https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/08/chess-danny-gormally-holds-off-junior-challengers-to-win-british-rapidplay

Chess: Danny Gormally holds off junior challengers to win British Rapidplay

The top seed fought back from a fifth-round blunder and won the title
after a playoff with Ireland’s No 1 woman, Trisha Kanyamaraia

Chess: Danny Gormally holds off junior challengers to win British Rapidplay

The top seed fought back from a fifth-round blunder and won the title
after a playoff with Ireland’s No 1 woman, Trisha Kanyamaraia
Leonard Barden
Fri 8 Mar 2024 09.00 CET
Last modified on Fri 8 Mar 2024 09.34 CET
0

Danny Gormally, the top seed, fought back from a fifth-round blunder to
claim the British Rapidplay title (one-hour games) after 11 rounds in
two days at Peterborough last weekend and so continued a surge of form
and creativity in his late 40s. His victory came after he tied for first
on 9/11 with Ireland’s No 1 woman, Trisha ­Kanyamaraia, and won their
two-game blitz play-off 1.5-0.5.

Gormally was already one of England’s best players in the early 2000s,
but after he missed out on the national title he played less for a few
years. Then he made his name with the books Play Like the Pros and
­Calculate like a Grandmaster, both aimed at tournament ­competitors,
and by successful coaching of pupils including the top 10 ­England woman
Zoe Varney. His latest titles, ­Tournament Battle Plan and Chess
Analysis-Reloaded, again focus on a pragmatic approach for ambitious
competitors.

Gormally’s winning Rapidplay was highlighted by two critical episodes, a
round-five disaster and a round-10 checkmating tactic.

Earlier, Gormally won a pretty miniature where his opponent’s optimistic
queen’s side castling was punished by an unusual diagonal skewer of both
rooks.

For much of the event, 15-year-old Shreyas Royal, campaigning to become
England’s youngest grandmaster, had played the best chess, with well
prepared openings and incisive middle games, as in this win against a
strong IM.

Trisha Kanyamaraia, who tied for first before losing the playoff, is
­Ireland’s most successful woman player ever. At 18, she already has two
of the three norms needed for the women’s grandmaster title. Her older
brother Tarun, who also competed at Peterborough, is an IM, and both are
first-year students at Carlow College, Leinster.

A feature of the event was the large number of junior entrants, many of
them pre-teens, who scored well and scalped higher rated opponents. Most
still have to achieve ­consistency, but two pre-teens who again
impressed after previous successes at the ­Hastings and Cambridge Opens
were Oleg Verbytski, of Charlton, and Kai Hanache, of Hammersmith.

The best measure of progress and consistency for juniors is the monthly
Fide rating list, which can be set to show the top 100 names globally or
nationally at standard, rapid or blitz time rates and where England’s
Supratit Banerjee and Bodhana Sivanandan are regularly at or near the
top. Sivanandan, who shared the women’s third prize at Peterborough,
will be competing in her first women’s all-play-all, the Menchik
Memorial, in honour of the world champion killed by a V-1 flying bomb in
1944, from 22 to 26 March.

For decades, the British Rapidplay was only competed for at Halifax and
entries were limited. Its popularity at its new venue was clear, but
there were some problems. Alan Walton, a respected older expert, wrote
in the English Chess Forum: “With the high volume of families present,
the hotel couldn’t accommodate the volume, the restaurant/bar area was
full all day with nowhere to sit down and eat/relax between games (only
option on Saturday was to go back to your room, Sunday was stand up for
45-30 mins until the next game).”

Most players took only B&B accommodation for the Saturday night, so had
to play rounds 7-11 on Sunday after checking out of their rooms.

The tournament had 215 entrants, of whom 132 were rated below Fide 2000,
that is BCF 175 in old money, and a level below which some international
opens require higher entry fees from low rated players. That may be the
answer to overcrowding for 2025, especially if the ECF wants to
encourage more elite GMs to compete. The World Rapid is now a major
event with Magnus Carlsen, so its British version may need a further
upgrade.

The men’s and women’s world championship Candidates, to decide the 2024
world title challengers and due to be played in Toronto in April, were
in danger of being switched to Spain this week after it emerged that
Canada had approved hardly any visas.

Fide made a public appeal to the Canadian government and all player and
official visas have been approved and are now being processed normally,
so that Fide was able to lift this weekend’s deadline.

It would have been bizarre if the event had had to be moved, since a
Canadian venue should favour the two US competitors, Fabiano Caruana and
Hikaru Nakamura, and thus significantly improve the chances of a North
American world champion.

Canada has not previously hosted any Candidates tournaments, but was the
venue of one of the most famous Candidates matches of all time. Bobby
Fischer’s 6-0 sweep of Mark Taimanov in 1971 took place in Vancouver,
and another, Fischer’s 6-0 against Bent Larsen, was played at Denver,
not far from the Canadian border. In both cases the losers cited the
pressure they felt from facing the American on his home territory as one
cause of their devastating defeats.

Meanwhile, 19-year-old Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who missed qualifying for
the Candidates, has advanced to world No 4 after his victory with a
round to spare in Prague this week.

3910: 1 Ra2! b4/d4 2 Ra5! b4/d4 3 Kd7! Kxf6 4 Bxd4 mate.