FIDE increases prize fund for World Senior Chess Championship
FIDE is pleased to announce an increase in the prize fund for the World Senior Individual Chess Championship 50+ 65+, to be held from November 14-27, 2022, in Assisi, Italy. The FIDE World Senior Chess Championships were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, given the vulnerability of this age group to COVID-19, but now it returns to the board under strengthened safety measures. In total, this event will receive €20,000 of extra funding from FIDE, with €17,000 going directly to increase the prize fund and €3,000 to strengthen the existing fair-play measures. Thanks to this addition, the event will reach a record prize fund of € 37,000. Below you can find the detailed distribution and other details about the event. With this move, FIDE keeps expanding its support for senior players, and it complements the annual grants given every year to distinguished players, coaches, arbiters and organizers aged 65+ who are facing an unstable financial situation. “We find it essential to provide the older generation with decent conditions and worthy prizes in FIDE events. Chess contributes to mental longevity, and we are happy to see thousands of senior players proactively competing in various chess competitions on a club and professional level,” says FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich. The increased funding is just one of the actions planned by FIDE to support chess seniors. Starting next year, FIDE will launch a comprehensive “Active Ageing” project, aiming to engage senior citizens all over the globe. World Senior Individual Chess Championship 50+ 65+ The World Senior Championships is organized by Cristina Rigo and the Arcoworldchess Organization. Located in central Italy, not far from Rome and Florence, Assisi hosts dozens of chess events throughout the year. The program of the event will also include visits to museums, a Blitz Tournament, and FIDE Arbiters Seminar. The championships are 11-round Swiss tournaments with time control of 90 minutes for 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game + 30 seconds per move starting from move 1. List of participants For further information, please visit the official website of the Championship: scaccomattissimo.com/assisi-2022-en Photo: Mark Livshitz
Asian Continental Championship 2022 begins in New Delhi
The Asian Continental Chess Championship 2022 got off to a rousing start at Leela Ambience Convention Hotel in New Delhi on Wednesday. 140 players from 13 Asian countries which include 31 Grandmasters, 46 International Masters, 14 Women Grandmasters and 17 Women International Masters are participating in this nine-day-long prestigious competition to decide the Asian champion. With Asian supremacy at stake, the event also serves as qualification for the next year’s World Cup as the top four players in the Open and two players in the women’s category will secure their berth in the World cup. On the opening day, top seeds and favourites Praggnandhaa and Tania Sachdev (pictured above, right) started their championship campaign with draws while ninth seed Abhijeet Gupta and women’s second seed Nomin Erdene Davaademberel of Mongolia lost their games to become the biggest casualties. Turkmenistan’s Saparmyrat Atabayev forced Pragganandhaa to sign the peace treaty after 47 moves while Tania settled for a half point against Sakshi Chitlange after 26 moves after three-fold repetition. Gupta suffered a shock defeat by the hand of Amartuvshin Ganzorig of Mongolia while Liya Kurmangaliyeva got the better of Davaademberel. In other upsets of the day, untitled Sanket Chakravarthy (pictured above, ) outwitted GM Arjun Kalyan while Sharan Rao beat Grandmaster Deep Sengupta. S Nitin and Moksh Amit Doshi held Kazakh Grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev and fifth seed Aryan Chopra respectively in the first round. Photo: Shahid Ahmed & Aditya Sur Roy Regulations for Asian Continental Chess Championship (pdf) Official website: delhichess.com
FIDE World FR Championship: Home and away – a day of double duels
The pairings are the simplest aspect of today’s group stages, as the players face off four times against the same opponent, in two mini-matches, as the contest transitions into the return matches from rounds 3 to 4. Even though the match-ups repeat, the mini-matches were played from two different starting positions. It is interesting to watch the players marching through the hotel to the playing area. On the move a few minutes before the round begins, this means that they really have closer to just 10 minutes to prepare to play the match’s starting position once from each side. Perhaps it is this shortage of time and vast unexplored sea of possibilities to try to chart that explains the visibly relaxed mood before the game and optional lack of emphasis on preparation. Relaxed and enthusiastic The players without analytical seconds here – Matthias Blübaum, Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura, are first to appear. Young Nodirbek Abdusatorrov, who is accompanied by his mother on the trip, is not far behind. Perhaps even more surprising is that classical world champion Magnus Carlsen, and his last challenger, Ian Nepomniachtchi, stroll towards the playing hall, discussing some kind of sequence of moves. Even if the subject is perhaps one of the games from day one, there is a sense that the novelty of Fischer Random has stimulated a renewed curiosity and enthusiasm for exploring action on a chessboard. Start position 1 The position that has come ‘out of the hat’ for the first mini-match is finally about as exotic as possible and gets a strong reaction from a few of the players. Carlsen remarks to group rival Vladimir Fedoseev: “This is probably the worst possible starting position!” Fedoseev also thinks fate has been cruel: “The position with both Knights in the corner should be banned from the drawing!” Favourites and crunch matches The day’s play was officially opened by Thordis Loa Thorhallsdottir, the President of the Reykjavik city council, who executed the first move for Icelandic Grandmaster