Tata Steel latest

Today is a rest day at the Tata Steel Chess Masters Tournament. After four rounds the early leader, Pavel Eljanov, has maintained his position at the head of the field with three wins and a draw. The heavyweights are breathing down his neck, however, and he has so far avoided some of the bigger names. These are early days and there are still another nine rounds to go. So what do top grandmasters do on their day off? Answer: they play football. Magnus Carlsen and Loek van Wely captained the two teams in a friendly played at Telstar F.C. this afternoon. This appears to have become an annual event as a similar match was played last year with van Wely’s team winning 14-9 – not sure who was playing in defence but perhaps Pep Guardiola was the manager. And what of the match, you may ask? Well, over to our on the spot reporter, Rook van Zugzwang, who filed this report for the Tata Steel Chess Masters website:

“Carlsen picked his assistant Peter Heine Nielsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi and his assistant Alexander Motylev, Vladimir Dobrov and Lu Shanglei. Grandmasters Benjamin Bok, Jorden van Forreest, Aryan Tari and two of Loek’s chess friends, Ard van Beek and Rob Duijn were on team Van Wely. Both teams were supplemented by players from Telstar. Telstar player Calvin Valies opened the score for Team Carlsen. Benjamin Bok scored the next two goals, bringing the score to 1-2. Carlsen scored 2-2, followed by Telstar players Stefano Lilipaly and Liban Abulahi taking Carlsen’s team to 4-2. Chinese grandmaster Lu Shanglei increased the advantage to 5-2 and Carlsen himself scored a wonderful goal half a minute before the end of the match, making it a 6-2 victory for his team and taking revenge for last year’s match.”    

Meanwhile, back at the chess Wei Yi has made a solid start although he came a cropper with the black pieces against Carlsen in Round 4 after what appeared an equal game on move 29 suddenly became ‘White is much better’ next move to ‘White is winning’ and defeat by move 33. However, his current total of 2/4 keeps him in the middle of the pack and he can take credit with this win in Round 3.

White:   Wei Yi (2706)   Black:  Ian Nepomniachtchi (2767)       

Tata Steel Chess Masters 2017

Hargreaves Shield v Bridge (h)

Broadstairs  3         Bridge   1 

1 John Couzens (125) 1-0     Tim Spencer  (130)
2 Andy Flood (117) ½-½     Chris Stampe  (127)
3 Reg Pidduck (107) 1-0     Bill Tracey (e114)
4 Bob Cronin (103) ½-½     Graeme Boxall (83)

Andy Flood writes:

A confident and strong Bridge team travelled to the reigning Hargreaves champions Broadstairs, outgrading the home team on three of the four boards, with both teams keen to maintain their unbeaten record. Early success went to Broadstairs with an excellent win by the Gullbuster on Board 1 who after sacrificing a piece for three pawns manoeuvred a won endgame by mopping up his opponent’s pawns before his higher graded opponent resigned. Reg was next to finish, playing very solid chess to guarantee at least a point, with another won endgame against a higher graded opponent.

It ended up as being a great result for Broadstairs with all team members contributing to the final total with Bob Cronin and Andy Flood both securing half a point in their drawn games finishing simultaneously and very close to the 11.00 pm deadline.  With a final score of 3-1, Broadstairs remain unbeaten and on top of the league two points ahead of Bridge halfway through the season.

Tata Steel Chess Masters

             Even the sandwiches have class

The Tata Steel Chess Masters tournament, held annually at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands,  has traditionally been one of the strongest events in the chess calendar and this year’s competition which began today  is no exception. With five of the top ten players in the world taking part and an average grade of 2751, it is comfortably the strongest tournament ever held in…er…2017. Naturally we shall be following the fortunes of Broadstairs’ adopted son, Wei Yi, and he began with an unspectacular draw in round one – as did most of the players – so here is the only win so far which puts Ukraine’s world no.15 into an early tournament lead.

