Since abdicating his world crown last year, Norway’s world champion, Magnus Carlsen, has appeared at a variety of over-the-board events, and also competes frequently online.
Carlsen’s often crowded schedule caught up with him last week when he flew across several time zones to the World Team Rapid and Blitz in Astana, Kazakhstan, missed the early rounds, and was then beaten in 23 moves by Hungary’s Richard Rapport. The No 1’s king was caught uncastled and, down to two minutes on his clock, he resigned in the face of a forced mate.
Carlsen then recovered, and scored an important win when he faced China’s Ding Liren, his successor as world champion, in a patchy game with errors on both sides. Ding himself was in much better form than earlier this year, and his happy mood during an impromptu football match suggests that he has recovered from his well-documented battle with depression. Ding’s $2.5m world title defence against the 18-year-old Indian Gukesh Dommaraju starts in Singapore in mid-November.
Some teams in the World Rapid/Blitz were, like China, national squads. Others, such as Carlsen’s WR Chess Team, were selected individuals. The bottom board needed to be an amateur who had never attained a 2000+ Fide rating, and for WR Chess this was its sponsor, Wadim Rosenstein, who held his own when the WR team won Rapid in 2023 but totalled a catastrophic 1/12 this time. The amateur board rule invited a ringer, and China’s amateur, Pang Bo, won all his 11 games.
The Rapid team winners were Al-Ain UAE, whose name indicates an Emirates origin. However, more than half of their players were Russian grandmasters, competing under the neutral Fide flag. Fide currently bans Russian teams.
Carlsen and WR Chess did win the Blitz. Another team in both events was GMHanscom, with Hans Niemann on top board. GMHanscom were paired with WR Chess three times, but Carlsen took a time out on each occasion. Carlsen and Niemann have not met over the board since their notorious game in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, when Carlsen’s defeat set off a chain of cheating allegations and a $100m lawsuit.
Immediately following Astana, Carlsen scored 11/11 in Chess.com’s Titled Tuesday. He and Nakamura are the only players ever to reach 11/11 in this competitive online event.
There will be another occasion for Carlsen v Niemann in Paris on 6 September, when the semi-finals and final of the Chess.com Speed Championship will be played live. Niemann defeated Wesley So in their quarter-finals on Wednesday, while Carlsen knocked out the world No 4, Arjun Erigaisi, on Thursday evening. Niemann gave an interview after his match with So in which he described Chess.com, Fide, Carlsen and Nakamura as “the chess establishment which conspired to ruin my career”.
Asked afterwards about his coming match with Niemann, Carlsen replied that he would prefer a different opponent, but “he’s playing quite well. I think if I have a decent day I’ll probably win without too many issues.”
Next week, on 14-18 August, Niemann will play a five-day, $20,000 match against England’s No 1 rated grandmaster, the former Russian Nikita Vitiugov, at London’s Gem Fitzrovia Hotel. Their series will be a mixture of classical, rapid, and blitz games.
Gawain Jones won his third British Championship last weekend as the Yorkshireman, 36, squeezed through a tie-break against top-seeded David Howell to win the £10,000 first prize. Jones’s two previous British titles also came after playoffs, as did his victory at this year’s English Championship in June.
Jones and Howell played five games in a single day as they were paired together in round nine and then met at rapid and blitz in the playoff. There was little between them, and Howell had chances to win the match before Jones finally triumphed in a knight v bishop endgame.
Shreyas Royal, 15, broke Howell’s longstanding record as the youngest English grandmaster, set at age 16 in 2007, by more than six months. England has nearly 40 GMs, but Royal is the first of them to be born in the 2000s, and he has long been the heir apparent to the elite of English chess. His GM title is a historic achievement, yet to have real national significance it needs to be just the start of a journey to a 2600 rating, to the world top 100 (around Fide 2650), and if possible to the elite top 30-40 rated 2700+. His combative win against Howell was among the best games of the tournament.
Matthew Wadsworth secured his second GM norm after the Cambridge economics graduate, 24, shared third prize, losing only to Jones. Wadsworth has been unlucky so far with his norm quest, but the title now looks close. He won a fine and original game against Royal, where White scored with rooks on the seventh.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport support for elite chess enabled the English Chess Foundation to make this the strongest British championship for many years. The first two prizes at Hull were £10,000 and £5,000, with £2,500 for the women’s championship, which Lan Yao won for the third successive year, this time in a tie with Ireland’s Trisha Kanyamarala. Bodhana Sivanandan, nine, drew with two grandmasters but missed a winning move which would have made her the youngest female ever to defeat a GM.
One award has sparked some critical comments. The £150 Alexander prize for the best game went to Howell against Ameet Ghasi for what seemed a good advertisement for the Carlsen/Howell book Grind like a Grandmaster. The award did not name the judge(s) nor whether any other games were considered.
3932: 1 Ne7+! Qxe7 2 Qh7+! Kf7 (if Kxh7 3 g8=Q mate) 3 g8=Q+ Kf6 4 Qgg6+ Nxg6 5 Qxg6 mate.
