The Challengers Group, the second grandmaster group of the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee, is sometimes called the kindergarten, because traditionally young and very young players get a chance there to measure themselves against established stars. Think of the 13-year old Magnus Carlsen who in 2004 won the C-group in Wijk aan Zee and became world champion nine years later.
The three children of this year were 15-years old: Nodirbek Abdusattorov from Uzbekistan, Nihal Sarin from India and Vincent Keymer from Germany. A glance at their ratings would be enough to dispel the danger of underestimating the kids. Abdusattorov, the highest rated of the three, would be number three in the Netherlands among the adults, behind Anish Giri and Jorden van Foreest.
Friedrich Friedel, the founder of the German company ChessBase, recently travelled through India to spot and catch young chess talents for training sessions with Kramnik and Gelfand. After his trip, he wrote that he dared to make three predictions: that in ten years time, the world champion would come from India, that there would then be three Indians among the top ten, and that more than half of the active players in the world with a rating would be Indians.
The third prediction in particular seems far-fetched to me. Anyway, predictions have a tendency to fail. You never know. Who can say if there isn’t a genius girl of six somewhere in the Netherlands now who will be world champion in ten years time? And who would have thought of a Norwegian world champion before Carlsen appeared?
In any case, the stream of Indian chess prodigies who are set on becoming the new Anand is impressive. And also impressive is a game that Nihal (the name Sarin that is often added is his father’s name) won last year in the World Cup against the Azeri grandmaster Eltaj Safarli. That game can be found in the game viewer.
Magnus Carlsen thought it was a perfect game. It’s hard to say what Safarli did wrong; it looks as if he was overrun by an unstoppable higher power.
The Challengers Tournament was won by the Spaniard David Antón Guijarro (24). A half-point behind, Abdusattov shared second place, and Keymer and Nihal shared sixth place. Not at all bad, but not really the new Carlsen, as far as we could tell now.
Would it then be the 16-year old Iranian Alireza Firouzja, who played in the Masters Group? Together with his father, he had recently moved to the French city Chartres, famous for its magnificent cathedral, and in Wijk aan Zee he played under the FIDE flag.
He started fine with 2½ out of 3. Had you expected this, asked a journalist who was impressed by the score of the newcomer. Firouzja thought for a few seconds and then said, “It could have been three points,’’ which was true. No false modesty. He has said that he wants to become world champion.
Firouzja was temporarily set back by Wesley So, who delivered a lesson on the force of the bishop pair in an endgame. After a victory, So always thanks the Lord for his help. Is it right to employ God as a kind of “super second” in a competition? I think a more reverent attitude was displayed by a Dutch soccer player who long ago was asked if he ever prayed to God to have him score a goal, and then said, “No, I don’t, for at such moments I think that the goalkeeper may be Catholic also.”
Firouzja came to 5½ out of 8, but then he lost three in row against the top guns. First he was beaten by Magnus Carlsen. “At the first jump everyone falls,” said Firouzja. He had played Carlsen many times in blitz and rapid games, but he meant that this had been the first time that he had played a world champion in a classical game.
In the last two rounds he was beaten by Fabiano Caruana and then after that, by Anand. His final score at Tata was 6½ out of 13, not bad at all for a youngster who made his debut in a super tournament, but again, not quite the new Carlsen yet. But this may change.
The second game fragment in the viewer has nothing to do with the Tata tournament; it just reflects on the abundance of Indian prodigies. Gukesh is 13-years old and became a grandmaster at the age of twelve. Not quite the youngest grandmaster in history, but close.
When you see the final combination in the game in the viewer, you might say, “Yes, obviously, we have known that since Lasker-Bauer, Amsterdam 1889.” But I was impressed by the fact that Gukesh also knew that game, at least that’s what I gathered from a video on YouTube that was made when he was 11-years old. I don’t think that he knew the year and the place of Lasker-Bauer, but he knew the moves. He was a child who had absorbed chess knowledge.
Click here to view Nihal-Safarli, World Cup 2019 and Vupalla-Gukesh, India 2017