Magnus Carlsen kept his narrow lead over Shak Mamedyarov in Friday evening’s final round at Stavanger, the Norwegian elite tournament which the world champion has now won four years running. His Azerbaijani rival had earlier scored a bizarre penultimate round victory over India’s former world champion Vishy Anand, who till then had been Carlsen’s main contender throughout the tournament.
In a level position, Anand blundered into a losing tactic which he noticed too late. Mamedyarov was away from the board, and when he returned Anand resigned, to the bewilderment of his opponent, who had also failed to notice the hidden win.
Carlsen then won from a worse position against France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to set up what proved to be a low-key final round where the leading games were all drawn. His main objective in Stavanger was to advance towards his announced target of a world record 2900 rating, but as at Wijk aan Zee at the start of 2022, his progress was minimal.
Although Carlsen is currently on a run of 41 classical games without defeat, his six draws in nine classical games this week mean that the 31-year-old’s live rating has only advanced 0.3 points. At 2864, this is still a long way from the 2900 rating summit. He also escaped from more than one lost position in classical or Armageddon during the tournament, so this will not go down as a vintage Carlsen performance.
Stavanger is unique in its rule requiring all drawn games to be immediately replayed as Armageddons, where White has 10 minutes on the clock for all moves and Black seven minutes, and where a draw on the board counts as a win for Black on the score table. After move 40 there is a per move increment of just one second, which means that any Armageddon which gets that far with the result still unclear is likely to end in a frenetic scramble.
When Stavanger introduced Armageddon a few years ago, there were comments that this was a measure designed to favour Carlsen’s impressive speed skills. Indeed, Carlsen’s Armageddon results in the past three years have been crushing: 14 successes out of 15 with just a single loss to Fabiano Caruana in 2019. In contrast, he has lost three of his first four Armageddons in 2022. One of those was to Anand, who said afterwards that it “felt like a defeat” because he had earlier outplayed the No 1 in their classical game before missing a clear chance.
The loss which hurt Carlsen most was against Norway’s No 2, Aryan Tari, who drew their classical pairing with the ultra-solid Scotch game 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3, enticing Carlsen to opt for a sharp Sicilian in the Armageddon.
Abhimanyu Mishra, who last year became the youngest ever grandmaster at age 12, continues to make eye-catching progress. Earlier this year the now 13-year-old won the St Louis Spring Classic B with 7/9 and a 2700 rating performance, while he advanced again this week by finishing joint second to China’s No3 Yu Yangyi in St Louis Summer Classic A, scoring an unbeaten 4.5/8 in an event where he had the lowest rating. His rating has passed the 2550 landmark, and he is on course to break the record for youngest 2600 player by a margin of several months.
Next week’s Caplin Menchik Memorial at the London Mindsports Centre in Hammersmith, close to Ravenscourt Park tube, will be an all-women’s event with international title norms. IM Harriet Hunt is the top seed, and the other three England players have norm chances.
Long ago in 1897 London hosted the first international women’s tournament, won by England’s Mary Rudge, the oldest competitor at 55, with a Fischeresque 18.5/19 total.
Then in 1927, alongside the first chess team Olympiad, London staged the first world women’s championship. Vera Menchik, born in Russia but living in England, won with 10.5/11 and stayed champion by wide margins until she was killed by a V1 bomb at her Clapham home in 1944.
In 1967 Nona Gaprindashvili, the then world champion, won women’s internationals at Havering and Paignton, scoring 6.5/7 in both with six wins and a quick final-round draw. More recently, there have been women’s internationals in London in 1973 and 2013, with another two events in April this year. England girls won three golds this year in Rhodes, and opportunities for these new talents are opening up.
3819: 1...Rf5! (threat Rh5+ and mate) 2 Qe8 Qh4+! 3 Kg1 Rg5 mate. Anand v Mamedyarov: Anand resigned! Too late after playing 1 Qb5?? he noticed 1...Qxf3+! when 2 Kxf3 Nh4 is mate while 2 Kg1 Qxh3 is hopeless. Mamedyarov was away from the board and when he returned was bewildered by the resignation, because he hadn’t seen Qxf3+ either. Tari v Carlsen: 1 Nxf5+! gxf5 2 Qg5+! Kh8 3 Rxf5 and Carlsen resigned. Even giving up Black’s queen will only delay mate.
