The Modern Day Chess
With the growing popularity of Chess in the world , we encounter some of the best players offering us brain-storming moves.
A recent game with probably most beautiful moves happened between Dutch Grand-Master Anish Giri and Chinese Grand-Master Wang Hao. This was a match of 2020 Candidates Tournament which was postponed due to the ongoing pandemic crisis.
The 2020 Candidates Tournament is an 8-player double round-robin that will decide Magnus Carlsen's challenger for the World Championship match. It is now set to take place in Dubai in November-December 2021. This 14-round event began in the Hyatt Regency Hotel ,Yekaterinburg, Russia on 17 March 2020, but was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and has now resumed on 19 April 2021.
For this tournament the prize fund is €500,000.
For the starting moves ,the players have 100 minutes for 40 moves, after which they have 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, along with this a thirty second increment is provided from move 1.
Hyatt Regency Hotel ,Yekaterinburg, Russia
(Image courtesy : ZenHotels.com)
Time to jump into the game:
Anish has the white pieces:
- d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. g3 Be7 5. Bg2 O-O 6. O-O dxc4 7. Qc2 a6 8. a4 Bd7 9. Qxc4 Bc6 10. Bf4 Bd6 11. Nc3 Bxf4 12. gxf4 a5 13. e3 Na6 14. Ne5 Bxg2 15. Kxg2 c6 16. h3 Qb6 17. Qe2 c5 18. Rfd1 cxd4 19. Rxd4 Rad8 20. Rxd8 Qxd8 21. Rd1 Qa8 22. Kg1 Nb4 23. Qb5 Nbd5 24. Nxd5 Nxd5 25. Rc1 h6 26. Qd7 Nf6 27. Qd6 g6 28. b3 h5 29. Kh2 Kg7 30. Qd4 Rd8 31. Qb2 Qb8 32. b4 axb4 33. Rc4 b3 34. Rb4 Qa7 35. Rxb3 Qxa4 36. Rxb7 Qe8 37. Ra7 Rd5 38. Qb7 Ne4 39. Nxf7
Here we have a picture after the match :
(Image courtesy: chess24.com)
Move 9:
Move 21:
Move 21:
Move 23:
Now comes the most critical position in the game, give it a minute or two to justify the best move:
