Pantsulaia wins Mumbai Mayor’s Cup 2014

Levan Pantsulaia wins Mayor’s Cup 2014

By Sagar Shah

For the past few years the Indian chess circuit has been flooded with International Grandmaster Opens. Six to eight very strong events take place in the country every year. Amongst them, the Mumbai Mayor’s Cup is definitely one of the best-received tournaments in terms of participation of strong foreign Grandmasters. This year the tournament was held from the 2nd to 9th of June 2014 at the Thakur College, Mumbai under three different categories: the ‘A’ category for players above 2000 Elo, ‘B’ for those below 2000 and the ‘C’ category below 1600.

As the name of the tournament suggests, it has the strong financial backing from the Mayor of the city, with good amount of sponsors supporting it. No wonder it has a very handsome prize money of Rs 2,400,000 (approx. $ 40,000) for all the three categories.

The beautiful trophy and handful of money ($5000) was what everyone was playing for!

The A category was very strong, with 18 grandmasters, and an average Elo of 2177 amongst the 170 players from 17 different countries, including Russia, USA, Armenia and Georgia taking part. The top seed of the event was the very strong Georgian GM Mikheil Mchedlishvili.

Mikheil Mchedlishvili (2632) recovered well from his second round loss to finish fourth with a score of 7.5/10. Mchedlishvili, could have really fought for the top honours had he not been defeated in an extremely complicated Catalan by the talented Indian IM Rahul Sangma from the black side in the second round.

IM Rahul Sangma (2322) analyses his extremely complicated game with Mikheil Mchedlishvili

The second seed of the event was the Tajikistan number one
GM Farrukh Amonatov (2609), who finished fifth

Amonatov Farrukh was the victim of a fascinating combinative attack by Vinay Kumar Matta (2183) in the very first round. Vinay is feared in the Indian chess circles as a fierce attacker. He stayed true to his strength and played a brilliant attacking game which is worth studying.

Great combinative vision was on show by Vinay Kumar Matta against Amonatov

The top two seeds had their accidents in the first two rounds. That meant the road was clear for the third seed to forge ahead. He took the opportunity and made no mistakes.

GM Levan Pantsulaia (2577) dominated the field right from the start scoring 8/10 with a performance of 2688 and finishing first. Levan was also the winner of the 2013 edition of the Mumbai Mayor’s Cup. This year he went home richer by Rs 300,000 ($5000). The financial capital of India is a lucky place for this Georgian player. When asked whether he intended to return to Mumbai again, he replied within an instant, “Yes of course!”

Levan played the entire tournament, scoring six wins and four draws. He played many interesting games but rates his eighth round game against the young Indian International Master Swayams Mishra to be the best. It was a Benoni Defence by Levan, who is a world famous expert on this opening. After sacrificing an exchange for a pawn the players reached a dynamic middlegame position, which was nicely balanced. There was no way for Black to break through. But Levan was rewarded for his persistence and patience as Swayams blundered. What followed was a beautiful combination of double attacks worth playing and learning from. This win sealed the deal for Levan as draws in the last two rounds were enough for him to be crowned as the champion.

Second place was the reward for the unbeaten and consistent GM Aleksandrov Aleksej (2554) from Belarus (right). At one point in his career Aleksandrov had a rating of 2670 and was a world beater. Though he has lost almost 120 Elo points, he still is a force to reckon with when he plays with full concentration and gives his best as he did at the Mumbai Mayor’s Cup.

The find for Indians from this tournament was definitely IM Himanshu Sharma (2372). The 31-year-old player from India performed excellently scoring 7.5/10 and finishing third. With 2615 performance Himanshu not only scored his maiden GM norm but also gained 30 Elo points.

Himanshu Sharma is an extremely strong Indian IM who in September 2009 had a rating of 2471. Now he is almost 100 points below his highest Elo, but this performance shows what he is truly capable of. When I asked him after the tournament what exactly he did differently here, his reply was simple, “I keep learning from my mistakes. In my game against Amonatov Farrukh I was better and should have won that endgame. However I made a premature exchange of rooks which helped him save the game. This was the seventh game. That night I realized that sometimes it’s important to let the opponent exchange your piece rather than you going out of your way to do that. This insecurity of exchanging pieces when ahead on material can often lead to losing the advantage. I learnt an important lesson and made good use of it in my eighth round game against Harutjunyan Gevorg.”

I have taken extract from both the games to show you what Himanshu exactly meant.

Himanshu learnt an important lesson about not exchanging pieces prematurely and put it to good use in the next game itself.

If Himanshu keeps learning from his mistakes at this rate, there is no reason why he shouldn’t become a grandmaster very soon.

Top final Ranking (after ten rounds)

• Full rankings of all 150 players

Part two, a pictorial report, will follow soon – with pictures of not only the top players, winners and norm achievers, but also from the beautiful and fast paced city of Mumbai.

All pictures for these reports were taken by Amruta Mokal, who is a not only an enthusiastic photographer but also a professional chess player with an Elo of 2043 and four WIM norms. Photography is her passion and she loves to cover tournaments, capturing various expressions and emotions of chess players so engrossed in the game. She is also the wife of the author of this article, Sagar Shah.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN You can use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.