CHESS#1315

The SInquefield Super GM in St Louis is a 10-player round robin. It has five players sharing the lead after five rounds. That group includes Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Alexander Grischuk (all on 3 points). Two more players, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Viswanathan Anand, are on 50 per cent (2.5). Wesley So, Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura are on minus scores. It’s entirely possible for any given player to win.

The Kerala floods have led to a couple of chess initiatives. Nihal Sarin, who is from flood-affected Thrissur, held a live show archived on the Chessbase India YouTube Channel soliciting donations to the Kerala Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund.

It was interesting on its own merits. The 14-year-old Sarin ran through some career highlights and games with IM Sagar Shah playing the foil. Most prodigies tend to be superb tacticians, with sharp memories and aggressive opening repertoires.

Sarin’s tactical skills are good but his positional sense is truly extraordinary and so is his technique. He wins long endgames against strong GMs. His analysis is also self-critical. With an Elo in the 2570 range, he’s going to be a Super GM soon.

Wei Yi and Ernesto Inarkiev played a match that ended in victory for the Chinese prodigy. At 19, Wei is rated at 2735 and still considered mildly “stalled” in terms of his early career graph. That’s due to insanely high expectations. Anyhow, Wei displayed his tactical talent, against a strong 2690 GM, by winning both the six-game classical segment 4-2 and then winning the rapid segment 3.5-2.5.

There’s a month left for the Batumi Olympiad. We could see a change in the operating style at Fide, if the strong Russian candidate, Arkady Dvorkovich, who’s backed by his former boss, Vladimir Putin, does win. However, Georgios Makropoulos seems to have the edge and if the Greek does win, it would effectively mean a continuation of the Kirsan regime in terms of operating style. Nigel Short could play spoiler but he’s not really likely to be considered a serious option.

The Diagram, White to Play (White: Mamedyarov Vs Black: So, Sinquefield 2018) is a nice example of liquidation to a winning endgame. Equal material, equally messy pawn structures. White played 28.Rxf6! Rxf6 29.Bxd5 exd5 30.Rxf6 Rxe5 31.Rxh6 Rxe3 32.Rg6+ Kh7 33.Rxg5 Forced. Despite material equality, White’s winning — his pawns roll faster.

Play continued 33. — Re2 34.Rxd5 Rxb2 35.Kh2 Rxa2 36.Kh3 a5. The game ended 37.g4 a4 38.g5 a3 39.Rd7+ Kg8 40.Rd8+ Kh7 41.Rd7+ Kg8 42.Rd8+ Kh7 43.g6+ Kh6 44.Rh8+ Kg7 45.Rh7+ Kg8 46.Ra7 Ra1 47.Kg2 Rc1 48.h6 Rc8 49.Rxa3 b5 50.Ra7 Rb8 51.Kg3 (1-0). The key is not calculation here — it’s evaluation.

Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player