Magnus Carlsen’s uneven progress through the online Meltwater Champions Tour, two tournament victories in six attempts, still leaves the world champion in pole position for the 10-player Tour final over the board at San Francisco in September.
There have been suggestions that the 30-year-old has lacked focus at times, and he admitted to feeling unwell on the penultimate day of last weekend’s FTX Crypto Cup, but the Norwegian still wins his share of impressive games. His hard-fought victory over Wesley So was significant as the US champion had beaten Carlsen in two previous finals and has emerged as the world No 1’s main Tour rival.
One of Carlsen’s eccentricities has been his use of 1 b2-b4, the Polish/Sokolsky/orangutan discussed in last week’s column and a rare visitor to elite chess. Carlsen brought it out yet again in a critical game against So, but got nothing from the opening, then blundered horribly in a level position.
Carlsen’s world championship challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, finished third, and the pair will face each other twice over the board at Stavanger in September in advance of their €2.2m, 14-game title series at Dubai. Both San Francisco and Stavanger are scheduled just two months before Carlsen’s global defence, which some previous champions would have reckoned too short an interval for preparation.
Complaints are increasing over the readiness of Tour players to halve out quickly by using copycat sequences, which often consist of an early threefold repetition of position or of hoovering most of the pieces off the board. The structure of Tour events, with all-play-all preliminaries qualifying the top eight for the knockout stage, encourages a safety-first approach.
In the Crypto Cup qualifying rounds, So won his first two games, defeated an outclassed tailender, and drew almost all the rest by familiar patterns. Hikaru Nakamura and Teimour Radjabov have frequently been criticised in online viewer comments.
There have been calls for the Tour to ban certain opening sequences, which would be an ineffective remedy as there are many other drawing lines to choose from. Dropping players from the Tour invitation list is the drastic and ultimate resort, but this would weaken the Tour’s claim to feature the top players in the world.
The Covid-19 pandemic is easing in some countries, and the annual over the board Tour organised from St Louis, cancelled in 2020, resumes this Saturday with a classical elite all-play-all in Bucharest, Romania. No Carlsen or Nepomniachtchi, but a strong lineup is headed by world No 2 Fabiano Caruana and the rest of the top 10. Play starts at 1pm BST, and is free to watch live online.
Gibraltar’s annual open was cancelled, but its Caleta Hotel has just hosted the women’s Grand Prix which qualified two players into the 2022 women’s candidates and an eventual challenge to China’s Ju Wenjun. The Rock has always made it a key policy to encourage women’s chess, and its former participants have included the all-time top two women, Judit Polgar and Hou Yifan.
Zhansaya Abdumalik was the star. The 21-year-old was unbeaten on 8.5/11, won first prize with a round to spare, reached a 2500 rating which qualified for the GM title at open level, jumped to the fringe of the women’s world top 10, and received personal congratulations from the Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Abdumalik’s most visual win came when she refuted erratic opening play to trap her opponent’s queen in 17 moves.
Bizarrely, Abdumalik was officially only a reserve player for the Grand Prix, so was ineligible for the candidates qualifying places, which went to India’s Humpy Koneru, who stayed away after winning two previous tournaments, and to Russia’s Kateryna Lagno. The event attracted a huge online audience from eastern Europe and Asia, and more than 100,000 spectators watched it on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
The Crypto Cup, Bucharest and Gibraltar are all important events, but a small all-play-all which starts in Budapest on Saturday may prove more significant than any of them.
Abhimanyu Mishra, the 12-year-old American who already has two of the three required norms for the grandmaster title, is going for his third and final GM norm of a 2600-rated performance at First Saturday June in the Hungarian capital.
Mishra’s live rating is 2498, with 2500 needed, so that is no problem. In his latest event, he lost twice early but recovered strongly and took first place on tie-break with 6/9, just a point short of the GM title. His final round win against the top seed is impressive as Black gradually uses his broad centre to create a decisive attack on the white king.
Mishra became the world’s youngest international master at 10 years, nine months and three days, beating the previous record of India’s Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa by 17 days. The plan then was to break Sergey Karjakin’s grandmaster age record of 12 years seven months by as wide a margin as possible as a step towards still higher targets.
Then the pandemic took a hand, so that Mishra played hardly any over-the-board tournaments during 2020. Hence the bold plan of moving to eastern Europe so as to take advantage of the circuit of Budapest all-play-all tournaments with guaranteed title norms, albeit requiring a high points total, normally 7/9.
Mishra was born on 5 February 2009, so still has until 5 September to break Karjakin’s record, although his results suggest that it will happen much sooner. This is just an incidental target, a stop on the way to his real ambition of becoming the youngest 2600 and 2700 rated player by his mid-teens. Caruana achieved 2600 at 15 and Carlsen 2700 at 16, but it is still a stiff landmark. Can the boy from Englishtown, New Jersey, deliver? First Saturday, with the pressure on, will provide a serious test. Live coverage is expected on major viewing websites.
3726 1..Rxe5! 2 dxe5 Qg4 (attacking d1 and g2 so forcing the reply) 3 Qf1 Nh3+ 4 Kh1 Qxd1! (Nxf2+ also wins) 5 Qxd1 Nxf2+ 6 Kg1 Nxd1 and White, a knight down, resigned.
