Another week, another record attempt. The world champion, Magnus Carlsen, makes his first visit to Scotland this weekend, with serious chances to improve his all-time best 2903 rapid chess rating. The Norwegian’s six games in a double-round rapidplay, starting at 1.30pm both on Saturday and on Sunday, will be live and free on chess24.com with grandmaster commentary by Daniel King.
Carlsen will take on India’s former champion Vishy Anand, China’s world No 3, Ding Liren, and Russia’s 2016 title challenger Sergey Karjakin in the double-round Lindores Abbey Stars. The event is staged at the historic Lindores Abbey distillery in Newburgh, Fife, which will issue a limited edition of its Aqua Vitae spirit to mark the occasion.
Carlsen set his current all-time record rapid rating of 2903 earlier this month at Abidjan, Ivory Coast. He is 58 points ahead of his nearest rival, the US champion, Hikaru Nakamura, but will be expected to improve further. In the 28-year-old’s favour are his good personal results against the opposition trio, the better chances of decisive results in rapidplay compared to classical, and the higher gearing of rapidplay events, with a rating coefficient of 20 rather than 10 in classical.
Why Lindores Abbey distillery? The majority shareholders in the firm are Russian and are friends of the RCF president, Andrey Filatov, who has a significant record as a chess sponsor. Filatov was the main backer of the 2012 world championship match in Moscow where Anand retained his crown against Israel’s Boris Gelfand and he also paid for the restoration of the legendary Alexander Alekhine’s grave in Paris after it was damaged by a storm.
Carlsen is currently one of the most active world champions in chess history, to the delight of chess fans everywhere. Just one week after Lindores Abbey, he will compete in two tough classical events, Altibox Norway in Stavanger starting 3 June and Zagreb, Croatia, beginning 24 June. His current classical rating is 2875, and the targets within reach are his personal peaks of 2882 (month end) and 2887 (daily calculation on 2700chess.com) and then a round 2900.
Meanwhile the Moscow Fide Grand Prix, a significant event in the long process to decide Carlsen’s 2020 world title challenger, has reached its semi-finals. On Thursday and Friday, with possible speed chess tie-breaks on Saturday, America’s Nakamura meets Russia’s Alexander Grischuk, while Poland’s Radoslaw Wojtaszek plays Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Wojtaszek has been the big surprise, eliminating two opponents without the need for tie-breaks and thus gaining bonus points and the early lead in the Grand Prix series.
The Grand Prix also includes 16-player knockouts in Riga, Hamburg and Tel Aviv. Competitors play in three events, and at the end of the series the two who have accumulated most points earn the real prizes, places in the 2020 candidates which will decide Carlsen’s next challenger.
3620 1 Re4! Rxb4?? (Bc3 should draw) 2 Be1! Rc4 3 Rxd4! Rxd4 4 Bc3 wins the rook and the game.