Ding, Carlsen, and Especially...Shogdzhiev!

Two world champions upstaged by an eight-year-old.

Have you heard of Roman Shogdzhiev? Until a few hours ago, I hadn’t, but there’s a pretty good chance he’ll be a household name among chess fans in the very near future. You might as well jump on the bandwagon now - I’m already there.

I was giving a lesson to a ten-year-old student (Alexander Zhou, approximately 1800) and wanted to show him the Johan-Sebastian Christiansen games I presented on the blog a few days ago. When I mentioned Christiansen his response was something like, “You mean the grandmaster who lost to an eight-year-old?”

Hmm, I hadn’t heard about this, but a few seconds later, after a quick web search, I improved on my student’s info. Me: “In the World Rapid & Blitz Championships, he beat FIVE grandmasters!” Of course, one shouldn’t try to upstage kids or cute animals; they always win. His reply was brilliant: “What have I been doing with my life?”

I’m not sure how Shogdzhiev qualified for the event, but any doubts people might have had about what a player of his caliber was doing there were immediately put to rest when he defeated Jahongir Vakhidov, a well-known Uzbek GM rated 2599, with Black in the very first round of the Rapid. In round two he drew with former Candidate and 2700-rated GM Alexey Dreev, in round 4 he drew with Gadir Guseinov, and in round 6 he defeated the aforementioned Christiansen. He slowed down a little, but in the last three rounds he also defeated and drew a couple of strong IMs.

In the Blitz he started slowly, but went on to defeat Kirill Shevchenko, Alan Pichot, and V Pranav - just to pick out the top highlights. Again, the little monster is eight years old. There were a few indications of his being a (comparatively) normal eight-year-old: he played a few positions out to mate despite their being so lost that I could have won them when I was eight years old (there was no chance of flagging - the blitz time control included an increment), and (e.g.) he managed to lose a very simple rook and pawn ending against Khusenkhojaev in the antepenultimate round of the blitz. But overall, he’s a terrifying talent.

More here, and if you like videos here’s the end of his game vs. Christiansen, while you can watch one of the longest (in number of moves) blitz games you’ll ever see, against Boris Grachev almost a year ago. (I nominate Thomas R. for the job of counting how many moves were played.)

Shogdzhiev’s may be the most interesting story, but in the here and now the most important story is that Ding Liren was back in action over the weekend, in a little warm-up going into this coming weekend’s action in the Tata Steel Masters (Wijk aan Zee). The event was the “1st China Chess King”, a two-day, 12 player knockout event, and it did not go well for the current world champion. Ding overcame Jinshi Bai (best known as the loser of Ding’s immortal game) 1.5-0.5, but lost to Wang Hao 1.5-0.5 in the semis and to Wei Yi 3-1 in the 3rd-4th place match. (Two draws, and then losses in both playoff games.)

Given Ding’s long layoff - since last April, I think - he shouldn’t be troubled by the result. We all have to take our lumps when we return to the game after a long absence, and sooner than we expect we’re back in form. Ding probably shouldn’t expect too much from Wijk aan Zee, either, but I’d expect him to be his usual self by the time he’s defending his World Championship title later this year.

Finally, while I’ve included all of Shogdzhiev’s and Ding’s games in the game file, albeit without notes, I’m also including another of Carlsen’s wins from the World Blitz Championship - with notes. It had a couple of nice moments, and Carlsen himself seemed pleased by the game. All the games are here; the Carlsen one is the last entry.