John Saunders reports:
Round 3 of the Chess.com Isle of Man Masters tournament, played on 25 September 2017 at the Villa Marina, Douglas, will live long in the memory for some remarkable upsets, notably 65-year-old US GM James Tarjan’s victory over former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, and the defeat of two of three highest rated women players in the world, Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun. At the close of play the tournament was left with four players on a maximum score of 3/3: Pavel Eljanov (UKR), Rustam Kasimdzhanov (UZB), Alex Lenderman (USA) and the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen (NOR).
The finish to Magnus Carlsen’s game against Jeffery Xiong was also reminiscent of an open tournament hack. The US player’s queenside play seemed to get him a very decent game against Carlsen’s less than incisive opening, and when the black rook came to c3 Carlsen found himself obliged to whip up a kingside counter to divert attention from his dodgy queenside. Objectively it wasn’t enough to win him the game but practical chess triumphed. Xiong got flummoxed and put his king right in the firing line. Carlsen, one senses, won’t need to read any books about how to win open tournaments. He was born knowing how to play chess in whatever format or arena and won’t lose any sleep about whether his win was wholly convincing or not. The point goes up on the scoreboard and that’s all that counts.
World champion Magnus Carlsen lines up against World Junior Champion Jeffery Xiong
If the aforementioned book title goes into a second edition, the authors may well consider including the star game of the day, which was 65-year-old long retired (but now recently unretired) grandmaster James Tarjan ‘s sensational win against Vladimir Kramnik. Until a couple of years ago James Tarjan was one of those names that only those of us well stricken in years remembered from the 1970s and 1980s chess scene. Quite a big name at the time, with appearances and gold medals for the US Olympiad team, he became one of the long list of grandmasters who decided Hans Ree was wrong and that chess wasn’t “beautiful enough to waste your life for”. My database has him playing his last significant event (the 1984 US Championship, which was a very strong 18-player all-play-all – an unthinkably long tournament to the modern mind) and his next the 2014 US Open, exactly thirty years later. Let’s measure that time period in chess terms that we can understand: Tarjan plays the last game of his semi-pro chess career six years before Carlsen was born, and returns to the chessboard as an amateur a year or so after Carlsen has become world champion.
Jim Tarjan, wearing his now familiar braces, faces up to a t-shirted Vlad Kramnik
The highlight for me wasn’t so much the game, which we’ll come to in a while, as Jim Tarjan ‘s demeanour at the interview with Fiona Steil-Antoni. As I tweeted at the time, “what a delightfully modest man! I was moved to see how moved he was.” Jim was still in shock as he sat down to be interviewed by Fiona (who, incidentally, handled the interview brilliantly). It was obvious that he was overcome by the emotion of having pulled off so remarkable an achievement. Paradoxically Jim’s emotion was so understated and yet so heart-felt that I found myself moved almost to tears just watching. Not for us chess players one of those extravagant mass hugging celebrations you get on a football field, but all the more touching and genuine for being low-key. It was one of those lovely moments which don’t come along very often but which take you a bit by surprise. I shall cherish it.
Jim Tarna being interviewed by Fiona Steil-Antoni (photo Chess.com / Mike Klein)
I have some emotion to spare for Vladimir Kramnik, too. The tournament has been a tough one for him so far and one wonders whether he developed a psychological problem after round one. He laughed when he pulled Fabiano Caruana ‘s name from the tombola machine but his subsequent loss may have led to a nagging sense of injustice about the (bad) luck of the draw which he is finding hard to shake. With one point from three, his hopes of recovery in the tournament and qualification for the Candidates’ tournament now look bleak, but, if he can go on a run of victories now he can still get in among the leaders by the finishing line.
HYPERGROVEL LIKE A VETERAN GRANDMASTER
Here’s the game, which features what I referred to in my early chess writing many years ago as ‘hypergrovelling’. It was something I used to do myself when I played a lot of club chess after work. I didn’t grovel by choice, but usually because I used to get a lot of lousy openings as I never did much homework. Jim Tarjan himself likened his game strategy of putting pieces on the back rank and concentrating simply on not getting mated to Muhammad Ali’s famous ‘rope-a-dope’ when the legendary pugilist would duck and weave on the ropes while the hapless opponent would try (and usually fail) to lay a glove on him. OK, maybe comparing his strategy with that of the world’s most celebrated sportsman ever makes Jim seem a tad less modest than my original tweet claimed, but we can certainly see what he’s driving at when we look at the moves.
Georgia on my Mind: Nino Batsiashvili scored a surprise win against world’s top rated woman Hou Yifan
Another player who might be weighed down under a psychological strain at the moment is top rated woman player Hou Yifan of China. In Gibraltar she chose the crude weapon of publicity – throwing her final round game – to highlight her dissatisfaction with being paired with so many women opponents, but she must now be finding that publicity is a double-edged sword. This has come back to haunt her in the Isle of Man, where, exactly as in Gibraltar, she has been paired with four women opponents in the first four rounds and, quite naturally, most chess scribblers worldwide (including me) can’t help but keep harping on about this. These things are very hard to live down. Note, I am writing this report after seeing the pairings for round four, but there was probably already a psychological burden on her shoulders as Yifan sat down to play Nino Batsiashvili in round three. The Georgian player was one of Yifan’s total of seven women opponents out of ten in Gibraltar and she beat her there, but Nino got her revenge in the Isle of Man.
Jovi Houska won against Ju Wenjun when the Chinese player forgot about her clock and lost on time
There was a sort of weird parallel between this game and the other major all-female clash between Jovanka Houska and Ju Wenjun. In a level-ish position the Chinese player simply forgot about my clock and lost on time. Jovanka seemed a little sheepish about it when questioned but she will take the point and the rating boost. In my earlier quick report about this I titled this ‘St George Slays Two Dragons’ because both the Georgian and English women play under the banner of St George and they were facing two (Chinese) dragons. Maybe a little fanciful, even by my standards. I shall have to adjust my medication.
More fun later today…
