Highly emotional

Fragile grandmaster
Chess BY QUAH SENG SUN

Vassily Ivanchuk from Ukraine has a reputation for being highly emotional at the chess board.

IF Lahiri Atanu’s brief loss of form cost him the title at the Sarawak open chess tournament last month, it was just a small matter. Players everywhere experience it all the time, whether they are amateurs or professional chess players.

About two weeks ago, something of this nature happened in faraway Italy to a high-ranking professional chess player taking part in a top-level chess competition.

That it happened to Vassily Ivanchuk, a grandmaster from Ukraine, should not be surprising to anyone familiar with the chess world as he is known to be highly emotional at the chess board.

A few years ago, he got so upset after losing a vital game for his team at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden, Germany, that he refused to give a scheduled urine sample. At that time, the World Chess Federation had just made it compulsory for chess players to take random dope tests in compliance with the International Olympics Committee regulations.

He got off lightly. After a hearing, the World Chess Federation concluded that he was not to blame for refusing. But that incident cemented Ivanchuk’s reputation as a highly fragile chess player. He is so into the game that an important loss of form can turn him into a blubbering mess.

Witness what happened last September at the semi-finals of the Chess World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. It was the critical third game of a play-off match. Ivanchuk thought he was winning and fell into his opponent’s psychological trap. He played a two-move blunder and lost the game and the match. A highly distressed Ivanchuk left the chess board, covering his face with his hands.

Fast forward four months to this month’s traditional annual invitational tournament at Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. Ivanchuk had been invited to play in this double round-robin event, together with Alexander Morozevich, Hikaru Nakamura, Nikita Vitiugov, Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri.

Being the highest rated among the six players may have caused him some uneasiness, but he did not play like the tournament favourite. At the middle point of the tournament, he was in third place behind Nakamura and Morozevich, but only just. There was still hope of overtaking them.

In the sixth round Ivanchuk lost to Giri, the lowest ranked player among the six participants. It was a strange game. To those watching it via the Internet, it was as if Ivanchuk was inviting his opponent to break up his pawn formation. Giri seized the chance, then tightened his grip around the holes in Ivanchuk’s game and collected an easy win.

Ivanchuk looked groggy after that. In the seventh round he lost again, this time to Vitiugov. He played a combination

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