John Saunders reports: Round 4 of the 2017 Chess.com Isle of Man Masters, played at the Villa Marina, Douglas, on 26 September, featured less drama and pathos than round three but didn’t lack for hard-fought chess. It’s just that a lot of that hard fighting led to draws on the top boards. World champion Magnus Carlsen was held to a draw by the one-time FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan, and these two now share the lead on 3½/4 with five others: Pavel Elyanov (Ukraine), Santosh Gujrathi Vidit (India), Laurent Fressinet (France), Julio Granda Zuñiga (Peru) and Alex Lenderman (USA).

Kasimdzhanov and Carlsen end a long, tough game with a laugh and a smile

Carlsen, playing Black, surprised his opponent on move one, answering 1.e4 with 1…Nc6: the Nimzowitsch Defence, not to be confused with the more mainstream Nimzo-Indian Defence. But the champion’s taste for occasional off-beat opening choices is well-known so it pays to expect the unexpected. Kasimdzhanov is an unflappable character and he didn’t get too excited, steering the game into something resembling a King’s Indian. It was an interesting game and worth checking out in the Chess.com report written by FM Mike Klein, but perhaps one of those games best followed in real time rather than in print afterwards, so I am going to skip lightly over it and the draws at the top of the pairings in order to find some decisive action to mull over.

Nils Grandelius (Sweden) drew with Fabiano Caruana (USA)

Santosh Gujrathi Vidit joined the leaders on 3½/4

I confess that hitherto I’ve not been too familiar with Indian GM Santosh Gujrathi Vidit ‘s play but I note he has ascended to the giddy heights of 2700-dom, which is pretty good going for a 23-year-old and he is a humorous and self-deprecating character when interviewed in the commentary room. (Another good reason to tune into Mike Klein’s report as it has an embedded link to his annotation of the game we’re going to look at.) Vidit’s win against Benjamin Bok of the Netherlands was impressive. He didn’t just play the right moves but also played them in the right order (which may put British readers in mind of an old comedy sketch played out between Morecambe and Wise, and the celebrated orchestral conductor André Previn – I’ll leave you to click on that – be warned: no chess content).

Bharathakoti Harsha demolished Sebastian Bogner

There was nothing on the giant-killing front to match round three’s Tarjan-Kramnik epic – we may have to wait a couple of decades to see anything that measures up to that – but my eye was taken by this game between Bharathakoti Harsha of India and Sebastian Bogner of Switzerland. The first-named (nothing will induce me to type that name again) is a 17-year-old IM rated 2394 while his opponent is a 26-year-old GM rated 2599. But the lower-rated player took his opponent to the cleaners after the Swiss player chose to play an anaemic opening system. Never has the two-word comment allegedly made by King George V of England on his deathbed seemed so apposite (and if you don’t know what that was, I’ll leave you to google the answer).

Finally, a footnote on the Tarjan-Kramnik game. Yesterday’s commentary by Jim Tarjan about ‘rope-a-dope’ and me about ‘hypergrovelling’ should perhaps have been accompanied by a health warning, along the lines of ‘passive play can seriously damage your rating’. It’s suddenly occurred to me that there might be children reading and that they might be influenced by these flippant suggestions for how to play chess. To that end, I thought it would be salutary to publish something that is rather more typical of what happens when you arrange your pieces on the back rank and remind younger or more suggestible readers not to try this sort of thing in important games. Here is Michael Babar vs David Eggleston.

30-year-old English IM David Eggleston gave rope-a-dope and hypergrovelling short shrift

Vlad Kramnik plays Altan-Ulzii Enkhtuul of Mongolia on a non-electronic board

Altan-Ulzii Enkhtuul calmly awaits her date with destiny.

There are two other ongoing stories to pick up on. Vlad Kramnik, the main casualty of ‘ Brandom ‘ in round one, and then a more humiliating defeat in his dramatic super-GM-versus-superannuated-GM battle with Jim Tarjan in round three, nobly returned to do battle on board 50 with a woman grandmaster from Mongolia. The only notable occurrence here came after the game when Vlad showed his lack of familiarity with a non-electronic board (which he may not have played on this century). He tried to signify victory by placing the kings on e4 and d5, but perhaps someone should remind him that this doesn’t work on ordinary chessboards.

Aerial shot of Hou Yifan playing Yuliya Shvayger

The other ongoing story was the continuing saga of Hou Yifan being paired against female opponents. As you will have already read in the round three report, she was paired with her fourth female opponent in four rounds, exactly mirroring her experience in Gibraltar. She too was on a non-electronic board, which necessitated my walking to other side of the building and climbing a flight of stairs to the balcony a couple of times during play to secure an overhead shot of her board which I could then transmit to her numerous fans worldwide via Twitter. She was back to her best form, winning quite comfortably against Yuliya Shvayger of israel. But, perhaps not wanting to risk a fifth female opponent in a row, she opted to take a bye in round five.