Bodhana Sivanandan, eight, England’s girl prodigy, produced a stunningly impressive performance on Friday afternoon at the European Women’s Blitz Championship in Monaco. She totalled 8.5 points out of 13, finished 15th in a field of 105, won the prize for the best junior, and was the top English player. Blitz is three minutes per player for the entire game, plus a two seconds per move increment from move one.
Sivanandan drew with Germany’s No 1 woman Elizabeth Pähtz, who is a grandmaster at open level, won or drew against several other elite women, and finished with a victory against Bulgaria’s Nurgyul Salimova, the 2023 Women’s World Cup finalist who has qualified for the women’s world championship Candidates in Toronto.
The Harrow primary school pupil was honoured with a personal invitation by the Monaco organisers after her eyecatching success at Zagreb last month, where she was the top scoring female in the European open blitz. Sivanandan was also invited to the European Women’s Rapid, which takes place this weekend, but is committed to matches for her club in Britain’s 4NCL League, which has two weekend rounds in Warwick.
Her Fide blitz rating is already 2107, and she will gain a further 75 points from Monaco to move close to the 2200 master level. England grandmasters who played her informally after last month’s London Classic assessed her strength as even higher.
Alexandra Kosteniuk, who as a Russian was women’s world champion and now represents Switzerland, won gold at Monaco to follow her second place at last month’s World Blitz. Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, formerly of Iran and now Spain’s No 1, won silver and Georgia’s Bella Khotenashvili bronze.
The world champion, Ding Liren, has confirmed that he will play this weekend at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, which has its opening round on Saturday (1.15 pm GMT start, free and live coverage on chess24.com and other leading chess websites) and runs until 28 January, and that he will defend his global crown later this year against the winner of April’s eight-man Candidates at Toronto.
Ding will play the black pieces on Saturday against India’s Vidit Gujrathi, winner of the recent Grand Swiss in the Isle of Man and one of the eight Candidates to challenge for Ding’s world title.
In a frank and fascinating interview on chess.com with the Dutch chess journalist Peter Doggers, Ding said he felt “much better” than when he briefly considered retiring at the time of the Asian Games in September. His illness, he explained, was “psychological, not physical” and arose partly from the extra media attention after his victory over Ian Nepomniachtchi in last year’s world championship match.
Now he is eager for battle at Tata Steel where, although he is top seed, he thinks that Anish Giri is favourite to repeat last year’s success. Beyond that, he is ready for a defence of his world crown against the winner of the Candidates at Toronto in April: “Fans don’t need to be worried”.
A grandmaster poem in a chess article is something unique. Doggers’ interview, where Ding comes across as modest, humble and cultured, includes a translation of the verses which Wei Yi, who also competes at Wijk, sent to his friend at the start of last year’s world title match against Nepomniachtchi.
As a warm-up for Wijk aan Zee, Ding competed at Changsu in the China Chess Kings, an eight-player knockout. It did not go well. He lost his semi-final to Wang Hao and then a third place playoff to Wei. The tournament winner, Yu Yangyi, came fresh from his bronze medal in the World Rapid in Samarkand.
After only one win in six games at Changsu, Ding is pessimistic about his chances at Wjjk: “I am not so confident about my strength. Also, I have the crown so there will be more cameras on me, which brings extra pressure”.
The Nepomniachtchi v Daniil Dubov knight dance at last month’s World Blitz, which led to a double default for the Russian duo, was repeated when they were paired again at this week’s online Titled Tuesday. Nepomniachtchi has also published a podcast in which he explained that they were protesting against the excessive one-hour delay caused by an appeal. Other prearranged draws went unpunished, while the appeal committee was exclusively composed of Fide officials with no independent members.
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Just as in the World Blitz, Dubov was motivated to do well and won the Title Tuesday on tie-break from Samuel Sevian, who scored a brilliancy against Levon Aronian.
From 2-16 February, a luxury resort on Germany’s Baltic coast will host a classical time limit super-GM tournament of “Freedom Chess”, alias Chess 960, Chess 9LX or Fischer Random, where the starting lineup of the back rank pieces is decided randomly in advance. Elite grandmasters like 9LX because opening preparation is minimised, although lower level players who find the normal game hard enough have shown little enthusiasm for it.
The field for the $200,000 event includes Carlsen, Ding, Fabiano Caruana and Aronian along with four of the best young GMs: Alireza Firouzja, Vincent Keymer, Dommaraju Gukesh and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. The format is a best of two games knockout at a classical time rate, with ties settled by rapid.
Carlsen has always wanted to play 9LX at slower classical time rates rather than rapid, and calls the event “a dream come true”. He is taking it very seriously, even to the extent of missing Wijk aan Zee for the first time for a decade so as to prepare for 9LX.
3902: 1…Ng3+! 2 hxg3 Qh6+ 3 Kg1 Be3+ 4 Rf2 Bxf2+ 5 Kxf2 Qf6+ 6 Kg1 Qxa1+ 7 Kh2 Re5! and wins with the double threat of Rh5+ and Q or Rxa5.
Sevian v Aronian: 1 Bxh7+! Kxh7 2 Qh5+ Kg8 3 Bf6! Resigns. If 3…gxf6 4 exf6 with Qg5+ and Qg7 mate.
