Anish Giri conquered the height at home

The next chess season opened with a super-tournament in the Dutch Wijk aan Ze, which will be remembered for its dramatic denouement. She left the Uzbek teenager Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who was close to him, without the main prize and brought it to the famous Dutch chess player Anish Giri.

This success of Anish Giri ended one of the most interesting chess series. For the first time in the super tournament, which is now called the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Giri took part in 2009, when he was a 14-year-old schoolboy. At that time, he, a native of St. Petersburg, represented Russia, and he was not yet allowed to participate in the main competition at the Wijk aan Zee festival: he fought in tournament B. Later, Giri changed his citizenship, turned from a chess prodigy into a powerful grandmaster and, Naturally, as the new flagship of Dutch chess, the tournament in the Netherlands almost never missed.

But he had a strange relationship with him. Anish Giri, who has not dropped out of the elite for a long time, or rather, even from that part of it that can be called the “cream” (and he was in the top three of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) rating), very often claimed to win the home supertournament, and it didn’t work out with him. Giri took second place five times, but could not reach the first. On two occasions – in 2018 and 2021 – he scored an equal number of points with those who got gold – Magnus Carlsen and Jorden van Forest, losing to them only in tie-breaks.

It has grown together with the title only now, when 28-year-old Anish Giri is already perceived almost as a chess veteran. Well, after all, among the notable grandmasters there are indeed many who are not just younger than him, but much younger. In this release of Tata Steel Tournament, let’s say accepted participation of as many as five chess players under the age of 20: these are three Indians – Arjun Erigaisi, Rameshbabu Pragnanandha and Gukesh Dommaraju, German Vincent Kaimer and Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov. And his victory had a rather entertaining connotation.

In principle, Anish Giri’s performance can be easily described by banal definitions: powerful, stable, even. He did not lose a single game, and among the four he won in 13 rounds, there were those in which Giri was opposed by celebrities of the highest category.

In one, it was the Chinese Ding Liren, who in April will fight with the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi for the title of world champion, in the other, the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, who was the champion for ten years, and last year decided to part with this title, but remains the undisputed chess frontman . True, in Wijk aan Ze Carlsen played unevenly and only thanks to a shock finish was he able to infiltrate into the top three.

But in fact, it’s just as fair to characterize Anish Giri’s rise as primarily the result of an amazing denouement, a twist that is rarely seen in chess. On the whole, the junior brigade invited to Wijk-aan-Ze looked modest against the background of experienced opponents. But there was an exception to the rule. Uzbek Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who by the age of 19 had already accumulated a decent track record (it includes, for example, the gold medals of the World Rapid Chess Championship and the World Chess Olympiad), played maturely and with a spark in the Netherlands. He, like Giri, dealt with Carlsen, and kept the lead from the sixth round until the last.

He approached him, ahead of the Dutchman by half a point and having an advantage in additional indicators. At the same time, Nodirbek Abdusattorov had to play with white against Giri’s compatriot Jorden van Forest, who this time looked extremely inexpressive and entrenched himself in the basement of the table. Giri, on the other hand, also in white, fought with class grandmaster Richard Rapport, who recently changed his Hungarian citizenship to Romanian. It seemed that it would be a matter of technique to maintain superiority for Abdusattorov.

But something completely unexpected happened. The Uzbek grandmaster suddenly let slip, allowing Jorden van Forest to take the upper hand in a position that promised no problems for the favorite, and Richard Rapport made a chic gift to Nodirbek Abdusattorov’s competitor. Rapport is known just for the fact that he loves unconventional play, in almost every situation he tries to find a move that surprises the opponent, even if it looks clumsy. In the game against Giri, while defending, he easily held the position, moving the king stuck near the corner of the board to any of the available four squares behind him or to the side. Rapport moved him forward for some reason with his 34th move – on g6, in fact, under a mating attack and soon lost.

Alexey Dospekhov