In what seems a very much a stealth mode, the Altibox Norway tournament (Norwaychess.no) has started in the Stavanger, Norway. It is a major event, once part of the World Chess Tour, now it’s just a very strong standalone tournament. This year it features eight of the world’s top 10 players, missing are only Shak Mamedyarov (6th) and Ding Liren (10th). In their places are Sergey Karjakin and Anish Giri. The other eight players are the World Champ Magnus Carlsen, former world champs Vladimir Kramnik and Vishy Anand; Americans Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, and Wesley So; with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian rounding out the field.
The event started with a blitz exhibition tournament to decide their pairing numbers. Showing great form, at least in blitz, Carlsen won in a very convincing, undefeated fashion with 7.5/9. Nakamura was second on tie-break over Aronian both with 5.5/9. The other Americans, Caruana and So, not noted speed players, finished eighth and ninth. Dead last, somewhat surprisingly, was Anish Giri with just 1.5/9. We will see if Carlsen’s blitz form holds up in the main event. The prize fund is a very generous $270,588, with $78,921 going to the winner. An interesting change from most other tournaments is that there is no time increment for the first two time controls. So, the players can’t count on that extra 30 seconds to make the time limit.
The 52nd Capablanca Memorial tournament in Matanzas, Cuba, has just ended with a surprising win by Indian grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran over the pre-event favorite, Vasily Ivanchuk (2nd), and Brandeis U. grad Sam Shankland (3rd). The mercurial Ivanchuk was well on his way to defending the title he earned last year when he had two inexplicable loses, first to the Polish player Kacper Piorun and then a strange last-round game with Shankland where he lost on time. Shankland had a good event marred only by loses to Ivanchuk and Sasikiran (it was a 6-player double round-robin). It should be noted that the Cuban #1, Leinier Dominguez-Perez was missing this year after having played six of the last seven years. We are not sure why.
Coming events: June 16, Waltham Petrosian G/25 d5 4-Round Swiss (dual), Waltham CC, WalthamChessClub.org/Schedule.html; June 17, Boylston $15 Open, 40 Norris St. Cambridge, www.BoylstonChess.org.
Recent results: Mass Open Scholastics, K-12 U1500; 1st Timmy Guan 4-0; 2nd-3rd: Brandon Ni, Andrew Trias 3-1, K-12 U800: 1st-2nd Evan Li, Apollo Fung 3.5-0.5; 3rd-5th: Michelle Chudnovsky, Alexander Tran, Alvin He, 3-1
Answer to today’s problem: The very sneaky 1…Rxf2+ 2.Kxf2 Kd6! and White’s rook is trapped and lost to 3…Nc4.
Chris Chase can be reached at BostonGlobeChessNotes@gmail.com.
