Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Suddenly Turn The Tables
The FIDE World Cup 2023 took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from Jul, 30th to Aug, 21st. 206 players participated in the Open section while 103 players in the Women section.
The format used in the World Cup was an eight-round knock-out. It consisted of two classical games with 90 minutes for the first 40 moves. Then followed by 30 more minutes for the rest of the game. 30 seconds increment applied from move one. If the two-game match ended in a tie, players contested the tiebreakers consisting of blitz games.
Magnus Carlsen was the winner in the Open section. He and the young Indian star Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa had a tense final match. In the Women Section, the Russian WGM Aleksandra Goryachkina won the title.
The FIDE World Cup brings together titled players from many nations and a wide range of rating. More than 600 rating points was the range in the Open section and more than 800 in the Women section. With such a difference, you would say the higher the player’s level, the higher the chance of winning. The reality is not so easy and in fact, several underrated players surprised and defeated their superior opponents.
Today’s game could be one of those cases if the script had not changed at the end. The game corresponds to the Women section, where French IM Pauline Guichard (ELO 2384) faced Indian IM Vaishali Rameshbabu (ELO 2431) in round 2. After 53 moves, Guichard had a winning position but abruptly everything changed in the next 10 moves where Guichard went from completely winning to checkmated!
What could have happened to Pauline Guichard? Possibly, because she was extremely confident with her victory, she didn’t make the effort to ask herself for the reason of her opponent’s moves.
We have seen similar cases in previous posts. For example, you will surely remember the case of Giri’s sudden loss of attention in his game against Nepo in Wijk aan Zee 2019. Or Petrosian’s unforgettable blindness in his game against Bronstein in the Candidates 1956.
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