with a spectacular run of four straight wins. Sharing second spot behind him are the troika of Hikaru Nakamura, Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk who all have 3 points. Anand and Kramnik are among a pack on 2, with four draws each.
Shirov has always been a tactician par excellence and also a ruthlessly accurate endgame player. But his extreme methods can backfire. Not this time. He is well-prepared and missing nothing. A score of plus four may be enough to win Corus. But it’s unlikely that Shirov will coast through the next nine rounds. He’s incapable of playing except at full throttle.
Carlsen has been rock-solid and professional in knocking off two wins. Ivanchuk has been close to his best. The pleasant surprise is “Naka”. The US specialist is making his Corus debut. There were doubts if his methods could work against a quality field. Two wins, two draws is a good start.
Somebody made an interesting point about Anand’s play. He’s used 1.d4 in his whites and stodgy defences with black. He may be concealing his title match preparation (will he play 1.e4 there?) and he could also be trying to consciously tone down. Topalov is a tactician by preference and Anand, may just have decided to try the effect of “boring” methods.
The world champion has been extremely self-critical on twitter. He has, according to himself, “been struggling with poor form”, “wondering if I've forgotten how to play chess”, “lacking incisiveness”. However, he has not, so far, made errors apparent to anybody else including Kasparov, who said Anand had played “very creatively” in at least one of his games.
In the B group, 15-year-old Dutch champion Anish Giri shares the lead with Ni Hua with three each. Harikrishna recovered from a first-round loss to Giri by logging two subsequent wins to move to 2.5. Negi has four draws as does Filipino prodigy Wesley So. In Group C, Ray Robson and Li Chao Jnr lead with 3.5 each. Abhijeet Gupta is sharing third with 2.5. Sowmya is unfortunately placed last with three losses.
There has already been a rich harvest of interesting games. The diagram, WHITE TO PLAY, (Nakamura Vs Van Wely, Corus 2010) is a finish from one of the most entertaining. White plays 27.Ne7+! Rxe7. Taking the Kt is forced since 27...Kh7 28.Bxg6+ fxg6 29.Qxg6+ Kh8 30.Qh6# is the threat.
Play continued 28.Rxe7 Qxh2 29.Bxg6 Qh1+ 30.Kb2 Qxd5 31.Bxf7+ Qxf7. The alternative 31.— Rxf7 32. Re8+ Kh7 33. Rh8# would end black's suffering. Now it's mopping up time after 32.Rxf7 Rxf7 33.Qxa6 Kg7 34.Qxb5 Kg6 35.Qc4 Rd7 36.b5 Kg5 37.b6 Bf3 38.Qb5+ Rd5 39.Qb3 (1-0). Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player
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