Various Events (and more)
UzChess Cup, World Juniors, Clash of Claims. Plus, new books on Keres.
If you’re sad because Norway Chess is over, cheer up! The UzChess Cup is two rounds in and eight of the ten players are rated over 2700, led by world #5 Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Abdusattorov won in round 1 against Parham Maghsoodloo and drew in round 2, sharing the lead with fellow Uzbek prodigy and namesake Nodirbek Yakubboev (who defeated Vidit Gujrathi in round 2). Here’s Abdusattorov’s win, with my comments.
The World Junior (U-20) Championship is also underway, and after 6 of 11 rounds there are four players tied with 5 points apiece. The World Junior isn’t what it once was. For many years, almost all of the strongest juniors played, and past winners include then-future World Champions like Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand. By contrast, this year’s top seed is 15-year-old Abhimanyu Mishra, rated 2627. He’s a fantastic player, especially for his age, but the tournament is missing such stars as Abdusattorov, Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Vincent Keymer, Nihal Sarin, as well as the somewhat less well-known but still top 100 players Javokhir Sindarov, Jonas Bjerre, and Volodar Murzin. (In case you’re wondering, Arjun Erigaisi, Alireza Firouzja, and Hans Niemann had their last year of eligibility in 2023.)
Anyway…the tournament is being held in India, and it seems that they’ve emptied their schools for this one. Almost half of the players - 60 of 125 - are from India, with ratings going down to 1790. And yet, they are extremely strong. Four Indians are half a point out of first, including, amazingly, one sporting a 1981 rating. (I remember reading an anecdote, I think from former World Champion Max Euwe, to the effect that he wondered when he was in Russia, in the heyday of Soviet chess, if even the taxi drivers were stronger chess players than he was. Someone might reasonably have a similar suspicion about Indian taxi drivers in 2024.)
Or to take another case, there’s Pawar Harshit, rated a glorious 2132, a point out of first with 4 out of 6. How has he done? Well, in round 1 he drubbed top seed Mishra, winning a crazy game with Black in 34 moves. He has gone undefeated thus far, drawing with another GM and beating an IM, to single out the highlights. (It might not just be his strength that accounts for the round 1 upset, as Mishra is struggling in general with only 3.5 points so far. Still, it’s a remarkable performance for P.H. thus far.)
And now for something completely different: the absurd “Clash of Claims” match between Vladimir Kramnik and Jose (“Jospem”) Martinez. GM Martinez is one of the 7,385 people Kramnik has accused/“not accused” of cheating in online games, so some clever soul decided that the thing to do was to have them play a hybrid match to see if Kramnik playing him under ideal circumstances would somehow prove that Martinez isn’t really as good as his Titled Tuesday and other online results would suggest. The format, as I understand it, is that they are playing for three straight days, with 12 games played each day: six at a board, and six online.
Friday was day one, and after the six OTB games they were tied 3-3. They only managed two online games, the first of which was drawn and the second won by Martinez, before something happened. (I saw that Kramnik was complaining, but didn’t catch the details.) The next thing I saw was that they were back at the board, and Kramnik went +2 in the remaining games to finish the day with a 6.5-5.5 lead. My impression was that Kramnik was clearly the stronger player in the abstract, but Martinez’s strength and resilience in blitz led him to be more successful in maximizing his opportunities. In any case, Kramnik’s claims regarding Martinez are so far looking as flimsy as Kramnik’s many critics have long claimed. (Here’s the video stream for day 1.)
Finally: I mentioned in a recent post that June 5 was the 49th anniversary of the death of the Estonian legend Paul Keres. There are some fine autobiographical works by Keres already in print, but I was mostly pleased to see that a massive four-volume work is being published by New In Chess at the end of the year. I say “mostly” because they’re charging 200 euros for the set. I’ve been a big Keres fan since my youth, but forking over that kind of money? It ain’t happening. YMMV though, and while I’m not going to buy it there will at least be a little regret - Keres was a genuine 20th century great, interesting as a chess player and more broadly as a human being.