Hjorvar Steinn Gretarsson. Again, each group featured a pairing with a heavy favourite versus the section outsider and one clash of expected serious title contenders. The favourites delivered smoothly: Carlsen shrugged off yesterday’s misadventures and showed his usual crisp technical control to defeat Blübaum with the black pieces, while terrifying teenager Abdusatorrov handed local hero Gretarsson another loss, the Uzbekistan Grandmaster also winning with the black pieces. In Group A, the reigning Fischer Random World Champion Wesley So continued to be the hardest working player here, grinding out a 106-move win over Nepomniachtchi, his third marathon game so far. These two may have been the pre-event favourites to emerge from the group, but with Abdusatorrov’s form and power, this duel may instead decide which of these classical chess giants is denied a semifinal berth. The Group B spotlight game between Nakamura and Fedoseev ended in a solid and fairly early draw. Second session The reverse pairing was quickly the highlight of the next session, with Fedoseev unleashing the well-known aggressive beast within, forcing Nakamura to show his legendary resourcefulness under pressure. The result – a baffling, chaotic brawl that somehow resulted in a roughly balanced endgame. The players battled on until there were only bare kings left on the board, and honours were divided in the mini-match. In Group A Nepomniachtchi showed his sense of occasion and went into turbo mode in the return game, accumulating a huge time advantage while posing So an array of problems to solve. Nepomniachtchi’s win created the first drawn match of the event. Favourites Carlsen and Abdusatorrov each won again, though they needed to overcome grittier levels of resistance. Their respective opponents now need to seriously rally if they are to avoid being slotted into the eventual playoff match for 7-8 place. Abdusatorrov was asked by NRK TV if he was, in fact, the tournament favorite here. He thought for a moment before giving a diplomatic answer that did little to disguise his immense confidence: “Magnus is always the favourite. But this is Fischer Random, and anything can happen.” Pairings & results: Round 3 Game 1: Group A Grétarsson – Abdusattorov 0-1 So – Nepomniachtchi 1-0 Group B Blübaum – Carlsen 0-1 Nakamura – Fedoseev 0.5-0.5 Round 3 Game 2: Group A Abdusattorov – Grétarsson 1-0 Nepomniachtchi – So 1-0 Group B Carlsen – Blübaum 1-0 Fedoseev – Nakamura 0.5-0.5 Match scores from Round 3: Group A Abdusatorrov – Gretarsson 2-0 So – Nepomniachtchi 1-1 Group B Carlsen – Blübaum 2-0 Nakamura – Fedoseev 1-1 More of the same? The next round featured the same pairings, but a new starting position. Start position 2 This development seemed to intrigue and puzzle the field. Nepomniachtchi reacted by judging it “too complex”, while Carlsen went into a bit more detail for Norwegian TV, telling national broadcaster NRK that it was “not a position I have seen before. It’s very interesting – the kings are relatively safe.” Drama and confusion The key Group A match between Nepomniachtchi and So started with a sharp battle and ended with a confusing incident when it appeared that title-holder So became confused about the variant’s trickiest aspect, the castling rule. At first, it appeared that So had just blundered horribly, but arbiters were summoned, and a discussion took place. Apparently, So had initially believed he could castle out of check in the final position, but even if Fischer Random castling looks different, the rules governing it are the same as in classical chess – one cannot escape a check by castling. Once So realized his error, he resigned. Oddly, this was not the first castling incident between the two players. In the inaugural event in 2019, there was a dispute about whether Nepomniachtchi had castled properly and a game had to be replayed. Today’s event was a clear signal that this variant of chess is still in its infancy when the current world champion can forget the details of a central rule. Later, Carlsen would confess he
Women’s Candidates Pool A: A peaceful day at the office
The second round of the Women’s Candidates Pool A semi-finals was launched by Louis Starck, Hermitage Hotel General Manager and Inna Bazhenova, publisher of The Art Newspaper Group. After their losses yesterday, both Muzychuk sisters were looking to bounce back with white pieces. Naturally, their opponents went for a very solid approach. Indeed, the well-reputed Petrov defence occurred in the Muzychuk – Humpy encounter as well as in the Muzychuk – Lei one. Although having similar results and openings, the two games went in completely different directions as early as move 3. In the Muzychuk-Koneru game, Anna thought for 38 minutes before playing 15.Bg5? in a slightly better position – the move chess engines consider to be a serious mistake. Humpy reacted in a great way and, after another misstep by Anna (18.Rxe6?), reached a position where she had a decisive advantage. However, Humpy did not manage to find 18…Ne5! repelling all White’s threats and winning material. 18… Ne7 was played instead, which led to a draw by repetition on the move 28. Fun fact: the players got a warning from the arbiter as they only repeated four times and agreed to a draw without asking for the arbiter’s permission. According to the regulations, you can draw with the arbiter’s permission after a threefold repetition or the game is instantly declared a draw after a 5-time repetition. As for the Muzychuk-Lei game, it seems like the Chinese player never was in danger with the black pieces after showing some high-quality preparation. The opponents followed the footsteps of Vladimir Fedoseev and Richard Rapport up to move 14, where Lei deviated, but it did not change the evaluation of the position as roughly equal. A draw was agreed on move 40 in a dead-even rook endgame. Tomorrow, on the 27th of October, there will be a rest day. Time for the players to recharge their batteries to provide even more excitement! Official webstie: womenscandidates.fide.com Text: WGM Andreea Navrotescu Photo: Michał Walusza ORGANIZERS: PARTNERS: