The annual Hastings International Chess Congress is under way and with a welcome injection of sponsorship from Tradewise Insurance, thirteen GMs have been tempted to enter the Masters Tournament. After four rounds the leader is the Polish GM Aleksander Mista (below), last year’s joint runner-up and the only one this time with a 100% score to date. His Round 4 win against Danny Gormally yesterday caught the eye, Black’s excellent endgame technique making your correspondent realise why these chaps are grandmasters and we are not.
White: Daniel Gormally (2506) Black: Aleksander Mista (2567)
Tradewise Hastings Masters 2015/16
White resigns
Once again, however, Hastings is overshadowed by the Tata Steel Tournament which begins on January 15th and has attracted the usual stellar cast of players. Five of the top ten players in the world are taking part and of the fourteen in the Masters Tournament, ten are in the world’s top twenty. As with last year, only the highest-graded Hastings entrant would have scraped into the Tata Steel Masters and that would only be at the expense of the local hero and regular participant, Dutch GM Loek Van Wely, who may be 132 in the world but still has an ELO grade of 2636. Naturally, we shall be following closely the fortunes of Wei Yi, who is also taking part, although he will be hoping he is in better form than he was at the Qatar Masters recently. Despite being seeded 12th, he finished in 69th position with a mere 4½/9. Magnus Carlsen was the winner but only after an admittedly easy play-off with another rising star of Chinese chess, Yu Yangyi, who won last year’s tournament. In order to force a play-off, Yu had to beat Wesley So in the final round which he did most impressively in the game featured below. Sadly, Yu will not be at the Tata Steel Masters but as well as Wei Yi there is his compatriot and world number 9, Ding Liren. Chess in China is clearly already a force to be reckoned with.
White: Yu Yangyi (2736) Black: Wesley So (2775)
Qatar Masters 2015
Black resigns