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Even as I write these lines, the World Championship Match has drawn to a close in Singapore. Gukesh has set a record by winning the title at the age of eighteen.
The ascent of the young player to the chess Olympus began with his triumph at the Candidates Tournament early this year. He also led the way for the Indian team winning gold in the recent Chess Olympiad. This issue is devoted to the grand event and offers games and their analysis.
The critical moment for the Indian team was the encounter with the USA team in the penultimate, 10th round. While Praggnanandhaa lost to Wesley So, Gukesh beat Fabiano Caruana and Arjun Erigaisi beat Leinier Dominguez. Anish Giri annotates the face-off between Gukesh and Caruana:
Gukesh Dommaraju v. Fabiano Caruana | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza
The extraordinary tension of the match is summed up by Wesley So who annotates his game with Praggnanandhaa in this issue:
As such, the USA team did not do badly. However, Caruana and So lost one game each. Dominguez lost two games. Only Aronian was unbeaten.
Five teams tied for second place with 17 match points in the open section, with the United States and Uzbekistan securing silver and bronze, respectively, based on tiebreaks. China, Serbia, and Armenia came close and lost out on Sonneborn-Berger points.
The Uzbekistan team suffered losses on account of the poor form of Sindarov and Yakubboev. The Chinese team went down for more than one reason. Ding Liren was still in a poor state, bogged down by 7 draws and 1 loss. In the end, the Chinese team did not even field him against Gukesh in the crucial India-China Match. Wei Yi, who faced Gukesh, conceded defeat after a marathon game lasting 80 moves:
The Indian team made 21/22 points far ahead of these runner-up teams, with Gukesh and Arjun finishing on a record score of 9/10.
Who could have posed a challenge to the Indian team? Only the Russian team. However, Russia has been banned from official FIDE competitions on account of the invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukraine team was led by Vasyl Ivanchuk, and he had mixed results, beating Wesley So among others. It was his encounter with Richard Rapport that turned out to be entertaining.
Attack like a Super Grandmaster
In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM†with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.
On seeing this game our first impression is that the Ukrainian maverick went too far with his king march. But matters are not so clear after White plays 20.Bh6! instead of 20.Be5??
I was also surprised to see players from the other war-torn state, Palestine, participating in the Olympiad.
Ms Rasika Ratnaparkhi, reporting for ChessBase India, wrote:
They faced visa and travel issues, and the Palestine team was one of them. After a long battle, they finally made it to the venue to battle on the board. Chess players in Palestine have fewer opportunities, limited access to coaches, and fewer chess clubs. That's why, competing in Olympiad is a very big opportunity for them to get international exposure.
Team Palestine | Photo: FIDE / Maria Emelianova
I would have liked to see here a more detailed coverage of the Women’s Olympiad in this issue. Here are a few observations on the performance of leading teams.
The Ukrainian women's team suffered due to the absence of the Muzychuk sisters.
The Polish team did beat India by a narrow score. However, they did not do so well in other matches.
The USA women's team had mixed results. Carissa Yip and Alice Lee were both unbeaten and won individual medals for their performance. The experienced Irina Krush and young Gulrukhbegim Tokhirzhnova suffered as many as three defeats each in their matches. In the end, the USA women's team was lucky to win the bronze medal.
The Kazakh team had mixed results. On the top boards, Kamalidenova suffered three defeats. Nurmanova lost two games. Assaubuyeva and Balabayeva remained unbeaten.
The performance of the Indian women's team was not without adventures. They did win the first seven matches and then lost to Poland in the 8th round. In the 9th round, they were second behind Kazakhstan after a 2-2 draw with the USA. However, in the 10th round, they beat China (2½-1½). In the 11th and final round they beat Azerbaijan, even as the Kazakhs were held to a draw (2-2) by the USA.
Final result:
This bland summary does little justice to what was happening over the board in the Women's Olympiad. Before the second round the Indian women players were held up on account of transport issues. Their opponents, the Czech players, refused to start the clock till the Indian women players turned up. They did happen to lose the match, but won the hearts and minds of their rivals, not to mention spectators all over the world. Where else can one find such sportsmanship?
In the 4th round the Indian team beat the French team and the tense match between Divya Deshmukh and Mitra Hejazipour held spectators in thrall. I didn't find annotations to the game in this issue. For now, readers have to be content with my commentary:
The final phase of the game is marked by a tragicomedy of errors. Otherwise both players showed great fighting spirit. Mitra Hejazipour's sacrifice of a piece nearly turned tables on her unsuspecting opponent, and she missed a stunning combination that would have allowed her to share the honours in the end.
A few words on this remarkable player here would not be out of place: Mitra Hejazipour is a quintessential rebel who refused to wear hijab in an international tournament following the diktat of the rulers in Iran and settled in France.
The turning point for the Indian team was the loss to the Polish team in the 8th round. Harika lost to Alina Kashlinskaya. R Vaishali lost to Monika Socko. Divya Deshmukh outplayed Aleksandra Maltevskaya. So everything depended on Vantika Agrawal to win the game with Alicja Sliwicka and level the score in the match with Poland. Sadly, this was not to be. Here is what happened.
