Sunway Sitges 2018: 12-year-old Sreeshwan beats Vassily Ivanchuk!

by Sagar Shah - 14/12/2018

The Sunway Sitges 2018 is a tournament to follow. Indian GM Sasikiran Krishnan is the fourth seed. We have two young stars of Indian chess Nihal Sarin and Praggnanandhaa playing out there. As if all of this is not enough we have the young talent Gukesh looking to break Karjakin's record of youngest GM in the world. Also worth keeping an eye on is Raunak Sadhwani who recently gave Vishy Anand a scare at the Isle of Man International 2018. However, day one belonged to a 12-year-old from Hyderabad Sreeshwan Maralakshikari, the current under-12 Commonwealth gold medalist, who beat the great Vassily Ivanchuk in just 26 moves. We have the entire analysis of the game and post-game interview by Rupali Mullick.

At the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival 2018, the second seed is GM Vassily Ivanchuk (2717). In the first round Ivanchuk was facing the young talent from Hyderabad Sreeshwan Maralakshikari (2244) | Photo: RupaI Mullick

Sreeshwan is just 12 years old and born in 2006 | Photo: Sagar Shah

Ivanchuk, with a rating advantage of nearly 500 Elo points, was clearly the favourite. Sreeshwan speaking to ChessBase India after the game said, "I thought I could draw the game against the former World Blitz Champion, but I didn't think I could beat him!" Well, the young boy did beat Ivanchuk and he did it in style. His pieces were all around Vassily's king and on the 26th move, Ivanchuk had to stretch out his hand in resignation. So let's have a look at how the game transpired:

The game opened with 1.d4 and Ivanchuk replied with 1...c5. We soon transposed into a Benoni.

It speaks volumes about the young boy's courage that he was not afraid to go for the most aggressive system against the Benoni with f4

The critical moment in the game came when Sreeshwan played his pawn to e5, opening up his bishop on c2 to attack the g6 pawn. At the same time the bishop on d4 is hanging. The right move here for Black was to take on c3 with his bishop and then get his knight to e5. However, Ivachuk erred big time. He took the pawn on e5 with his bishop and in came a striking blow!

Sreeshwan didn't have to be asked twice! He picked up the pawn on g6 with his bishop

Sreeshwan shunned a repetition with Qf7-h5 and got his bishop to g5, which was a killer blow.

The final nail in the coffin was the rook coming to f4 and delivering a checkmate via h4. Ivanchuk could do nothing better than to resign the game!

This was by far the biggest victory in Sreeshwan's chess career till date

Interview by ChessBase India's Rupali Mullick after Sreeshwan beat Ivanchuk

Know Sreeshwan Maralakshikari better:

This interview was done in July 2018 when Sreeshwan had just become the under-12 Commonwealth champion

Round 1 results of Sunway Sitges 2018:

Bo.	No.		Name	Rtg	Pts.	Result	Pts.		Name	Rtg	No.
1	1	GM	Andreikin Dmitry	2719	0	1 - 0	0		Jimenez Ruano Adrian	2245	89
2	90		Sreeshwan Maralakshikari	2244	0	1 - 0	0	GM	Ivanchuk Vassily	2717	2
3	3	GM	Inarkiev Ernesto	2693	0	1 - 0	0		Blasco Coll Andreu	2240	91
4	92	AGM	Siddharth Jagadeesh	2240	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Sasikiran Krishnan	2673	4
5	5	GM	Edouard Romain	2644	0	1 - 0	0	FM	Garcia Trobat Francisco	2239	93
6	94	IM	Blechzin Igor	2237	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Vocaturo Daniele	2629	6
7	7	GM	Adly Ahmed	2626	0	1 - 0	0	CM	Bharath Subramaniyam H	2234	95
8	96		Moksh Amit Doshi	2233	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Indjic Aleksandar	2620	8
9	9	GM	Lagarde Maxime	2616	0	1 - 0	0	FM	Sande Edreira Jose Antonio	2230	97
10	98	FM	Martinez Lopez Ivan	2228	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Gordievsky Dmitry	2614	10
11	11	GM	Romanov Evgeny	2614	0	1 - 0	0		Real Thibault	2220	99
12	100		Sorensen Hampus	2219	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Liang Awonder	2589	12
13	13	GM	Peralta Fernando	2584	0	1 - 0	0	FM	Kholopov Alexander A.	2210	101
14	103	CM	Fernandez De Bobadilla Gabriel	2196	0	0 - 1	0	GM	Santos Latasa Jaime	2584	14
15	15	GM	Lopez Martinez Josep Manuel	2580	0	1 - 0	0	IM	Gluckman David	2192	104