Indian Chess Review 2005

In the year 2005, Indian chess had plenty to cheer about. Viswanathan Anand, who emerged as the world's top rated active player , and his juniors who won various tournaments.

Anand, who was vying for the honour with Veselin Topalov after the two were tied second since July , took the honour when the Bulgarian lost six rating points to slip to 2782 while the Indian, who did not play any rating game in the meantime, maintained his tally of 2788.

Anand won the Amber blindfold and rapid chess tournament, underlining his expertise in the Rapid and blindfold version of the game. The Indian, in fact, won all the three titles rapid, blindfold and overall. P Harikrishna was the most successful Indian winning three strong titles against stronger opposition.

The year started with Harikrishna's joint triumph along side Boris Gelfand of Israel in the Bermuda Inerrnational event. Later , he stamped his superiority on the Sanjin Hotel Cup in China and the Crown Group of Essent chess tournament of 2005.

Anand was yet again at his best in smashing Russian Alexander Grischuk in the Mainz Chess Classics by a 5-2 margin while Rustam Kasimdzhanov s full point lead during the Leon rapid chess tournament also came a cropper against Anand.

Anand's lows were seen in the Classical chess format where, after his second place in the Corus event, Anand was third in the Linares chess tournament, second in the MT el Masters, behind Topalov again, and second in the World championship in Argentina.

Another big shock for Anand came in the Corsica Masters where his winning streak for many years was ended by Vladim Milov of Switzerland.

Krishnan Sasikiran jointly won the Sigeman and Co . International Chess tournament along with Dutch veteran Jan Timman.

Koneru Humpy , who mostly kept a low-profile all through the year , won her solitary title at the North Urals Cup at Krasnoturinsk, Russia in July . This was by far the biggest ever women's round-robin tournament of the world and Humpy topped Chinese Xu Yuhua by a half point to emerge clear first. World women's champion Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria finished last in this evenly matched field that included Russian glam-girl Alexandra K osteniuk as well.

India dominated in the age group chess tournaments. Talented youngster Sahaj Grover won the world under-10 at Belfort in France becoming the youngest ever World champion from India in any sport.

N Srinath grabbed the Under-12 W orld title championship making it an Indian double for the first time in the same event.

Mary Ann Gomes won the Asian Under-16 girls championship held at Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Indian colts also clinched 21 out of 24 medals at stake in Asian Youth chess championship at New Delhi.

However , there was no success for them in the World Junior chess championship at Istanbul in Turkey as none of them could bring home a medal.

For the last few years the likes of Harikrishna and S S Ganguly among boys, and, Koneru Humpy and Eesha Karavade among girls ,had done well to win coveted medals in this event but this time the steam in Indians ran out in the absence of Harikrishna, Humpy and Ganguly .

In the ratings list released by the FIDE in October , Harikrishna jumped to the 31st spot with a career-high rating of 2673 from 59th place. Sasikiran, who had to vacate the second spot to Hari in the Indian list, reached 2663 to mo ve from 52nd to 40th spot.

Humpy and S Vijayalakshmi also recorded their career-best ratings in the list. H umpy , whose previous best was 2539 in J anuary 2002, reached 2540 while Vijayalakshmi tallied 2486 to be fourth and 12th respectively in the world s women s list.

In the world junior list, Humpy was the top-ranked girl while Hari was third among the boys.

Category: Articles , Chess