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On their way to getting silver medals, the Armenians won a number of matches by the smallest of margins. In round 8, for example, they beat India 1 by a 2½-1½ score thanks to Gabriel Sargissian’s win over Pentala Harikrishna — all three remaining games finished drawn.
As it turns out, the Indian grandmaster could have set up an ‘eternal blockade’ on the dark squares in the endgame. But finding the correct manoeuvre on move 96 is never easy!
The crucial match between the youthful teams of Uzbekistan and India 2 saw the eventual champions saving a draw after Gukesh had an unfortunate lapse of judgment and blundered a piece against Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
India 2 was up in the scoreboard at that point, after Praggnanandhaa showed the proper technique to convert an endgame with rook and h-pawn against bishop. During the live commentary webcasts, experts repeatedly noted that this was by no means a trivial conversion.
If White puts a step wrong, Black can build an impenetrable fortress.
Poland’s Oliwia Kiolbasa took home the individual gold medal on board 3 after scoring 9½/11 points in the women’s tournament. Remarkably, the 22-year-old collected nine wins in a row in Chennai.
Precisely her ninth consecutive win gave her team match victory over the rating favourites from India. Kiolbasa made the most of her outside passed pawn in a rook endgame against rising star Vaishali.
The ending caught the attention of Wolfram Schön, who sent a thorough analysis of the position, first pointing out that:
This was the critical position, where Vaishali mistakenly responded to 57.h4 with 57...Kg6.
Go over Walter Schön’s full analysis plus two more instrucitve endgames annotated by GM Karsten Müller in the replayer below!
Magical Chess Endgames Vol. 1 & 2 + The magic of chess tactics
In over 4 hours in front of the camera, Karsten Müller presents to you sensations from the world of endgames - partly reaching far beyond standard techniques and rules of thumb - and rounds off with some cases of with own examples.
