After the last three rounds of the London Classic, the race for the top looks like it will be between eight-time British champion Michael Adams, 52, and 17-year-old Indian Dommaraju Gukesh.
Both leaders took advantage of their opponents’ mistakes in Thursday’s sixth round. Adams scored a full-point shot when Jules Moussard inexplicably fell behind bishop on move 32. A simple pawn move would have preserved the winning position for the Frenchman.
Gukesh was gifted a mating attack when England’s Luke McShane quickly made a fatal switch on move 36, turning the draw into a defeat. The sixth round was also a failure for Hans Niemann; 20-year-old US grandmaster Ruy Lopez mishandled Berlin and was well beaten by Ukrainian Andrei Volokitin.
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Classic, characterized by combative chess, sharp plays and simple mistakes, now looks ready for Adams, the oldest opponent. Nicknamed “The Spider”, the Cornishman retained his own subtle strategic style. He has the white pieces in his next two matches, then matches 14-year-old Shreyas Royal in Sunday’s final round.
If Adams slips up, Gukesh will have a chance to get the tournament victory he needs to take the lead on the Fide Circuit, whose winner qualifies for the Candidates world championship in April 2024.
After the sixth round the leaders were Adams (England) 4.5, Gukesh (India) 4, Amin Tabatabaei (Iran) 3.5, Niemann (USA), Mateusz Bartel (Poland), Volokitin (Ukraine) and Moussard (France) 3.
Earlier, Gukesh scored 26 Rd2 against Moussard?? When he made a mistake with , he lost full points. (26 Qd4!) the winning counter allows 26…Bxa3!
Niemann came to London directly after achieving the best result of his career in Zagreb. The 20-year-old US player had a perfect score against Royal, sacrificing a knight, then sacrificing both wickets for a mating attack, but overall opted for a quieter approach than in Croatia.
After the fourth round, there was a Christmas party where Niemann, Iran’s No. 2, and Tabatabaei played a minute’s worth of bullet games before leaving together, clearly best friends. They came together the next day, strumming a known and possibly pre-arranged plot line, finishing with hours more time than when they started (due to the increase per move).
Royal needed 4/9 points for the GM norm and seemed to achieve that when he won a nice strategic game against Tabatabaei. In the later rounds, the 14-year-old player’s inexperience became evident.
By the way, what about Magnus Carlsen? Norway’s world No. 1 will defend his online Champions Tour title overall in Toronto from Saturday until December 16. Carlsen’s seven rivals for the $500,000 prize fund include world Nos. 2 and 3 Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, as well as Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
After Toronto, Carlsen will travel to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he will defend his World Rapid and World Blitz titles from December 26-31
He’s warming up for No. 1 Toronto this week. Carlsen won Titled Tuesday with a near-perfect 10.5/11, earning Firouzja just one draw. On Wednesday, he reached 3340, surpassing Nakamura’s last score of 3332, the highest rating ever recorded on chess.com.
Two schoolgirls took first place at the UK Women’s Blitz Championships in Leamington Spa last weekend. 13-year-old Elis Dicen took the title from eight-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan in the tiebreak. Both scored 11/14 but Dicen won his individual match, one of the best in the tournament. This was a 3+2 blitz: three minutes per player plus a two-second increment per move for the entire game.
The duo finished ahead of 2019 under-18 world girls blitz champion Kamila Hryshchenko and the former Moscow women’s champion’s experienced international rival. Elmira Mirzoeva finished fourth and fifth. It was a double success for Sivanandan, who finished second to Mirzoeva last year and shared the 2022 British title. All 15 finalists had previously placed first or second in the regional qualifiers.
Both British girls have made rapid progress recently. Dicen won the open division in the Delancey UK Schools Competition final at Blenheim Palace, becoming the only girl in the competition’s history to do so ahead of all boys, while Sivanandan had a clean sweep of the world under-eight classic, rapid and 33/33. and blitz championships, scoring an impressive 7/11 against much higher-rated male specialists in Riga, Latvia.
More than two decades after the yesteryear trio of Harriet Hunt, Ruth Sheldon and Jovanka Houska won world or European titles at under-18 and under-20 level, the future of British women’s and girls’ chess looks bright again. British women’s champion Lan Yao, 22, is a rising star in international football.
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At youth level, the work of She Plays to Win, chaired by England women’s coach IM Lorin d’Costa, is bearing fruit. Plays to Win aims to attract more girls to the game through all-female online tournaments and weekly Sunday simulations hosted by French multiple champion Sophie Milliet in London.
Women’s chess in England is already young. More than half of Britain’s women in the top 50 in the Fide rankings were born in 2000 or later, compared to just 12% of men. The British Chess Federation and women’s chess director Aga Milewska are encouraging rising players with the help of chess charities and a new £500,000 government grant.
Internationally, women in the UK rank 20th, behind Western European countries France and Germany, as well as world leaders China and India; but results are expected to improve thanks to Sivanandan’s promises and the emerging talented young generation.
In addition to Dicen and Sivanandan, the ratings trajectories of Eugenia Karas (15), Abigail Weersing (17), Nina Pert (15), Anusha Subramanian (14) and Tashika Arora (15) indicate the potential to reach the England women’s team in the next few years. is showing. .
3897: 1 Rxb7! Qxb7 2 Qf6+ Kg4 3 Qe6+ Kh5 4 Qxg8 Rg7 (Qg7 lasts longer) 5 Qf8 d4 6 e6 c5 7 Qxg7! and Black resigned (Qxg7 8 e7 and queens).