From Baku: Jon Speelman's Agony Column #19

Agony Column #19

This week’s “Agony column” is different because I’ve been in Baku as captain of the England women’s team. With permission from my team and our Open one (I gather if I say men’s then I may start a riot but might venture to call it the Open though overwhelmingly male section) I’m reproducing a few interesting moments.

Opening preparation at the top level is an intense affair taking several hours before each game. I gather that Magnus Carlsen has opined that it should be no more than two but this is often exceeded. Most of the time the players will score only glancing blows but there is a palpable hit from time to time and Gawain Jones suffered one in his game against the very strong Indian Vidit Gujrathi.

Vidit Gujrathi (Photo: Pascal Simon)

Vidit plays all sorts of opening lines, but in this case Gawain was waiting for him, only to be astonished by the depth of Vidit’s response.

Gawain Jones (Photo: Maria Emelianova)

The next day, it was Gawain's turn to play some dangerous theory. His opponent was a thirteen-year-old who already became Iranian champion this year for the first surely of many times. He's currently rated just 2463 but will gain heavily in Baku.

The Iranian Champion Alireza Firouzja (Photo: Pascal Simon)

My board two, Daagne Ciuksyte, played a fine attacking game against Portugal.

Luke McShane (Photo: David Llada)

In the pre-engine age it's possible that some readers might have been under the happy misapprehension that grandmasters don't blunder. Certainly we blunder less than weaker players and perhaps less spectacularly (the flaws which engines are always finding in top level games do objectively exist but are often very hard for a human to see). But under strain we can all play awful moves