 

White:  Pavel Eljanov (2755)   Black:  Richard Rapport (2702)       

Tata Steel Chess Masters 2017

Hastings final result

Congratulations to GM Deep Sengupta of India who has won this year’s Hastings International Chess Congress with a score of 7/9. Going into the final round, no fewer than 23 players were within a point of the leaders and of those, 12 had a chance of either winning or sharing the first prize. However, with four players on six points, realistically the race was between those four and the only one to win was Sengupta. After losing his second round match, he finished strongly, taking two and a half points off three top ten seeded grandmasters in his last three games. His final winning game is featured below.

                             FM Ravi Haria

However, while Indian grandmasters dominated the top boards, you might be asking yourself who was the top Briton. Was it Mark Hebden? Danny Gormally? Glenn Flear? No, it was 17-year old Ravi Haria – as featured in our last post – who beat all three of the previously mentioned GMs on his way to 6½/9, joint second place. He also achieved his second IM norm, lost only one match and, for good measure, also scored draws against Bogdan Lalic and Keith Arkell: 4/5 against GM opposition! How about that?! One final note on Hastings: congratulations to Toby Stock, formerly of this parish, on winning the Weekend Major.  It was amusing to see his club listed as Broadstairs even though he has not played for us since moving five years ago, now resident in Cambridge.  Still, we don’t object to basking in a little reflected glory – just don’t tell the ECF.

Meanwhile, our attention now shifts to the Tata Steel Masters which begins next Friday (13th). With all due respect to Hastings, this is where the big boys come out to play with five of the world’s top ten taking part including Sergey Karjakin possibly looking for some sort of revenge against Magnus Carlsen, and our good friend, Wei Yi. He is well down the pecking order and recently lost a match against Richard Rapport of Hungary to ‘decide’ who is the best U20 player in the world. He may also be looking for revenge as Rapport is in the line-up as well.

White:  Deep Sengupta (2575)   Black:  Murali Karthikeyan (2530)       

Hastings International Chess Congress 2016/7  Round 9

Hastings

In the gap between Christmas and the New Year the thoughts of many chess fans turns to Hastings and its annual chess congress. This is one of the oldest tournaments in the world and over the years has attracted some of the world’s greatest players.  Possibly the most famous is the 1895 tournament which has claims to be the strongest ever held in England. The then World Champion, Emanuel Lasker, and the former World Champion, Wilhem Steinitz, took part alongside Chigorin, Tarrasch and a number of other world-class players. To everyone’s surprise, however, the tournament was won by the American, Harry Pillsbury, in his first international competition.    Personal memories either as spectator or player include seeing Glenn Flear beaten by a young Judit Polgar in the 1989 Challengers, watching the top players in the Premier fight it out in the comfortable surroundings of the Cinque Ports Hotel and – at the other end of the scale – trying to concentrate on playing chess on the pier while the waves (visible through the cracks in the floorboards) were crashing around beneath us.

This year, thanks to some generous sponsorship resulting in a first prize of £2000, the organisers have managed to attract a sizeable number of GMs and IMs. Top seed is the Indian GM S.P.Sethuraman but he was surprisingly beaten in the first round. It was not the only early upset with the result that by round 3 there were only nine players out of the 97 with 100% scores. One of these is the rising English star, FM Ravi Haria.  At 17, he is currently graded 228 and has been on the radar since his annus mirabilis of 08/09 when his grade shot up from 95 to 169 and he was still only ten years old! He attracted attention in 2015 when he beat GM Gawain Jones in the Politiken Cup and in round 2 at Hastings this year he came up against another formidable opponent in GM Danny Gormally.

White:  Ravi Haria (2382)   Black:  Danny Gormally (2493)       

Hastings International Chess Congress 2016/7

Spolier alert! If you have not had a chance to have a go at the Christmas teaser in the last posting, now is your chance because the answer is about to be revealed. Otherwise, look away now… For the rest of you waiting on tenterhooks for the answer – and there might be one or two of you curious to know – it is annoyingly simple. In the puzzle Black cannot castle because as both pawns are on their original squares, Black’s previous move must have been with either rook or king, thereby disallowing castling.  Therefore, 1. Qa1 followed by 2. Qh8 wins. Happy New Year!