Saturday
Jun222019
Rathnakaran's Spectacular, Speculative Queen Sacrifice
Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 9:29PM
Heard of IM Rathnakaran Kantholi, rated 2338? Probably not, and given the depth of Indian chess, he may have been an obscure figure there as well. India is getting so strong and so deep in chess that the old joke that Russian cab drivers play better chess than the visiting GMs may now be more aptly applied to the world's second-most populous nation. Anyway, his obscurity is a thing of the past, at least for the next 15 minutes. Never mind Viswanathan Anand, never mind Pentala Harikrishna, never mind all their mega-prodigies. If even the 156th-ranked player in India plays like this (or see my notes to the opening phase of the game, here), the rest of the world is in trouble.
tagged Rathnakaran Kantholi, brilliancy