With three rounds to go in the London Classic, the race at the top looks set to be between eight-time British champion Michael Adams, 52, and the top-seeded Indian, Dommaraju Gukesh, 17.
Both leaders benefited from blunders by their opponents in the sixth round on Thursday. Adams got a full-point swing when Jules Moussard inexplicably left a bishop behind at move 32. A simple pawn move would have preserved a winning position for the Frenchman.
Gukesh got a parrying attack when England’s Luke McShane, pressed for time, made a fatal knight exchange on move 36, turning a draw into a defeat. Round six also proved to be a setback for Hans Niemann, as the 20-year-old American grandmaster mishandled Ruy Lopez Berlin and was soundly beaten by Ukraine’s Andrei Volokitin.
Related: ‘It exposes all your flaws’: Chess’ YouTube king GothamChess on the game he loves
The Classic, which was characterized by combat chess, sharp play and unforced errors, now seems ready for Adams, the oldest competitor. The Cornishman, nicknamed ‘the spider’, has retained his own subtle strategic style. He has the white pieces in his next two matches, followed by a pairing against Shreyas Royal, 14, in Sunday’s final round.
If Adams makes a mistake, there is a chance for Gukesh to get the tournament victory he needs to take the lead in the Fide Circuit, the winner of which will qualify for the Candidates’ World Championship in April 2024.
Leaders after round six were Adams (England) 4.5, Gukesh (India) 4, Amin Tabatabaei (Iran) 3.5, Niemann (USA), Mateusz Bartel (Poland), Volokitin (Ukraine) and Moussard (France) 3.
Earlier, Gukesh dropped a full point when he blundered against Moussard with 26 Rd2?? (26 Qd4!) making the winning counter 26…Bxa3!
Niemann came straight to London after his career-best result in Zagreb. The 20-year-old American scored brilliantly against Royal, sacrificing a knight and then both rooks for a parry attack, but generally opted for a calmer approach than in Croatia.
After the fourth round there was a Christmas party, where Niemann and Tabatabaei, Iran’s No. 2, played ball games for a minute before leaving together, clearly best friends. Together the next day, they rattled off a familiar and likely pre-arranged drawing line, ending with more time on the clock than when they started (due to the increase per move).
Royal needed a score of 4/9 for a GM standard, and it looked like he would achieve this when he won a fine strategic match against Tabatabaei. Inexperience spoke against the 14-year-old in later rounds.
What news about Magnus Carlsen in the meantime? Norway’s world number 1 will defend his online Champions Tour title across the board in Toronto from Saturday to December 16. Carlsen’s seven rivals for the $500,000 prize money are led by world numbers 2 and 3, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, and also include Wesley So, Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
After Toronto, Carlsen heads to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he will defend his World Rapid and World Blitz titles between December 26 and 31.
This week the No. 1 was warming up for Toronto. Carlsen won Titled Tuesday with a near-perfect 10.5/11, conceding only one draw against Firouzja. On Wednesday, he broke Nakamura’s recent score of 3332 for the highest rating ever on the chess.com site by reaching 3340.
Two schoolgirls finished joint first at the UK Women’s Blitz Championship in Leamington Spa last weekend. Elis Dicen, 13, took the title after a tie-break from Bodhana Sivanandan, eight. Both scored 11/14, but Dicen won their individual match, one of the best of the tournament. This was 3+2 blitz: three minutes per player for the entire game, plus an increase of two seconds per move.
The pair finished ahead of seasoned international opposition from 2019 Under-18 Girls’ World Blitz Champion Kamila Hryshchenko and the former Moscow women’s champion. Elmira Mirzoeva, who finished fourth and fifth. It was a double success for Sivanandan, who finished joint second behind Mirzoeva last year and shared the 2022 English championship title. All fifteen finalists had previously finished first or second in regional qualifiers.
Both English girls have made rapid progress recently. Dicen won her open section at the final of the Delancey UK Schools Challenge at Blenheim Palace, the only girl in the history of the competition to do so ahead of all boys, while Sivanandan completed a clean 33/33 sweep in the world under eight classic , fast and blitz championships, and scored an impressive 7/11 against much higher rated male experts in Riga, Latvia.
More than twenty years after the vintage years in which the trio of Harriet Hunt, Ruth Sheldon and Jovanka Houska all won world or European titles under 18 or under 20, the future looks bright again for English women’s and girls’ chess. British women’s champion Lan Yao, 22, is a rising star in the international game.
Related: ‘It was strange’: Iranian chess players meet across the board in exile
At junior level, the work of She Plays to Win, led by England women’s coach IM Lorin d’Costa, is paying off. She Plays to Win aims to attract more girls to the game through women-only online tournaments and weekly Sunday simulations in London by French multiple champion Sophie Milliet.
Women’s chess in England is already young. More than half of the top 50 Fide women in England were born in 2000 or later, compared to just 12% of men. The English Chess Federation and its women’s chess director, Aga Milewska, are encouraging emerging players with the help of charities and the new £500,000 government grant.
Internationally, English women rank 20th behind top Western European countries France and Germany, as well as world leaders China and India, but results will improve thanks to the promise of Sivanandan and an emerging generation of talented teenagers.
In addition to Dicen and Sivanandan, the ratings trajectories of Eugenia Karas, 15, Abigail Weersing, 17, Nina Pert, 15, Anusha Subramanian, 14, and Tashika Arora, 15, all show potential to reach the England women’s team in the coming years. .
3897: 1 Rxb7! Qxb7 2 Qf6+ Kg4 3 Qe6+ Kh5 4 Qxg8 Rg7 (Qg7 holds longer) 5 Qf8 d4 6 e6 c5 7 Qxg7! and black gave up (Qxg7 8 e7 and queens).