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Have the engines led us to lose our respect for the elite GMs?

24/09/2019 -

Alexander Grischuk and Ding Liren sat opposite each other in the fifth round of the World Cup 2019. In their first game after 13 moves, Grischuk made a move that led the engines to give an evaluation of nearly -3 points. It was almost as if he had blundered a piece. Ding Liren after thinking for a long time replied with a move that let his opponent off the hook without any problems. On social media as well as in live commentary one could see the viewers and the kibitzers saying things like these top players aren't as good as their ratings suggest, they always keep making blunders and so on. Is this really the case? Has the level of chess gone down, or are the viewers armed with engines being unjustifiably harsh? In this article IM Sagar Shah looks at the Grischuk vs Ding Liren position in depth and makes some observations.

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How to train with ChessBase 15

24/09/2019 -

ChessBase 15 offers powerful tools to improve your training and your chess. One such tool is the "Tactical Analysis" that can work as a virtual coach to answer your chess questions. But to get the most of the answers you should know how to ask the right questions! In this tutorial, resident ChessBase expert MARTIN FISCHER demonstrates an effective method to work with a strong chess analysis engine within your ChessBase 15 program at your own convenience. Drawing: ChessBase

GM Saptarshi Roy explains a Nezhmetdinov immortal

24/09/2019 -

Welcome to the second part of the Tuesday King Hunts with GM Saptarshi Roy. Today's lecture delves into a classic masterpiece played by one of history's most imaginative attacking chess players ever. We are talking about the legendary encounter between Lev Polugaevsky and the evergreen Rashid Nezhmetdinov from the year of 1958. In this game Nezhmetdinov in his absolute best creates a fierce attack with the black pieces straight off the bat, and then chases down the opponent's king in a picturesque manner from one side of the board to the other. With Grandmaster Saptarshi's nuanced move by move explanation, you are sure to get fresh insights into Nezhmetdinov's strikingly instinctive attacking style that is cherished even to this day as stuff of chess folklore! 

Gujarat GM R02+03: Deepan Chakkravarthy slips down the rank list

24/09/2019 -

Grandmaster Deepan Chakkravarthy squandered a sure win against 2088 rated Anadkat Kartavya to slip down the rank-list after the second day of Gujarat International Open 2019 here in Ahmedabad. At the end of three rounds of the tournament, as many as seventeen players are tied atop the leaderboard with perfect scores of 3.0/3 points each. Particularly notable among them has been the performance of Pranav Shetty (2124) who defeated Grandmaster Himanshu Sharma (2408) in round three to register his third consecutive victory, in the fourth round he is up against Maxim Lugovskoy and it remains to be seen if he can hold his own against the Russian Grandmaster as well. In this report we bring you the games, analyses, and much more from rounds two and three of the event.

World Cup 2019 Rd.4.3: The epic clash between two future greats - Xiong and Duda

23/09/2019 -

The fourth round of the World Cup 2019 saw most of the favourites progress to the fifth round. Radjabov beating Mamedyarov was a small upset, but apart from that Ding Liren, Aronian, Grischuk all advanced to the quarter finals. The most exciting duel was between 18-year-old Jeffery Xiong and 21-year-old Polish GM Jan Krzsyztof Duda. It lasted for eight games and could have been just anybody's match. In the end it was Duda who had to go back home. Xiong held his nerves and won the most important match of his chess career. This entire match has been analyzed in this article In the quarter finals Xiong meets Radjabov, MVL vs Aronian, Ding Liren vs Grischuk and Yu Yangyi takes on Vitiuigov. Round 4.3 report. 

Humpy wins Skolkovo FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019

23/09/2019 -

Humpy won the Skolkovo FIDE Women's Grand Prix by making a draw in the final round against reigning Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun. The Indian ace won her first major championship after returning to competitive chess since Batumi Olympiad 2018. Humpy finished at 8.0/11, gained 160 Grand Prix points and received 15000 Euro (approx. ₹11.73 lacs) for winning the tournament. Humpy, who is currently world no.3 behind Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun has just about every accomplishment in her bag except the world title. With the FIDE Grand Prix she aims to make it to the Candidates and eventually the highest title. She will be back in the next Grand Prix in Monaco from 2nd - 15th December 2019. Photo: David Llada / FIDE

The 2nd Gujarat International Open begins in Ahmedabad

23/09/2019 -

The 2nd Gujarat International Open Chess Tournament has begun in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and will continue till the 29th of September 2019. The category A of the event has attracted a total of 206 participants this year from 13 different nations across world out of which 166 are from India. There are as many as 46 titled players competing which include 15 Grandmasters and 13 International Masters. With a rating of 2596, Ivan Rozum of Russia is the top seed of the event, while Deepan Chakkravarthy and Sandipan Chanda of the host country follow him closely on the second and third spots respectively. The tournament is disbursing an impressive cash fund of Rs.13,00,000/- in the category A event and Rs. 25,00,000/- in all. In this illustrated article we bring you the glimpses of the first day's action. 

Meet the 16-year-old Hari Madhavan who beat two Grandmasters in a row!

