Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Ivanchuk Lost his Concentration

One tournament that is getting stronger every year is the “Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival”. The year 2018 we saw its fifth edition and veterans together with young players met in that open.

Veterans like Vasily Ivanchuk, Alexander Beliavsky or Oleg Romanishin played in the last edition. And also young raising chess stars like Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin or Vincent Keymer.

In the last years, it is usual to see a myriad of young Indian players taking part. One of them, Sreeshwan Maralakshikari (12 years old, ELO 2244) played in the first round against Ivanchuk. This game was the surprise of the tournament because the Ukrainian GM got crushed by his young opponent.

Apparently, Maralakshikari initially assumed that he had few chances of winning the game and he started playing fast from right the beginning.
The players received 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to the end of the game, plus a 30-second increment starting from move one.
At the end of the game, Ivanchuk’s remaining time was 1h 14min against Maralakshikari’s 1h 30min. As you see Ivanchuk’s opponent only employed the increment!!!

That would be the reason for Ivanchuk’s lost of concentration around move 19 when he made his mistake.