Chess: Carlsen loses to a Pole in Poland with Polish Defence before winning run

Magnus Carlsen lost to a Pole in Poland with the Polish Defence last weekend, as the world No 1 returned to action after a poker break following his abdication of the world title. Carlsen paid the price for a provocative choice of the risky 1 d4 b5 as Black against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. However, the Warsaw Rapid/Blitz took place over five days, and on Thursday Carlsen stormed through the field with seven straight wins to take first prize, surviving a final round 124-move marathon against Poland’s No 1, Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

Carlsen was in trouble early against Wojtaszek, whose strong pawn sacrifice 10 d5! trapped the Norwegian king in the centre. Later he missed fleeting chances to recover and resigned when his king was about to be chased into the open board with disastrous loss of material.

Wojtaszek, Poland’s No 2, said: “When he chose 1…b5, I thought let’s play, let’s make some normal moves. My approach was to play active chess, and that’s what I thought gave me victory.” Carlsen, who said: “I haven’t played or studied much chess recently, so it was showing,” went on to draw his next five games, where rapid points counted double.

Garry Kasparov was present on the second day, made a ceremonial first move for Carlsen, and said: “[Bobby] Fischer was at the top for three years. He reached it, but never defended the title. Magnus held it for 10 years, I was the best for 15. Looking at the length of dominance and the quality of opponents he faced, I can say that Carlsen achieved everything outstanding in this decade. However, the title of the best in history is subjective, and everyone can make their own decisions.”

By the third and final day’s rapid (25 minutes per game plus a 10 seconds per move increment) on Tuesday, Carlsen was back in the groove and confidently outplayed two Romanian opponents. In the 3+2 blitz on Wednesday and Thursday, the Norwegian was back to his dominating best, and won seven games in a row to take the lead.

Duda, his main rival, fought back in Thursday’s final round, in which Carlsen survived to draw a marathon 124-move endgame of king and rook against king, bishop, and two united central pawns. Leading scores in the Superbet Rapid/Blitz were Carlsen 24/36, Duda 23, Wesley So (US) and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) 21.5, Levon Aronian (US) 20.5.

Carlsen may well view Warsaw as a warmup before next Monday’s Norway tournament at Stavanger, which will test his classical skills against high-class opposition. His nine opponents include America’s world top-10 trio of Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and So, plus the cream of the teenage generation Alireza Firouzja, 19, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 18, and Dommaraju Gukesh, 16.

Firouzja is already the world No 2, while Abdusattorov continues to impress. The serious looking Uzbek seems to have a personality and playing style modelled on Mikhail Botvinnik, the Soviet chess patriarch who won, defended or regained the world crown five times from 1948 to 1961, and whose chess autobiography, Achieving the Aim, reflected his single-minded, technically skilled, and occasionally ruthless approach. Abdusattorov has just defeated Caruana 2.5-1.5 in the online ChessKids Cup in another sign of his continuing advance.

Next month, the world’s first official franchise chess league will be launched in Dubai. The Global Chess League is a joint venture between Fide and India’s Tech Mahindra Group, where six teams of six players will include an icon, at least two women, and an under-21. Carlsen, the current world champion, Ding Liren, and the former champion Vishy Anand are among the icons, along with many other top-50 grandmasters.

The Global Chess League runs from 21 June to 2 July, ending just before the Zagreb leg of the Grand Chess Tour. That helps explain why only two Americans, Leinier Dominguez and Irina Krush, will compete, as against nine Indians and five each from China and Russia. The Global League said: “Our selection process, based on the criteria of 2700+ rating for men, 2400+ for women, and 2600+ for the under-21 category, ensured that we approached every available player.”

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This weekend, from Friday 26 to Monday 29 May, the third English Championship will be staged in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. The first such event was a one-off knockout in 1991, in which Nigel Short defeated Michael Adams in the final. The second, in 2022, went to the veteran Mark Hebden, while Lan Yao won the separate women’s title.

This time, Lan has opted to compete in the open, where Adams is the top seed, 138 rating points ahead of the No 2 seed, IM Ameet Ghasi. However, with only seven rounds, there is scope for an upset result. Katarzyna Toma, the only WGM in the field, is top seeded for the women’s title.

Kushal Jakhria and Bodhana Sivanandan will make their national championship debuts in classical chess. The two eight-year-olds, who have already featured in this column, are rated by Fide as the No 2 and No 3 under-nines in the world behind Russia’s Roman Shogdzhiev, who scored 5/9 in the 2023 Moscow Championship.

Jakhria and Sivanandan are expected to make low-key debuts, but they already have impressive ECF ratings of 2032 and 1993, expert level, so that Jakhria is seeded 52nd out of 68 entrants, while Sivanandan is seeded 11th and in the top half of the women’s field. The English Championship starts at 11am 0n Saturday, and can be followed live and free on several chess websites.

3869: 1 Qxc8+ Kh7 2 Rh6+! Kxh6 (if gxh6 3 Qg8 mate) 3 Qh8+ Qh7 4 Rg6+ Kxh5 5 Qxh7 mate.