The Fide World Cup

As I write this, the Fide World Cup is underway in Sochi, the Black Sea resort in Russia which hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. It’s a thrilling event for spectators, who get to watch high-stakes chess in all its forms — fast, slow, wonderful and blunderful. The main knockout event began with a field of 206 players (with 50 seeded into the second round), while the women’s event had half that number. Each match sees two classical games on consecutive days, followed by a day of tiebreaks at fast-paced time limits. It is a brutal competitive environment, and those who reach the final stages have spent almost a month in fear of that one mistake which would put them on the next flight home. But the prize money is a major draw; between the two events, players take home more than $2 million, though many bear significant costs to participate.

For assorted reasons, several top English grandmasters (alas, including me) passed up the chance to play this year. That left an opportunity for 22-year-old international master Ravi Haria, who has recently finished reading history at UCL. Haria performed impressively at the European Individual Hybrid Chess tournament, beating Falko Bindrich, a strong German grandmaster, 2-0 in the first round. But in the first round of the World Cup, he was paired against Vadim Zvjaginsev, an even stronger and more experienced Russian grandmaster. Zvjaginsev is particularly noted for some imaginative ideas in the opening, including 1 e4 c5 2 Na3!?

Haria rose to the occasion, winning the first game with a stylish strategical squeeze. Zvjaginsev struck back to take the game into tiebreaks, but Haria proved that his initial win was no fluke. His steady play brought another win with White and a gritty draw with Black, which saw him through to the next round against the French grandmaster Etienne Bacrot.