Asian Continental Championship: Wei Yi and Padmini Rout win

Tiebreaks determine winners in both groups

The Asian Continental Championship came to a close in Manila, the Philippines with Wei Yi and Padmini Rout winning the title prize in the Open and Women’s group respectively. Wei had finished joint first alongside Amin Tabatabaei and Le Quang Liem but was awarded the title prize due to his better tiebreak score. In the women's group too, Padmini Rout was joined by WGM Gong Qianyun in the first place after the final round. But since Padmini had won her direct encounter (which was the first tiebreak) against Gong in the sixth round, a draw was enough for her to clinch the title.

Top five finishers (L to R): Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (5th), Le Quang Liem (3rd), Wei Yi (1st), Amin Tabatabaei (2nd), Surya Shekhar Ganguly (4th) | Photo: Genghis Imperial

Padmini had led the women’s event all along and cruised to victory drawing all of her last three games. Wei Yi, on the other hand, had briefly slipped down to second place after round 7. In the penultimate round, he climbed back to the top after defeating Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan.

The first official world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, has often been quoted saying if he could establish an unassailable knight on e6 or d6, he could go to sleep, for the game would win itself. Nodirbek Abdusattorov also found the d6 knight in the above position to be a bone in the throat. So much so, that he decided to throw in the towel at this point!

On the top board, GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Amin Tabatabaei, the tournament leaders at the time, discussed an Italian opening. Tabatabaei induced complications in the middlegame by giving up two knights for a rook and two pawns. 

The Popular Italian

In the actual DVD Bologan covered all answers by Black against 3.Bc4, especially 3...Bc5, presenting all relevant possibilities for White.

Play continued 21…Nxd3 22.Qxd3 Nxb4. The computers preferred white’s position at several points after this but Tabatabaei stuck to his plan of advancing his queenside pawns to seek counterplay. Ganguly could not find the best moves to press in the position but he did manage to win one of Black's two queenside passers and blockade the second to hold the game to a draw after 57 moves.

In the final round, Ganguly was facing Le Quang Liem, who was half a point behind him on the score tally. Le, as white, went for the English Opening, which soon drifted into the lines of the reversed Sicilian Dragon. The game remained equal for the most part but as in the previous round, Ganguly began making inaccuracies in the endgame and found himself under pressure. 

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Black was already under a bit of pressure here when Ganguly's 62…Bf8? brought the game to an instant end. There followed 63.Qh3+ Bh6 64.Kf6 Qd2 65.Qf5+ Kh8 and 66.Kg6 when Black could not have avoided the loss of the h6 bishop or an eventual checkmate.

Le Quang Liem made his way into the top 5 by defeating Surya Shekhar Ganguly in the final round | Photo: Almario Marlon Bernardino Jr. 

Final standings (top 20)

All available games

Women’s Championship

Ever since the sixth round, Padmini Rout had remained ahead of her nearest rival by a full point’s margin. In the last two rounds, the Indian international master had no problems sailing to a victory with short draws.

Padmini Rout finished first scoring three comfortable draws in her last three games | Photo: Peter Long

Meanwhile, Gong Qianyun tried hard to topple Padmini off the pole position but, in the end, only managed to catch up with the leader. And since Padmini had defeated Gong in the sixth round, she had nothing to worry about. Gong’s final round game against Munkhzul Turmunkh was especially spectacular. 

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At the outset, Black seems to have a strong attack but there is no knock-out blow. In fact, the computer evaluates the position to be slightly better for white after 23.Qd2. However, white grabbed the h3 knight in the game but this proved to be disastrous. White lost her queen after 23…Rxe3! 24.fxe3 Bxh3+ 25.Ke2 Bg4+. Although white still had a rook and two bishops in the resulting position, Black's kingside pawns were much too fast.  

Final standings (top 20)

All available games

Update on the Vidit Gujrathi incident

In our first report on the event, we had mentioned GM Vidit Gujrathi’s complaints regarding the accommodation and the attacks that Vidit and his colleagues, Abhijit Kunte and MR Lalith Babu, fell prey to on the eve of the event. ChessBase India had also tried to get in touch with some of the officials from the National Chess Federation of the Philippines and the Tournament Director of the event but none of the emails was answered.

However, in a recent update on the incident, one of the founding members of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines, Bobby Ang, addressed these issues in a report in BusinessWorld. According to Ang, the police had reviewed closed-circuit TV recordings of the incident and concluded “the three players went out and passed by a group of children (not armed goons) and two of the kids (who were half the size of the players) asked them if they could spare some change. The players ignored the beggars and went back to the hotel. Nobody was “cornered and attacked by armed goons.”

About the complaints regarding the accommodation, Ang wrote, “they were comparing the rate of a stripped-down room rate with no amenities at all with that of a single room with breakfast, lunch and dinner and function room. Most players took the option of a double room which is $85 per person. No chess organizer here in the Philippines would stoop to milking visitors from foreign shores by marking up hotel rates. Maybe this is done in other countries, but not in the Philippines.”

Three days before this piece was published, Vidit had posted about the incident on Facebook stating that the perpetrators were young delinquents.

Talking to ChessBase India, Vidit said, “It is a lie that they were just begging. The officials agreed that these people were delinquents. And I have zero problems if the CCTV footage is made public.”

When asked about the accommodation, he added: “The room was absolutely horrible. You can ask any player. There were rats in the room!”

Finally, Cliburn Anthony A. Orbe, the treasurer of the National Chess Association of the Philippines, took to Facebook to clarify the entire incident. In a live video stream, he read excerpts from a copy on the police report of the incident, which affirmed that the youngsters were only begging. He also admitted that these beggars were juvenile delinquents but did not possess weapons. However, they were begging aggressively and were bothering the trio. He further added that he understood Vidit, Lalith Babu and Kunte's side. "They (the Indians) were not familiar with the place. They may have sincerely thought that those minors had weapons." 

"There are no armed goons in Makati, especially in the Central Business District" - Cilburn Anthony A. Orbe

Links

• Official site
• Asian Continental Championship: Two at the top
• Asian Continental Championship: An unfortunate start