The Weekend Australian - Review

Chess

- Sports · Chess · Party Games · Hobbies · Magnus Carlsen · Garry Kasparov · Norway · Federation Internationale des Echecs · FIDE · Russia · India

Mag­nus Carlsen and Hikaru Naka­maru have shared first in the Cham­pi­ons Show­down 9LX, an on­line event hosted by the Saint Louis Chess Club. But this time there was much more in­ter­est in the other end of the com­pe­ti­tion.

For­mer world cham­pion Garry Kas­parov made a wel­come re­turn to the board, fin­ish­ing eighth in a field of 10. He won just one game and lost three.

Ira­nian prodigy Alireza Firouzja did even worse, com­ing last, but the re­sult was no dis­grace. The 17-yearold was play­ing in his first truly elite event and did man­age to beat world No.5 Maxime Vachier-La­grave and No.8 Wes­ley So.

Firouzja will have an­other chance next month when he tack­les Carlsen again in the Alti­box Nor­way su­per­tour­na­ment. This will be a “clas­si­cal” event played at slow time lim­its — un­like the Cham­pi­ons Show­down, which was Chess 960, with the pieces ran­domly re-ar­ranged at the start of each game.

In other news, the Ar­me­ni­ans have been loudly protest­ing about the re­cent On­line Olympiad. You may re­call that the World Chess Fed­er­a­tion al­lowed Rus­sia and In­dia to share first place de­spite the In­di­ans for­feit­ing two games in the fi­nal due to a dodgy in­ter­net con­nec­tion. The Ar­me­ni­ans rightly point out that they did not get sim­i­lar treat­ment when they suf­fered sim­i­lar dis­con­nec­tion prob­lems ear­lier on.

Fi­nally, the Fed­er­a­tion has an­nounced that the Can­di­dates Tour­na­ment will re­sume on Novem­ber 1 af­ter be­ing in­ter­rupted by the pan­demic.

Max La­garde-Mari Bo­sio­cic, Tri­este

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 Nbd7 7.Bc4 Qb6 8.Bb3 e6 9.Qd2 Be7 10.O-O-O Nc5 11.Rhe1 h6 12.Bh4 O-O 13.g3 Qc7 14.f4 Re8 15.e5 dxe5 16.fxe5 Nfd7 (See di­a­gram, be­low left) 17.Nf5!? Nxb3+ 18.axb3 exf5 19.Nd5 Qd8 20.Nxe7+ Rxe7 21.g4 a5 22.gxf5 a4 23.Qb4 axb3 24.Bxe7 Qc7 25.Qc3 Qxc3 26.bxc3 b2+ 27.Kxb2 Nb6 28.e6 fxe6 29.fxe6 Nc4+ 30.Kb1 1-0

This week’s prob­lem (be­low right): Christo­pher Reeves, 1965. Mate in two.

Last week’s so­lu­tion: 1.Be6! (wait­ing). If 1...Qxb3 2.Nc3 or 1...Qc5/Qxd3 2.R3b2 or 1...Qc3 2.Nxc3 or 1...Qc1 2.Nc1 or 1...Qxb1 2.Ra3 or 1...d1=Q 2.Nc3 and 1...d1=N 2.Nc1.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia