The Women’s World Chess Championship will be decided by tie-break
ANATOMY OF A MUST-WIN “The person that said winning isn’t everything, never won anything” —Mia Hamm Take your opponent out of their comfort zone Aleksandra Goryachkina‘s (playing white) choice to open the game with 1.d4 d5. 2.Nc3 was strategically brilliant. In just two moves, she managed to completely take the World Champion Ju Wenjun out of her preparation. Ju spent 17 minutes contemplating her reply. At the same time, Goryachkina knew that she is likely to get the type of position that favored her style — positional and strategic, proving that one doesn’t have to go for hand-to-hand combat in a must-win. In fact, black spent about 40 minutes on her first 10 moves. Goryachkina’s ability to make her opponent work this much just out of the gate proved critical later in the game. Be yourself While Ju was spending time and energy figuring out what to do in an opening she has not played before, Goryachkina kept her cool. She was not precise, but she did not need to be. Ju’s quasi-aggressive 10..Ne4 and 11..f5 could have been refuted by Goryachkina with more precise play. It was not, and by move 20 white’s advantage appeared to have evaporated. Pundits were down on Goryachkina’s chances to exert any kind of pressure. Despite being low on time, it looked as if Ju’s upcoming moves would be more straightforward and logical: Being short on time would not be a factor. Anxiety Attack Despite objective equality on the board, Ju’s nervous play appeared to catch up to her. She seemed adrift, not being sure what to do with her pieces. Black’s sequence Qh5, Qg6, Qe4, h6 and Qh7 allowed White to consolidate and begin to probe Ju’s position with 27.e4! Once again, White did not need to be precise, as Black continued to drift with 28…Rc8 and 30..e3. It is worth noting that by move 28, both players were down to 12 minutes left until the time control, but their body language and play could not have been more different. It became clear that the next ten moves will decide the game. Make time control and convert Ju looked exhausted and was not putting up much resistance. Black allowed exchanging all minor pieces, leaving Ju in a completely lost passive end game. Goryachkina converted with trademark calm and efficiency. Tie-break and stray observations: – Given today’s performance, one wonders if Ju regrets not pushing harder with white in game 11. – Ju has the 2nd highest rapid rating in the world. Goryachkina’s rating is quite low, but she hasn’t played rapid in a while. – Having defeated the World Champion three times in twelve games, Goryachkina will not lack confidence in tie-breaks. – Six decisive outcomes in a twelve game match have to be a record of some kind for the modern era. Official website: https://wwcm2020.fide.com Text: Michael Friedman Photos: Eteri Kublashvili & Michael Friedman Contact: press@fide.com Photos in high resolution are available for the press at our official Flickr account.
Rating analytics: Do ratings help to predict future champions?
Kaspars Migla is the creator and founder of chessratings.top. In his column, he analyzes monthly FIDE standard rating changes, career-high ratings, rating distribution by country, continent, region, and other rating-related statistics. In this edition, he tries to establish a correlation between the rating of juniors with their future achievements. In chess, the title of World Champion is contested by the strongest challengers determined by objective criteria known as rating. The career of the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen illustrates the point. He became #1 in the rating list on January 1, 2010, succeeding Veselin Topalov on the top and three years later in 2013 won the World Champion title. Since then Magnus has been not only an uncontested chess leader but also a role model and a man to beat and surpass. In order to figure out his competitors in the near future, a special option of rating comparison was designed at chessratings.top. Any player can be compared against another rating-wise at a particular age (which is calculated not by the exact day of birth but simply a year when a player reached a particular age). This information is more than enough to identify several up-and-coming young talents whose ratings are higher than that of Carlsen at the same age. Among those who are running ahead of Carlsen’s rating schedule, Alireza Firouzja is the most prominent one. On January 1, 2020, his rating reached 2723 points, whereas Carlsen at the same age had 2690. You can check out the comparison of these players here. Photo: John Saunders Figouzja stands alone in the U-18 category but when it comes to the U-16 group, there are three players outperforming the World Champion – Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan, 2635), Nihal Sarin (India, 2618) and Praggnanandhaa R (India, 2602). All these teenagers reached chess maturity, i.e. became grandmasters. Several youngsters from the U-12 category, namely CM Abhimanyu Mishra (USA, 2397), FM Marco Materia, (France, 2320), FM Liran Zhou (USA,2307) and FM Aldiyar Ansat (Kazakhstan, 2263) also stack up well against Carlsen at their age – all these boys have higher ratings. Abhimanyu Mishra really stands out in this group with rating of more than 300 points higher than that of Carlsen at the age of 11. Magnus got his first rating (2064) in April 2001. He was in the U-12 which is very late by modern standards. Checking out the rating list of April 2001 in the U-12 category we see that the current World Champion was sitting at 61st position, 200 points behind the future Challenger Sergey Karjakin (2262). Interestingly, there were 9 (!) Chinese players in the top 13. We won’t analyze the categories U-8 and U-10 for at least two reasons. Firstly, many boys and girls just start learning chess at this age; secondly, we can’t compare their ratings with that of Carlsen (Magnus got his first rating being in the U-12 category). Photo: Andreas Kontokanis In women’s chess Hou Yifan (China, 2664), the #1 among active players, holds all “youngest-ever” records (rating, titles, various achievements) and is head and shoulders above her closest competitors. It is up to our readers what type of conclusions to draw from these statistics. It is clear that rating is a good indicator of chess strength, but in order to become the best not only among juniors but also in open competitive chess mere raw talent is not enough. In order to make progress, one has to constantly work on his or her chess development. Only this approach guarantees good results in the future. Kaspars Migla, https://www.chessratings.top/