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Tata Steel Chess: Vidit stands strong against Carlsen's trademark grind

15/01/2019 -

After three rounds, the Masters' segment of Tata Steel Chess saw a sole leader emerge in Ian Nepomniachtchi, Playing against Vladimir Kramnik, Nepo pulled out a win in the Berlin defence to overtake his co-leader, Vishy Anand, who was held to a draw by Vladimir Fedoseev. Magnus Carlsen had to settle for his third consecutive draw in the tournament but this time it wasn't short. In fact, the reigning world champ tried for a full 131 moves splitting the point with Vidit Gujrathi. In the Challengers, Parham Maghsoodloo and Andrey Esipenko joined the leaders while R Praggnanandhaa bridged a 100+ point rating gap to hold GM Erwin L'ami to a draw.

Tata Steel Chess: Anand, Nepo retain lead after short but sharp draws

14/01/2019 -

After suffering a loss in the first round, both Anish Giri and Jorden van Foreest bounced back with victories in the second round of the Tata Steel Chess 2019. While Giri, as he himself admitted after the game played like "drunk Petrosian" to withstand a powerful kingside attack by Kramnik, Van Foreest came out on top against Duda after the latter made inaccuracies in mutual time trouble. In one of the top games of the day, Magnus Carlsen was happy to finish with a "short but exciting" draw against Ian Nepomniactchi as the latter kept his tournament lead. The other tournament leader, Viswanathan Anand also drew a short and sharp game against Vladimir Fedoseev to retain his top spot. Round 2 report.

How can a GM rated 2470 lose in 7 moves?

14/01/2019 -

When we look at grandmasters we think that they are infallible, they cannot make mistakes. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Grandmasters make mistakes, it's just that their frequency of errors is much less than that of a non titled player. In the seventh round of the Delhi GM International 2019, Bangladesh's strongest GM for many years and a fantastic chess player Ziaur Rahman (2470) was pitted against Diptayan Ghosh (2544), a strong and talented GM of India. Everything began normally as Ziaur played his Trompowsky. However, on the sixth move, he made a huge blunder. Diptayan saw it immediately, Ziaur saw it too. But he had already made his move. As Black executed his seventh move, all that the Bangladeshi GM could do was to resign the game. Check out the game with move by move diagrams.

Tata Steel Chess 2019 Round 1: Anand and Nepomniachtchi open with wins

13/01/2019 -

The first elite chess event of the year, Tata Steel Chess, went underway in the Dutch town of Wijk aan  Zee on Saturday. After a nail-biting first round, Viswanathan Anand  and Ian Nepomniachtchi turned out to be the two victors of the day. Magnus Carlsen showed some enterprising chess in the premier matchup against Ding Liren but was unable to secure a win. Teimur Radjabov, on the other hand, was a heartbeat away from winning his opening clash against Vladimir Kramnik but the former world champ managed to wriggle out with a draw. Meanwhile, Parham Maghsoodloo found his king checkmated in the top game of the challenger's group against Anton Korobov. Evgeny Bareev also made the most of R Praggnanandhaa's errors to open with a win. Erwin l'Ami and Maksim Chigaev started with wins on the first day. Round 1 report.

Live games from Tata Steel Chess 2019

12/01/2019 -

Tata Steel Chess 2019 - the Wimbledon of chess is being held from the 12th to the 28th of January 2019 in the city of Wijk Aan Zee, Netherlands. The players in the Masters section are Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Ding Liren, Anish Giri, Teimour Radjabov, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Samuel Shankland, Vladimir Fedoseev, Jan-Kryzsztof Duda, Richard Rapport, Vidit Gujrathi and Jorden van Foreest. In the Challengers section, the India is represented by 13-year-old R. Praggnanandhaa. On this page you can find live games of both masters and challengers section and also live commentary by Peter Leko and Anna Rudolph. Live Games begin each day at 6 p.m. IST.

Rs.6,00,000 prize fund for a one-day rapid?!

12/01/2019 -

The organizers in Indian chess are taking risks - the Delhi GM Open 2019 has a prize fund of Rs. 1 crore. Taking a cue from them the Universal Chess Foundation in Mumbai is organizing a six lakh rupees event in the city. Sounds normal, right? Well, it's just a one-day rapid event! And it is only for players below the rating of 1800. If you participate in this tournament, you not only get a chance to fight for very high prizes, but also get coaching from GM Saptarshi Roy for four hours (!) and a ChessBase workshop. In this article you will find all the information related to the tournament. And if you enroll from ChessBase India for the event, you also get a special gift.

Delhi GM round 4: Unheralded Neelash Saha leads with a perfect 4.0/4

12/01/2019 -

The biggest prize money tournament in Indian chess - the 17th Delhi GM International 2019 is in progress from the 8th to the 16th of January 2019. Four rounds have taken place and we have five players leading with a score of 4.0/4. While four of the five leaders are GMs, we have one of them who is an untitled player from West Bengal - Neelash Saha. In this article we are going to have a look at two of Neelash's excellent games in which he beat an IM and a GM by playing high quality chess. Photos from the venue by Niklesh Jain and game analysis by IM Sagar Shah. 