The aim of this course is to help you understand how to make tactical opportunities arise as well as to sharpen your tactical vision - these selected lectures will help to foster your overall tactical understanding.
Vantika reproached herself for the terrible oversight.
Sadly, matters did not improve much in the next round as the Indian team scored 2-2 in the match with the USA and fell behind Kazakhstan in the tournament standings. The morale of the players was low, and their spirits were lifted by the sympathy and friendly words of team captain Abhijit Kunte. Days later Vaishali recalled:
We had this huge setback after seven good rounds. We lost to Poland and drew with the USA to concede the lead. The night was not looking great. We had a team meeting. Our captain Abhijit Sir said, 'We have to change something'. So we went for a walk. We had a good time discussing things, chess and non-chess. That really helped.
An emotional Harika Dronavali with team captain Abhijit Kunte | Photo: FIDE / Michal Walusza
Among female players Eman Sawan had a remarkable result in the Olympiad. This Palestinian player along with other members of her team missed the first round on account of visa issues. She went on to score 7 wins and 2 draws in the event. Admittedly, she did not encounter great resistance in her games. Here is a striking finish from her play.
In terms of human interest the participation of children made a great impact on the chess Olympiad. It's hard to believe that these tiny tots had come to represent their lands and play. In the near future we shall see and hear more of them.
This issue has a special feature on Dommaraju Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi with 4 videos, one each on their opening play and style
There are 3 opening videos in this issue. In the first video, young Felix Blohberger offers analysis of a line in the Spanish Anti-Berlin (C65):
It's interesting to note that the line is from a game that he lost as Black to Benjamin Gledura in the Olympiad.
In the second video, Jan Werle offers a discussion of a long line in the Sicilian Sveshnikov (B33):
In the third video, Nico Zwirs introduces an opening novelty in the Symmetrical English Opening with which he recently won a game against Christian Gloeckler at the Sparkassen Chess Trophy, Dortmund (an event that he also won).
Take your pick.
Top trainers strongly recommend regular study of well-explained classical games to improve your understanding of chess in the long term. 33 modern classics are explained in details on this video course.
There are as many as 11 opening surveys ranging from the Evans Gambit to the English Opening in this issue. Among them I would single out the analysis of the Evans Gambit by Tanmay Srinath. The following game was seen in a tournament with an unusual theme. Players were offered positions from great games in chess history and they had to make their own moves. Tanmay Srinath has chosen the following game with a detailed view of the opening that was once a battleground of ideas between Steinitz and Chigorin.
Wilhelm Steinitz facing Mikhail Chigorin
Besides opening surveys, this issue has standard features on tactics, strategy and the endgame.
In the Modern Classics series, Dorian Rogozenco's video commentary on the 10th game of the Kasparov-Anand World Championship Match 1995 deserves special mention. As is known, Anand was leading the match after winning the 9th Game. However, in this 10th game, Kasparov prevailed with his superior opening preparation and sharp middlegame tactics.
In the regular column 'Fundamental Endgame Knowledge', Karsten Müller offers a demo lecture on opposite-coloured bishops. The icing on the cake is his analysis of selected rook endgames from the Olympiad.
This section also offers a column, 'Readers write', in which we find contributions by well-known experts like Zoran Petronijevic, Frits Fritschy and newcomers Stefan Gottuk and Markus Hochgraefe.
The main database of the issue has 7703 games, of which 28 are deeply annotated. There is much else in this DVD that deserves to be explored. Apart from the players I have already mentioned, the commentators include Nordibek Abdusattorov, Levon Aronian, Anish Giri and Wesley So, among others. It may be noted that there are more annotated games in the opening and training sections of this issue. Well, practice makes perfect.
Notes
1) The official site of the FIDE Chess Olympiad offers a visual and aural feast, capturing the great team tournament:
https://chessolympiad2024.fide.com/
2) The game, Gukesh-Wei Yi, from FIDE Chess Olympiad 2024 is analysed in detail by Anish Giri in New in Chess Magazine, 7/8, 2024
There are also two video commentaries on this game by Daniel King and Robert Ris on the ChessBase News Page:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/chess-olympiad-2024-r7-open
3) Mitra Hejazipour on her career:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMBnY8W5RpY
4) The game Benjamin Gledura-Felix Blohberger is also analysed by Jonathan Speelman in his ChessBase Column:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/speelman-agony-220
5) Here is more on the Historical Theme Tournament in Casablanca:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/back-to-the-future-with-casablanca-chess
https://en.chessbase.com/post/casablanca-chess-2024-d1
https://en.chessbase.com/post/stunning-carlsen-s-chess-memory
6) Patrick Wolff, Anand's second during the World Chess Championship Match, wrote a fascinating book,
Kasparov versus Anand: The Inside story of the 1995 World Championship Match (H3Publications.1996).
More information on the match and the book is here:
https://www.chabris.com/pub/Wolff/index.html
7) There are more annotated games from the Olympiad in CBM 222 Extra Issue:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/new-cbm-extra-222-with-olympia-special
2024 Chess Olympiad with analyses by Abdusattorov, Aronian, Giri, So, et al. Blohberger, Werle and Zwirs show new opening ideas in the video. 10 repertoire articles from English to King's Indian and much more!
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