22/09/2019 -

Last month a 16-year-old boy from Tamil Nadu created sensation by beating two Grandmasters back-to-back in the Tetrasoft Hyderabad GM Open. NB Hari Madhavan is currently studying in the 11th standard and has a rating of 2280. Born in 2003, he has been training in chess since six years of age at the well-known T Nagar Chess Academy run by A.L.Kasi and Srinivasa Rangan in Chennai. In this article we specifically look into the games where this talented youngster managed to outwit the two highly experienced and seasoned Grandmasters, namely Pavel Smirnov and Rodrigo Vásquez Schroder. We have analyses sent to us by Hari Madhavan himself, a lot to learn and be inspired from for any aspiring chess player.  

World Cup 2019 Rd.4.2: Vitiugov, Yangyi and MVL advance to the Quarter-finals

22/09/2019 -

Nikita Vitiugov of Russia and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France drew their respective games to advance to the quarter-finals of FIDE World Cup 2019. Along with them, Yu Yangyi of China also confirmed a spot in the quarter-finals by beating Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia. Jan Kryzysztof Duda of Poland suffered his first loss of the tournament against Jeffrey Xiong of USA. They along with eight other players will play their respective tie-breaker matches today to determine who will advance to the quarter-finals. Photo: Official site

A heartbreaking miss for Harsha Bharathakoti in Sants International Open

22/09/2019 -

India's 56th Grandmaster Harsha Bharathakoti has been in tremendous form lately. First he became the unbeaten champion of 3rd Warakomska Memorial held in Poland earlier in August; next he came very close to winning the Sants International title in Spain but, due to an unfortunate misapprehension, ended up finishing as runner up instead. The 21st Sants International Chess Open took place from the 23rd of August to 1st September in Cotxeres de Sants in Barcelona, Spain. A total of 18 Indians participated in the event, the highest rated among whom was Grandmaster Vaibhav Suri. Harsha started off as the 21st seed in the tournament but a string of strong performances enabled him to climb up the leaderboard and almost become the champion!   

The Drunken Master Opening – a Treasure House of Tactics, Traps, Tricks, and Trolling!

22/09/2019 -

How would you react if your opponent just moved all their pawns to the third rank of the board in the opening and still managed to hold ground? Wesley Falcao, a National Master living in New York, did exactly this in some of his blitz games. The result: this seemingly drunken manner of opening the game actually caught some strong players including IMs and GMs off guard, provoked errors and produced some really entertaining games. In this article, Wesley shares many games thematically, annotates almost every game and asks the readers to give it a try, at least in an online blitz game. Photo: Wesley Falcao

Deepan Chakkravarthy is the winner of 1st Lakecity GM Open

21/09/2019 -

The 1st Lakecity International Grandmaster Open came to a successful conclusion here in Udaipur on Friday. At the end of ten rounds four players finished on the top tied on 8.0/10 points each. However, on the basis of tie-break scores, India's Deepan Chakkravarthy, who remained unbeaten throughout the event, was declared as the champion. Russian Grandmasters Maxim Lugovskoy and Ivan Rozum had to settle for the second and third places respectively; while Neelotpal Das, who scored as many points as the podium finishers, was relegated to the fourth spot. In the final round of the tournament, the encounters on the top six boards all ended in draws and on board seven IM Mitrabha Guha registered an emphatic victory against Odisha's Rajesh Nayak to secure fifth position in the overall standings.

Using Fat Fritz in the Engine Cloud

21/09/2019 -

This past week we announced the release of Fat Fritz. It is a Neural Network program, inspired by Google's AlphaZero project, and it runs on the latest and most powerful hardware that is currently available. It has been secretly tested by a number of leading players, but it is now available for regular users as well. You cannot buy Fat Fritz — it's only use it in the Engine Cloud. For those who have never used this service before here is a brief tutorial.

World Cup 2019 Rd.4.1: Can Wesley So script a comeback?

21/09/2019 -

Even if all of the ten Indian players are eliminated, the World Cup 2019 remains to be one of the most exciting events with 16 players in the fray going into round four. The reason? Well, you usually see guys like Ding Liren, MVL, Svilder, Wesley So, Nepo, Aronian, Mamedyarov, Grischuk in super tournaments fighting it out against each other. But here you also have players like Alekseenko, Duda, Xiong, Vitiugov, Le Quang Liem, who are quite strong, but do not get a chance to fight against these elite players in normal super tournaments. In round four we saw quite a few interesting match-ups and some of them didn't go as expected. Wesley So lost to Vitiugov and young Alekseenko managed to hold Ding Liren to a draw with black!

Humpy takes sole lead in Skolkovo FIDE Women's Grand Prix

20/09/2019 -

Koneru Humpy continues her winning streak by scoring her fourth consecutive win in Skolkovo FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2019. The Indian ace beat Valentina Gunina in round 9 to take sole lead. Gunina tried to surprise Humpy with Blumenfeld Gambit and then by sacrificing an exchange, Humpy converted her advantage in the middlegame to a full point with accurate play to win the game and lead the tournament with two rounds left to go. Photo: David Llada / FIDE

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