Chess

Hats off to Harry Grieve, who took clear first place at the Chessable British Championships which concluded in Torquay last Sunday. I am in awe of the courage he showed in the final round game, against the international master Matthew Wadsworth. Grieve set the tone in the opening, sacrificing rook for bishop, but gaining long-term compensation. Wadsworth reacted well, but let his advantage slip, whereupon Grieve doubled up his investment. After several hours’ play, they reached the murky position shown below. Matthew Wadsworth–Harry Grieve Chessable British Championship, Torquay 2022 50...Qb7 The mate threat on b1 forces White’s hand. 51 Rxd3 cxd3 52 Qc3 Qa6 53 Qb3 Ke4! This move looks right, when I see it, but it takes real guts to play it.

Everyone remembers their first Olympiad. As I boarded the flight to Chennai last month, it struck me that two full decades have passed since my Olympiad debut in Bled, 2002. Respectable in the seniority stakes, though one of the charms of this biennial team event is that you can count on meeting someone excited to reminisce about Dubai 1986, or perhaps Lugano 1968, and who hasn’t missed one since. This year, teams from around 200 nations – perhaps 2,000 players in all – made the trip to India. The event was moved from Moscow with just a few months’ notice, but any fears about the hasty organisation were quickly allayed.

At the Chennai Olympiad, the Indian team began as second seeds, even with former World Champion Vishy Anand absent from the lineup. But it is the host country’s privilege to field more than one team, and India used its second team to showcase the next generation of talent. This team, which included three 16-year-olds, even won bronze, narrowly ahead of the first team. The gold medals went to another team of exceptionally talented youngsters from Uzbekistan, while Armenia took silver. Dommaraju Gukesh, who was born in Chennai, produced an astonishing performance on board 1 for the second team. He began with eight consecutive victories, including a victory over former World Championship challenger Fabiano Caruana.

I chatted to a spectator after one of my games at the Sparkassen Chess Trophy in Dortmund. ‘A close shave today, wasn’t it?’ he began. ‘Yes, I can’t believe my opponent escaped with a draw.’ ‘No, I think you were losing.’ ‘Oh, but didn’t you see my beautiful mating idea with b5?’ ‘There’s a fly in the ointment – have another look,’ he said. [The penny drops, eventually.] ‘Oops. Ah well, better lucky than good!’ Fortunately, my opponent shared my delusion during the game. And doubly so, in that my misplaced confidence spared me the need to conduct an arduous defence. My opponent has just snatched a pawn on a3. After 39 Rf4 Re8 40 Rff7 Rb8 my rooks would hit a brick wall.

On International Chess Day, 20 July, Magnus Carlsen announced that he will not defend his world championship title next year. The Norwegian won the title in 2013 by beating Viswanathan Anand in Chennai, and went on to defend his title against Anand once more, then Sergey Karjakin, Fabiano Caruana and most recently Ian Nepomniachtchi. Carlsen stressed that he has no intention of retiring. In fact, his stated goal is to keep improving, unencumbered by the grind of preparing for a new world championship match. (Each one might easily demand six months of preparation.) Reaching an international rating of 2900 is still a target he has in mind, though that Everest remains a long way off.

Modern chess computers, like the program ‘Stockfish’, are treated as oracles. Plug in a position, start the engine, and within a fraction of a second it will identify the best move and its numerical evaluation (+1.27 pawns!). So it is a natural misconception that an ambitious player must commit to endless clicking and memorising. On that theory, grandmasters are simply the ones who have set upon this treadmill with unusual fervour. I have done my share of gawping at the screen, but in wiser moments, I remember that when Stockfish is running, my brain goes to sleep. The firehose of answers is unmemorable if you don’t articulate any questions.

The ‘English chess explosion’ that began in the 1970s produced a bumper crop of grandmasters, which meant that by the late 1980s, England was second only to the Soviet Union in international team events. Those days are behind us, but the march of time means that England is now a force to be reckoned with in senior team events. The World Senior Team Championship took place last month in Acqui Terme, Italy. England’s over-50s team got a boost from the addition of Michael Adams, who reached that milestone last year. With Nigel Short, Mark Hebden, John Emms and Keith Arkell, they began the event as top seeds. In the fourth round, they saw off a serious challenge from the second seeded USA, with its team of emigrants from the former USSR.

