Chess Go Spinny

 Alireza Firoujza's 100% record was broken in round 4, as Yangyi Yu held him to a draw. Perhaps suprisingly, though, he remained the sole leader, as every player who started the round on 2½ points also drew. This enabled those players who started the day on 2 points to move within half a point of the lead, and five players - Vachier-Lagrave, Tari, Petrosyan, Sevian and Shirov - managed to do so. As a consequence, round 5 will see the two Frenchmen face off against each other in a keenly-anticipated encounter. At the other end of the table, there is no longer anyone on a 0% score either - the only player on 0/3, Aydin Suleymanli, managed a draw against Budisavljevic.

Round 3 was definitely Alireza Firouzja's day. Not only did he win, to become sole leader on 3 out of 3, but he extended his lead over the rest of the top seeds as he did so - Yangyi Yu of China is the only player in the rest of the top 30 to have even made it to 2½; he and Firouzja will play in round 4. The top two seeds, Caruana and Aronian, both drew their round 3 games in contrasting ways. Caruana will have been frustrated that he didn't manage to bring home the full point against Saric in a game he was surely winning, whereas Aronian had a very tough defensive task against Demchenko, and needed to draw heavily on his technique to hold a pawn-down rook ending. At the other end of the table, the tournament's only non-GM, IM Fy Antenaina Rakotomaharo of Madagascar, picked up his first points of the tournament with a draw against Georgiev.

 When two-thirds of your players are within 50 rating points of the tournament's median rating, and eleven-twelfths are within 100 points of it, there is a likelihood of a high draw rate. This was the case for the FIDE Grand Swiss, and the results so far bear it out. After two rounds, only three if its 108 players are on 2, and only ten on 0. That third seed Alireza Firouzja (France) is one of the three leaders is no surprise, but the other two, Alexandr Predke (Russia) and Ivan Saric (Croatia) are less well-known; Saric is up there courtesy of a second-round win against Kirill Alekseenko, who made his name by coming third in the 2019 event , which got him a wildcard for the Candidates. Going into round 2, Jorden van Foreest (Netherlands) was on a highly impressive run, having drawn in all eleven games of the 2019 event as well as his opening game here, but this finally ended when he lost to Robert Hovhannisyan (Armenia).

 There is currently a lockdown going on in Latvia, but the FIDE Grand Swiss in Riga is going ahead anyway. Whether or not it should be is a matter of considerable discussion , and it is unsurprising that several big names are absent. Among them are the quintet who don't need to qualify for the next Candidates - Carlsen, Duda, Karjakin, Nepomniachtchi and Radjabov. Another notable absentee is Hikaru Nakamura, who made a public announcement that he felt it unwise to play in those conditions. Be that as it may, it is still a very strong tournament, with 13 players rated 2700 or over, and 91 rated 2600 or over. Among them are two former World Championship challengers: Fabiano Caruana and Boris Gelfand.  

 The trend of 10-player all-play-alls with title norm possibilities is not showing any signs of slowing down, and the latest one was in Hull , under the auspices of the 4NCL . The norm targets for this one were 7 for a GM norm (or 6½ for the tournament's bottom seed, Shreyas Royal), and 5 for an IM norm. Tricky, but doable, and going into the final day, two players, Maciej Czopor and Conor Murphy, both had the chance to get GM norms, needing as they did 2/2. This was not to be, as both lost in round 8, but they nevertheless both achieved IM norms. Not that this is relevant for Murphy, who already has all his norms and has already applied for the IM title, but Czopor will certainly appreciate it. Title Name Rating Federation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Total 1 FM Czopor Maciej 2411 Poland * 1 ½ 0 ½ 1 1 ½ ½ 1 6 ...

 This year's British Championship festival had a number of events other than the main championship, and one of them was the British Women's Championship . This is normally awarded within the British Championship itself, but this year it was a stand-alone event. The pre-tournament favourites were two former champions, IM Harriet Hunt (who won the title four times between 1995 and 1999) and GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant (who won it four times between 2003 and 2007). But they clearly weren't going to have it all their own way, as third seed Katarzyna Toma beat both of them in successive rounds to be the sole leader after round 3. Had she gone on to convert a winning position against Varney in round 5, Toma would now no doubt be the champion. But a loss on time in that game meant that there were three joint leaders after that point, and whoever of Toma, Varney and Hunt made the most of their two final games would probably win the event.  And Hunt was the won who rose to the challe...

 One of the features of Barnstaple Chess Club is that it's a small club (currently 14 active members) with a wide range of ability, and thus a fair proportion of its internal games are mismatches. As I tend to be on the right side of those mismatches, I can't really complain, but it does result in the odd game which is effectively over within the first ten moves or so. I won two of those last night, against a somewhat variable opponent - Rob Kelso can play very well on his day, and had just won a nice pawn ending against Graham Jones before playing me. When I end up in one of those games, I often end up giving myself other challenges, such as seeing whether I can win in aesthetically pleasing ways. Well, I managed it in both these games; the second involved a queen sacrifice to bring about Anastasia's Mate, while the first involved what problemists would term a "switchback"; winning by moving a piece back where it's just come from.