National A blind Round 8-10: It's a race to the finish between Kishan Gangolli and Subhendu Patra

12/01/2019 -

Kishan Gangolli has been the five-time national champion of India in the visually challenged section. He has been known to dominate the national tournaments since quite some years now. However, in 2019 he isn't able to get the desired lead as Subhendu Patra from Odisha is right on his heels matching blow for blow. In their personal encounter which took place in the ninth round Kishan managed to win his game against Subhendu. However Patra came back strongly in the tenth round when he beat Swapnil Shah while Kishan had to draw his game against Marimuthu in an inferior position. As things stand we have two leaders Kishan Gangolli and Subhendu Patra with 8.0/10 and three rounds to go. Report of rounds 8 to 10 by chief arbiter Manjunatha Murthy.

Breaking: FIDE announces an additional qualification path to Candidates 2020 - FIDE Grand Swiss!

11/01/2019 -

Recently in a video published on ChessBase India entitled "Fireside chat with Vishy Anand", Vishy was asked - "What would be your strategy for the coming qualification cycle?" To which Anand replied, "My route is fairly narrow in the sense that I have to play the World Cup and qualify. The second route is narrower and that is via rating. I would have to gain at least 30 points and that too pretty fast, because it is based on monthly averages!" What Anand didn't know at that point is that FIDE would come up with another way of qualifying for the Candidates 2020 and it released this on the 10th of January 2019. One spot of qualification to the Candidates 2020 will be reduced via Rating criteria and the new FIDE Grand Swiss is announced. What is this about? Get to know all about it in the article below.

Delhi GM 2019 Round 1: 9-year-old Ilamparthi stuns the first GM of his chess career

10/01/2019 -

He was seven when we first reported about him and he was already making waves at the Indian chess scene. A few months ago, he scored ten wins in the first ten rounds of the under-9 nationals and became the under-9 national champion. This boy is still just nine years old and has a rating of 1920. On 9th of January 2019 he beat the first GM of his chess career. He is none other than Ilamparthi A.R. and his opponent was India's 56th GM Harsha Bharathakoti. In this report you will find the entire encounter analyzed and at the same time we have pictures and the entire report from the Indira Gandhi Indoor stadium of the largest Indian chess festival ever by Niklesh Jain.

National A blind 2019 Round 5-7: Subhendu Kumar Patra impresses

10/01/2019 -

Subhendu Kumar Patra from Odisha is showing phenomenal chess at the National A championship 2019. It's really amazing to see how far this youngster has come from the last year. He had finished 5th in 2018 and qualified to the Indian team at the World Team Championships 2018. Although he didn't play many games, his experience of working with the best visually challenged players in the country and his persistence is showing at the National A 2019. Subhendu is unbeaten and with 6.0/7 is leading the tournament jointly with 5-time National Champion Kishan Gangolli. With six rounds to go, and four spots for the World Championship 2019 in Italy at stake, this promises to be an exciting finish. 

Diptayan wins New Year Open 2019

08/01/2019 -

GM Diptayan Ghosh wins New Year Open 2019 at Outram Club in Kolkata by scoring 7.0/8, finishing a half point ahead of the pack of four players. 13-year old Arya Bhakta was the surprise of the tournament as he defeated IM Suvrajit Saha, GM Neelotpal Das and drew with IM Somak Palit in the penultimate round to secure 2nd position due to a better tie-break score. Another untitled player, Arindam Mukherjee secured 3rd position by scoring also 6.5/8. He scored a fine win over FM Mitrabha Guha in round 5. Former National Rapid Champion GM Neelotpal Das who was one of the Chief Guests last year, participated in this edition and secured 6th position. Photo: Shahid Ahmed

Aryan Joshi on fire at the National A for the blind

08/01/2019 -

The National A for the blind is becoming interesting with four rounds having been played. Youngster from Mumbai Aryan Joshi is on fire. He has scored 4.0/4 and is leading the tournament solely with his 100% score. On the second place we have Subhendu Kumar Patra and Kishan Gangolli both of who are on 3.5/4. With Aryan, Subhendu and Kishan not having played each other, the excitement in the event will grow with every passing round. We have a report from Nagpur on round three and four by chief arbiter of the event Murthy Manjunatha.

Diptayan, Aravindh and Rathnakaran are the winners of Vishy Anand 49 Online Blitz 2018

07/01/2019 -

For the first time ever in ChessBase Online Blitz tournament history, over 200 players participated including 14 GMs and 23 IMs. The tournament ended up in a three-way tie among the champions, between the last edition Guj-Goa Online Blitz winner GM Diptayan Ghosh, newly crowned National Champion GM Aravindh Chithambaram and super strong IM Rathnakaran K. There were special prize of signed copies of Anand's My Career DVDs, vol. 1 and 2 for Best female which was won by Vasudharini Kesavan and vol.1 for Best Junior won by CM Aronyak Ghosh. In this report we bring you some of the best games from the tournament. Photo: Shahid Ahmed and Amruta Mokal

National A 2019 for the Blind kicks off in Nagpur

06/01/2019 -

The National A for Blind 2019 has begun in Nagpur from the 5th of January 2019. It is going to be an exciting event as top four players from this 14-player round robin event, qualify for the World Championship in Italy from 5th to 15th og April 2019. The favourite is definitely five-time National Champion Kishan Gangolli, but he will be receiving stiff resistance from youngsters Aryan Joshi. Marimuthu, Soundarya Pradhan and others. Regular readers of ChessBase India will remember that the 2018 edition of the National A for blind happened because of the crowdfunding done on ChessBase India. It's a pleasant feeling to see that the 2019 edition has kicked off without any issues and is being smoothly organized. Check out the round one results.