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Hikaru Destroys Duda’s Bongcloud, Asian Continental Championships, Tata Steel India News
Hikaru Murders Bongcloud Opening
Yeah. After losing his first three games of the match, Jan-Krzysztof Duda went full tilt and decided to go for a Bongcloud. Unlike in his game against Magnus, Hikaru did not simply reciprocate the opening and let it bubble down into a draw, but rather expanded in the center and proceeded to disarticulate Duda in this game.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about Duda’s decision here. Obviously I’m nowhere near either of them in chess skill nor tournament experience, so I couldn’t speak to the immeasurable frustration Duda must have been feeling. That being said, really man? I get it, you were getting the floor mopped with you. But at that point you’re essentially refusing to play real chess and depriving the audience and your opponent of a worthwhile game. Imagine if an NBA team was getting completely blown out, so they decided they’d only take shots from 60 feet and give zero effort on defense. I think this is opening ordeal is akin to that.
Regardless of my personal opinion, I must still continue to report. The bongcloud affair took place yesterday on day 1, but today (day 2), Duda was able to win the first 2 games. An ambitious comeback was attempted in game 3, but he finally succumbed to Hikaru, and thus, conceded the match.
This brings Hikaru to the semi-finals of the chess.com global championship, in which he will face off against Wesley So, who defeated Dmitry Andreikin in dominant fashion as well. The other two semifinalists are Nihal Sarin and Anish Giri, who actually defeated Teimour Radjabov in a tiebreaking Armageddon match with the black pieces, starting with nearly 2 minutes less than his opponent.
Before I move on to the next section of the blog, though, I must make a correction! Well, not quite a correction, but a revision. In my previous post, I mentioned how Hikaru shot up in rating and was only four points behind Magnus, and I included a screenshot from 2700chess.com, by far the most popular source of live chess ratings. Now I’m not so sure how this works, but according to chess.com’s twitter, apparently the website has changed their algorithm in accordance with new FIDE regulations?
So in anticlimactic fashion, I must sadly reveal that Hikaru is still a ways away from catching up to Magnus, and is in fact rapid world #3, not #2.
Asian Continental Championship
Now that that’s out of the way, I welcome you to the main event of this post, the Asian Continental Championship of 2022. I’m very proud to announce that one of my favorite rising chess players, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, won this tournament in stellar fashion with a 7/9 outing, undefeated. This seals him a spot for the 2023 World Cup(!), which is precisely the tournament that got Jan-Krzysztof Duda his Candidates spot. If you think about it, this means Pragg is only two degrees removed from a World Championship match. Crazy stuff.
The women’s section of the event was taken away by none other than Nandhidhaa PV, who performed even better than her male counterpart score-wise, finishing the event with an unbelievable 7.5/9. This means that she will qualify to compete in the women’s World Cup, so we are all very excited for her and wish to see her succeed.
Tata Steel India
Not to be confused with the original Tata Steel classical chess tournament that takes place in Wijk An Zee, the Netherlands, a newer Indian speed chess version of the tournament has announced that they will be starting a women’s side of the event! Their first invitee was women’s chess legend Koneru Humpy, but today they announced on their twitter that the second will be Anna Muzychuk, another extremely strong player.
I’m elated to see a brand as strong as Tata Steel India helping to expand and incorporate women into chess on the biggest stages.