Ian Nepomniachtchi is back for more. The former world championship challenger left his rivals in the dust at the Candidates tournament in Madrid, seizing victory with a round to spare. So he will once again challenge Magnus Carlsen, in a world championship match slated for 2023. Or will he? A few weeks after beating Nepomniachtchi the first time around (in Dubai 2021), Carlsen stoked some intrigue when he stated: ‘It is unlikely that I will play another match unless maybe if the next challenger represents the next generation.’ ‘Nepo’ does not fit the bill; at 31, he is the same age as Carlsen.

Forbidden things have a secret charm – that delicious paradox applies to the chessboard just as it does in life. Moves which appear to be unthinkable (for example, when the piece in question can be readily captured) can create a strong aesthetic effect. Composers of chess problems often make great play of this fact – so much so that it is a useful rule of thumb for a solver. If you spot a move which appears to be prevented for several reasons, there’s a good chance you have your solution. Once in a while, this pursuit of maximum mischief proves its worth in practical play as well.

The Candidates tournament is underway in Madrid, where eight of the world’s best players vie for the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen in the World Championship. As the event began, Carlsen gave his judgment on each player’s prospects, dividing them into three tiers. Tier 1: Fabiano Caruana and Ding Liren are ‘the best and most consistent’. Tier 2: The ‘dark horses’ are Ian Nepomniachtchi, winner of the previous Candidates event, and Alireza Firouzja, whose meteoric rise last year took him to no. 2 in the world rankings (though since overtaken by Ding). Tier 3: The rest – Richard Rapport, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Hikaru Nakamura and Teimour Radjabov. Of course, none of the latter players is an easy mark.

Returning to the board, Mamedyarov looks at Anand’s outstretched hand with bemusement. It can’t be a draw offer – that would be a rude way to do it, and besides, the tournament rules prohibit an early peace treaty. No, Anand is resigning! He looks crestfallen, like a child whose ice cream has fallen to the ground. Mamedyarov pauses before taking his hand, and now Anand looks puzzled by his opponent’s hesitation. Here is the position: Vishy Anand-Shakhriyar Mamedyarov Norway Chess, June 2022 (See left diagram) Anand had just played 22 Qd3-b5, which pressures e8 and b7. No sooner had he played it than he spotted the flaw – Black can win on the spot with the brilliant 22…Qxf3+!, since 23 Kxf3 Nh4 is mate.

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, ‘El Ajedrecista’, died in prison in the United States on 31 May. The Colombian drug lord, a leader of the Cali cartel in the 1990s, acquired his splendid nickname, which translates as ‘the Chess Player’, on account of his ability to stay a step ahead of his rivals and pursuers. Curiosity sent me hunting for more information, and in doing so I stumbled into an unexpected rabbit hole. For it turns out that ‘El Ajedrecista’ was also the name given to a primitive chess-playing automaton, designed by a Spanish engineer, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo, and unveiled at the University of Paris in 1914.

Ding Liren took first place at last month’s Chessable Masters, the fourth event in the 2022 Meltwater Champions Tour. But it was his defeated opponent in the final, 16-year-old Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa from India, who stole the show. The teenager’s reputation is already well established, and he made headlines in the (non-chess) media in February when he beat Magnus Carlsen in a rapid game at the Airthings Masters, the first event in the tour. Remarkably, at the Chessable Masters, he added a second victory over Carlsen, who blundered in an almost even position in their game from the preliminary stage. Even more impressive were the scalps he took in the knockout stages. In the quarter finals he scored a 2.5-1.

