Chess: Checkmate in one decides finale of $1m Global League in Dubai
Last Sunday’s final of the $1m Global Chess League in Dubai went down to a single combat blitz game with an unlikely outcome. After several tiebreak stages failed to separate Triveni Continental Kings, led by Levon Aronian, and upGrad Mumba Masters, headed by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, the match evolved to a 3+2 blitz game between Jonas Bjerre, 19, and Javokhir Sindarov, 17, where the Danish player, who had lost several previous games to the Uzbek, was the underdog.
Sindarov pressed hard, but Bjerre kept the game going until both were blitzing at speed. Bjerre played 1…Nb4 and Sindarov, only aware of the threat to his bishop, replied 2 Be4?? Ra2 mate. Simply 2 Rxa5 with two pawns for a knight would have drawn easily.
Victory for Bjerre clinched the Global League title and its $500,000 first prize for his team. Before the decisive tiebreak game, his team captain, Aronian, told him: “Just fight; if you win this game, you will win the event.”
Earlier, Magnus Carlsen had been involved in two critical moments. The No 1 made a rare pawn promotion to knight where a queen would have allowed Vishy Anand to sacrifice his own queen for a stalemate draw, but then blundered fatally by capturing Aronian’s rook in a position where the superior Qe7 would have guaranteed a draw.
Carlsen’s mishap launched a tailspin for his Alpine Warriors team, which needed just one win from its last three matches to reach the final but instead lost all three and ended up bottom of the table. Anand’s Ganges Grandmasters suffered a similar fate.
The Tech Mahindra Global League is planned as an annual event until at least 2028, and has made a fine start with the aid of this dramatic final day. Its innovations include a scoring system where black wins count more than white, mixed teams of six with two women players and a junior, plus television and online commentaries aimed primarily at novice viewers.
For the individual players, there were successes and failures. Carlsen often played at his best, as in this smooth ninth-round win against JanKryzstof Duda, but errors limited his total to 6/10. The previously fast rising Indian Dommaraju Gukesh, 17, scored a disastrous 2/10, while his Uzbek rival Nodirbek Abdusattorov did well with 7/10.
This week the all-Chinese €500,000 12-game match for the women’s world championship opened in Shanghai, where Ju Wenjun, the holder, drew the first two games against her challenger, Lei Tingjie. Meanwhile the semiretired all-time No 2, Hou Yifan, disappointed in Dubai. At the moment the women’s crown is a Chinese monopoly, but watch out for Alice Lee
Carlsen, the most active No 1 player in chess history, has been, is, and will be in action on several fronts this week and has already produced a near unique performance. On Tuesday he scored a maximum 11/11 in Chess.com’s weekly Titled Tuesday, only the second time such a feat has been achieved in this fiercely competitive event. However, Titled Tuesday was followed by Tilted Thursday, as Carlsen lost twice in succession at the Zagreb Rapid and Blitz (5-9 July) and had an even score after six rounds.
Moreover, he did it while playing 1…a7-a6 in every game as Black, and against opponents who included Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.
The Norwegian is top seeded for the current over-the-board Zagreb Rapid and Blitz (5-9 July), and for the online Aimchess Masters (10-14 July). From 17 to 21 July he will compete in Chess.com’s Bullet Championship where his opponents will include Nakamura and Alireza Firouzja, making the event an unofficial world championship in the fastest form of chess (all your moves in one minute).
Finally, starting 30 July in Baku, Azerbaijan, Carlsen will attempt to win the 206-player knockout World Cup for the first time.
For English chess fans, 11 July is the start of the European Senior Team Championships at Swidnica, Poland, where England are seeded to win three gold medals.
3875: 1 Rh8! If 1..g5 2 Qh1 g4 3 Ra8 g3 4 Qh8 mate. If 1...Bxc2 2 Rh1+! (not 2 Qh1+? when Bd1! delays the mate) Bb1 3 Qg2 and 4 Qb2 mate.