Indians rock at the Qatar Masters 2015!

Indians rock at the Qatar Masters 2015!

The Qatar Masters Open 2015, held from 19-29th of December, was the strongest ever open tournament to be ever organized. There were 77 grandmasters out of the 141 participants and the tournament had a humungous rating average of 2526. Along with the current World Champion Magnus Carlsen, many other top players like Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Wesley So, and also three former Women World Champions (Hou Yifan, Alexandra Kosteniuk and Antoneta Stefanova) took part. 

There were in all 28 Indian players seen in action during the event. India number two, Pentala Harikrishna, who is also world number 14 with a rating of 2755, led the Indian challenge. Naturally, it is difficult to cover the performances of all these players, but in this article, we will try to go over the most prominent Indian performers at the tournament. But first a few words about the eventual winner:

Year 2015 went really well for the player from West Bengal. Apart from being knocked out in the first round of the World Cup 2015, Surya has been consistently gaining rating points and ends the year at a solid 2660 which brings him at number four in Indian rankings ahead of the young guns Adhiban, Sethuraman and Vidit. We have already analyzed Ganguly's superb win over David Howell in the round five report. For now we would like to focus on a much more entertaining game - his penultimate round victory over Salem Saleh. I would say this was a game of discovered checks! The UAE grandmaster gives discovered checks for as many as three times in the game and is still not able to finish our man, who miraculously escaped and scored the full point! 

After the tournament ended, we asked Surya what his aim for the year 2016 would be. He said, "I would like to break free from this 2600 Elo barrier. And I hope the next time it happens I am not in 2500!" All this and much more in this short video interview:

Harikrishna started the tournament as the ninth seed with a massive rating of 2743. It was quite an achievement from his end that he was able to maintain his Elo. He remained unbeaten and scored victories over Bastsiashvili, Ipatov, and Fedoseev. A very interesting position that occurred in Hari's game was against Nino Batsiashvili in the second round. The Georgian was fresh from her draw against Magnus Carlsen in round one. Hari played a provocative opening and players reached the following position:

If you think deeply about this position you will realize that the main threat here is not to take on g2. In fact, if it were Black to move he would not even think about taking on g2. Instead he would pick up the bishop on d3 with Nxd3 followed by ...Qd7! and take control over the key f5 square. Once Black gets ...f5 he would have a clearly superior position. Hence, in the diagrammed position White should have played 12.Be4! Hari said after the game that he wanted to meet 12.Be4 with 0-0. But now White jumps in with 13.Nf5! Bxf5 14.Bxf5 Nxg2+ 15.Kf1 Nf4 16. Ne2! and with the firm grip on the light squares, White is clearly better. In the game Nino went wrong and played 12.Bf5?! Hari quickly replied Bxf5 13.Nxf5 Qd7! and with control on the f5 square he was better. Finding the move 12.Be4 would show extremely high level of prophylactic thinking.

World Cup 2015 hero S.P.Sethuraman didn't have a great event at the start as he lost three games in the first six rounds. However, in the end he got rid of any rustiness that he possessed and scored three wins in a row against Burak Firat, N.R. Vignesh and Evgeny Tomashevsky. Particularly impressive was his last round win against the reigning Russian Champion. Tomashevsky is world number 18 and one of the most feared theoreticians in the world. Evgeny's opening expertise can be gauged from the fact that after Jakovenko's win against Bologan when Dmitry was asked whether he had refuted a particular line of the a6 Slav, Jakovenko replied, "This line is played by Tomashevsky from the black side, and as we all know Tomashevsky's lines can never be refuted!

In spite of knowing this, Sethuraman picked up the gauntlet and challenged Evgeny to a mighty theoretical duel in the Botvinnik Variation of the Slav. Sethuraman was much better prepared than his opponent and defeated the Russian in just 38 moves. 

As our photographer Amruta Mokal's lens shows after just 19 moves Sethuraman had his full quota of allotted time on the clock and Tomashevsky was down to 15 minutes!

