CHESS#1309
The big news was of course, R Praggnanandhaa completing his GM title with a round to spare at the Gredine Open in Ortesei, Italy. Praggnanandhaa had 6.5 points after eight rounds. He had completed the requirements for a third and final GM norm, even if he lost the final round. The one proviso was that he had to be paired with an opponent with a rating of over 2485.
That wasn't a problem. His last opponent was Dutch GM Roeland Pruijssers (2514). Instead of playing out a quick game and basking in glory, Praggnanandhaa forced a win to tie Ivan Saric (7.5) for first place. His rating performance was 2705. Praggnanandhaa’s elder sister, Vaishali (5.5), also completed a women's GM norm, her second.
Hikaru Nakamura came from behind to take first place in the Paris leg of the Grand Chess Tour. Wesley So led after the nine rapid rounds. So had scored 12 points from nine games (4 wins, 4 draws and a loss to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, with a doubling of the points scored). Nakamura and Sergey Karjakin were just behind (11 each). Viswanathan Anand (9 points) was sharing fourth-sixth spot with Levon Aronian and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
In the double-round blitz, fast twitch specialists like Karjakin, Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian and Nakamura surged ahead of So. Nakamura scored 12 from 18 rounds while Aronian scored 11 and Vachier-Lagrave shared third spot with Karjakin (10.5 each). Totting up, Nakamura scored 23, while Karjakin scored 21.5. So, who scored only 9 in the blitz, fell to third place with 21. However, the Filipino-American retains overall first spot in the GCT standings, courtesy his win at Leuven, combined to this third. Anand landed in sixth with a sub-par blitz performance (8/18) that led to a combined score of 17.
It is of great curiosity that Fabiano Caruana refuses to take blitz seriously. He landed last here (5.5/18) and was second-last at Leuven (6.5/18). It's not that the challenger can't play good blitz. He beat the much higher rated Nakamura when they played a head-to-head match. But he seems to have a mental block. This could cost him dearly if the title match goes into tiebreaks, given Magnus Carlsen's consummate skills at fast controls.
The Diagram, WHITE TO PLAY, (White: Praggnanandhaa vs Moroni, Luca Jr, Gredine Open, Ortisei 2018) is a nice example of Pragg's clinical efficiency. White attacks the Ke8.
White played 18.Qa3! Bd4 [Since 18...Bxb2 19.Rab1! Bxa3 20.Nf6# is checkmate. Hitting Kt-e7 ensures black can't run] 19.Bg5 c5 [Obviously 19...Bxb2 20.Qxe7#]
Now white finishes with 20.Nf6+ Bxf6 21.Bxf6 Rg8 22.Rad1 Rxd1 23.Rxd1 Nd5 24.Bh4 Kf8 25.Bf3 Qb5 26.Bxd5 Bxd5 [The backrank threat Qf1 helps black bail to a lost endgame] 27.Qe3 g5 28.Bxg5 Qc6 29.Qe7+ Kg7 30.Qe5+ f6 31.Qxd5 Qxd5 32.Rxd5 fxg5 33.Rxg5+ (1–0)