Mumbai IIFLW 09: Gukesh wins the juniors, Maghsoodloo takes the open

The last round of the junior tournament saw the following pairing:

Pranav. V., the defending champion was leading the tournament with half a point. He had the white pieces against Aaryan Varshney. It seemed as if Pranav had the best chance to take home the winner's trophy. However, Aaryan stood his ground and the game ended in a draw.

Gukesh has shown nerves of steel in the final rounds of the last few tournaments that he has played. In the under-11 nationals he won his last round and became the champion. In Malaysia he beat his opponent in the final round to make his maiden IM norm, and now in Mumbai he was able to outwit Rohith Krishna to join Pranav at the top. It is interesting to note that Gukesh was not afraid to experiment and opened 1.f4.

Black (Rohith Krishna) was worse out of the opening. He managed to limit the damage by playing some good moves. It was the case of giving a check when you see one, that led to his downfall. ...Qb7+ was met with Qg2 and Gukesh won the endgame. Instead ...Rd8 would have led to equality as the e6 pawn is untouchable thanks to the rook entering into white's camp.

Once Gukesh and Pranav tied at the top, it was a matter of buchholz. Gukesh's 44 was better than Pranav's 43 buchholz. Gukesh won the event and Pranav had to settle for the second spot. It was a pity that both the players didn't play each other. A ten round event would have made it extremely exciting with Gukesh and Pranav facing off in the final round!

I have a feeling that Gukesh and Pranav are the gen-next of Indian chess. And it's nice to see Indian chess producing champions in pairs. Praggnanandhaa and Nihal have already made a name for themselves all over the world. Now it is time for these two youngsters to shine. 

Gukesh and Pranav, both played in the under-13 and open section. For them playing in the under-13 section meant that they would have to play on top of their game in order to gain rating. Although both of them scored 8.0/9 in under-13, they didn't gain any rating. However, what they did earn was Rs. 1,50,000 and Rs. 1,25,000 respectively. And this meant that they can now invest that money into better training and playing more tournaments in India and abroad. A huge thanks to IIFLW for giving an opportunity to these youngsters to showcase their talent and win some big prize money.

The opening went really well for Leon who was well on his way to positionally crush his Bangladeshi opponent. But then Zia found some very interesting ideas which completely turned the game around.

...f5!? objectively not the best, but practically it was worth trying. After exf5, Black further sacrificed another pawn e4!?? to make the game extremely interesting. Check it out below:

Final Ranking after 9 Rounds

Parham Maghsoodloo wins the open section

Maghsoodloo began the last round with half a point lead as he had beaten GM Abhijeet Gupta in the previous round. In the final round he took a quick draw against Alberto David that sealed the pole position for him.

The only person who could now catch up with Parham was Deepan Chakkravarthy. But even if that happened Maghsoodloo would have been the champion because in their direct encounter the Iranian had beaten the Indian GM.

We wanted to get Parham into the studio on many occasions after his games in the tournament. However, somehow he always managed to vanish away. On the final day we caught up with him and did a short interview. The Iranian GM, who is clearly a huge talent, revealed some of the secrets that has helped him become such a feared opponent. One of them is - "I work 20 hours a day!" Yes, we did not hear that wrong. And No, he is not kidding. Check out this video to understand the way Parham Maghsoodloo works and why he is a force to be reckoned with.

Timur played a positionally beautiful game to score a victory and seal the third spot for himself.

A few words must be said about this 14-year-old boy. Suat Atalik looked at one of his games in the Bhopal Open and said that this boy is an amazing talent. Bharat Singh when asked who he thinks are India's biggest talents after Pragg and Nihal pointed to Arjun, saying the boy has it in him to become Telangana's first grandmaster! At the tournament he drew against five strong grandmasters and beat all his lower rated opponents. And the five GMs were all very strong: Ivan Rozum, Suat Atalik, Swapnil Dhopade, Andrei Deviatkin and Dibyendu Barua.

The young and bubbly 12-year-old Divya Deshmukh showcased some phenomenal bit of chess to gain 86 Elo points and also make her first WIM norm. Just have a look at her performance:

It is very curious to note that Divya played in both the junior and open section and performed quite poorly in the under-13 tournament. She lost a massive 70 Elo points. It's a great ode to her fighting spirit that in spite of bad results in the morning, she played some amazing bit of chess in the evening! She is surely someone to watch out for. We already published her interview taken at the Bhopal GM 2017, but we think it is worth watching again. Just look at her confidence!

Final Ranking after 9 Rounds

Previous reports from IIFLW 2017-18:

Round 1+2 Open: Beware of the top board!

Round 1+2 Junior: It's a tournament with life

Round 3 - A day of many upsets

Round 4 - Tactics, brilliancies and lucky escapes

Round 5 - Deepan Chakkravarthy takes sole lead

Round 6 - Deepan and Abhijeet pull off a miracle

Round 7 - Deepan slips, Gareyev shows his magic

Round 8 - Parham Maghsoodloo beats Abhijeet Gupta