Let's have a look at this brilliant game with some brief annotations: 

After the end of the tournament, we caught up with Sethuraman and asked him his thoughts about his game. More specifically we asked him whether he was scared of entering theoretical complications against such a renowned opening expert like Tomashevsky and Sethuraman's reply is a must-watch/hear for every budding chess player: 

 Super solid Vidit hardly loses a game, but in Qatar he was humbled by the Chinese GM Ni Hua. Yet the youngster had a decent event, losing just two Elo points. His most impressive performance was surely the game against Dmitry Jakovenko in the last round. The 21-year-old shows tremendous understanding of the value of initiative in a game of chess. Here's the position for you to test yourself whether you can play like the India number five:

Vidit- Jakovenko 

If you came up with the move 17.Nxf7 then you are one of those players who always tries to find some sort of spectacular moves even when the position doesn't warrant the same. After 17...Kxf7 18.Bg6+ Kg8 19.Bxe8 Qxe8 Black is almost winning.

You are once again in Vidit's (White's) shoes. What would you play?

Vidit played the move 19.exd5! Here it was important to control the temptation of playing 19.f4?! as Black could sacrifice an exchange with Rxf5! 20.exf5 a6! When the central black majority looks pretty threatening and provides adequate compensation. After 19.exd5 the game continued 19...Rxe1 20.Rxe1 cxd5 21.Qd2! And let's look at what we have got. 

This is the position that Vidit was aiming for when he played 17.e4! White is a pawn down but he has the bishop pair. Also the knight will settle down on the excellent d4 square. All the pieces are active and White has wonderful compensation for the missing pawn. Isn't this wonderful assessment of the position? Gujrathi slowly but steadily outplayed Jakovenko but couldn't finish him off and the game ended in a draw.

One of the most impressive performers at the event was surely Shardul Gagare from Ahmednagar. The 17-year-old boy made a mockery of opponents' ratings as he notched up a performance of 2704, thereby making his third and final GM norm. In the process he beat two super strong GMs Wei Yi and Ildar Khairullin. He made draws against world renowned players like Hou Yifan, Danii Dubov, Vassily Ivanchuk, B.Adhiban, Nguyen Ngoc Truongson and Daniele Vocaturo. He played all grandmasters and apart from one who had a rating of 2597, all others were above 2630! Shardul made his GM norm in the eighth round itself. However, you can understand how mentally strong this young kid is, as he played with complete focus in the last round and beat his 2647 opponent with the black pieces. Often after making a norm people relax and lose their next round, but not Shardul. Gagare gained 27 Elo points in the event and now has a live rating of 2497. With just three points to gain he should be on track to become India's next grandmaster. He will most probably be playing in the IIFL Mumbai tournament from 28th of January to achieve this milestone.

A GM norm in six rounds! Yes, you read it right! That's what N.R. Vignesh achieved at the Qatar Masters 2015. The 17-year-old youngster began the tournament with draws against Nguyen Ngoc Truongson and Samuel Shankland. But then he scored two emphatic wins against Mateusz Bartel and Wei Yi. Draws against Hou Yifan and Vladimir Fedoseev took the Tamil Nadu lad to 4.0/6 and already the GM norm was achieved with three rounds to spare!

Good news for Eesha Karavade fans is that this girl from Pune is finally back in form. By scoring wins over strong players like Irina Krush, Antaoneta Stefanova and Jan- Christian Schroeder, Eesha scored 4.5/9 gaining 20 Elo points. The bad news is that she missed her GM norm by a mere half point. She needed a draw in the last round against Daniil Dubov but went on to lose it.

Aravindh Chithambaram had a good event gaining 16 Elo points. One of the highlights of his tournament came in the game in which he lost. It was the one against Magnus Carlsen. After getting a lost position out of the opening, it seemed as if Aravindh's game would just fall apart. However, he fought on and even outplayed the World Champion from that inferior position. Carlsen had to resort to desperate means in order to win the position. As a strong GM rightly pointed out, "If this lad works on his openings, he will be terribly strong as his middlegame is just too good!". 

Mohammad Nubairshah Shaikh made his second IM norm. The young boy from Mumbai already has an Elo of 2400+. He just requires his final IM norm to achieve his title.

Can you find the common link among these players? Apart from each one of them being extremely talented, they are all from Tamil Nadu!

The author of these lines Sagar Shah, the photographer Amruta Mokal, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Padmini Rout, Abhishek Kelkar, Vidit Gujrathi, Eesha Karavade, B. Adhiban bid a final adieu from the city of Doha

All the pictures for this and the previous Qatar Masters reports on ChessBase India website have been taken by WIM elect Amruta Mokal. Taking quality pictures at an event of such great importance is a task which requires great amounts of skill, patience, and stamina. We request all the readers that whenever you share the pictures from here or any website do give appropriate credits to the photographer.

Final Ranking after 9 Rounds

Complete results of 131 players