Viswanathan Anand left the spectators in awe at the Superbet Rapid earlier this month. The ‘Tiger of Madras’, as he is sometimes known, was awarded a wildcard spot to the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour in Warsaw, which began just a couple of days after the first leg ended in Bucharest. At 52, the former world champion was the oldest player by some margin, and at least on paper could not be counted as one of the favourites. And yet Anand devoured the field in the rapid section, winning his first five games in a row, and secured clear first place with 7/9. It was a joy to watch. But only those with short memories will be truly surprised by his display of ageless ability.

The Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest concluded last weekend in a dramatic tiebreak between Wesley So, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian, who all took wildly different paths to finish the main event on 5.5/9. Wesley So was the tournament rock. He won two controlled games against Nepomniachtchi and Mamedyarov and otherwise never looked in danger. The other two certainly weren’t rocks, but they couldn’t decide whether to be paper or scissors. Vachier-Lagrave won two sharp battles, against Caruana and Firouzja. But when he met Aronian in round 6, it was Vachier-Lagrave who volunteered for a shredding. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave-Levon Aronian Superbet Chess Classic, Bucharest, May 2022 The previous move, 25 Kc3-d4, placed the king on the worst possible square.

Yuri Averbakh had a wry explanation for why he was made chairman of the USSR Chess Federation in 1972. There was a feeling that Boris Spassky, the Soviet world champion, would lose his title to Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik that year. Nobody else wanted to deal with the fallout, so Averbakh got the job. Whatever the truth of that, Averbakh had been deputy chairman for ten years already, and throughout his life showed a tireless appetite for almost every role that chess has to offer. He left his mark on the game as a player, politician, writer, analyst, editor, researcher, historian and arbiter. Yuri Lvovich Averbakh died in Moscow on 7 May, just a few months after celebrating his 100th birthday. He was born in Kaluga, a small city 100 miles from Moscow.

There is a video in which a small group of students amble about passing a basketball back and forth. The instruction at the start is to count how many times the players pass the basketball. Then comes the punchline – did you see the gorilla? Halfway through, a figure in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the scene, beats its chest and walks off. It was designed as a psychological experiment, with the startling outcome that about half the viewers missed the gorilla altogether. One explanation is obvious – they were focused on the basketball. But how can you miss a gorilla? Blunders at the chessboard can be just as perplexing. True, some are easily ascribed to nervousness or carelessness. Those are often the ones where you kick yourself right after making the move.

In the dying seconds of an online blitz game, I promoted a pawn and instantly regretted it. There was nothing wrong with the move, but the extra second spent on choosing and clicking the queen was more than I could spare. A few flailing moves later, my time ran out. Of course, I had forgotten to switch on ‘Always Queen’, a handy setting offered by all decent chess websites. Some 99 per cent of the time, a queen is what you want. But just occasionally, a knight, rook or bishop is superior. A knight may land with check, where a queen does not. To see a rook or bishop trump a queen is rarer still, as neither piece has any obvious point in its favour. But it can happen in scenarios where a queen would stalemate the opponent, but a lesser piece would not.

There are lessons in chess that cannot be learned from a book. One lands, from time to time, in a position which amounts to a trial by fire – a test of conviction as much as skill. The experience of such a game can stay with you for ever, radically altering your sense of what is possible at the chessboard. At least, I suspect that is what 13-year-old Shreyas Royal went through last month, when he faced the Georgian grandmaster Baadur Jobava in the first round of the European Individual Championship in Slovenia. Jobava’s peak rating placed him in the world’s top 20, so this was a David and Goliath pairing where at the outset the youngster had nothing to lose.

Wesley So won the final Fide Grand Prix, which was held in Berlin earlier this month. But it was Hikaru Nakamura, his defeated opponent in the final, who had the most to celebrate. Since he won the opening leg in February, in reaching the semi-final Nakamura secured a coveted spot in the Fide Candidates tournament, whose winner will become Magnus Carlsen’s next challenger. The second qualifying spot went to Richard Rapport, who won the second Grand Prix leg in March. The Candidates event will begin in Madrid in June, when the two will be joined by previous qualifiers Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja, Fabiano Caruana, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Teimour Radjabov. The final place looks likely to go to Ding Liren, in light of Sergey Karjakin’s disqualification.