Road to be the Best Chess Player in the World!-Chapter 490: A Boring Draw

"Oh, Wesley, you cunning guy..." Anish Giri shook his head when he saw the move the American-Philippine GM made on the board. "Who would’ve thought that behind your nice guy persona, you have that ruthlessness inside of you?! This is going to be tricky for him..."

Wesley So himself just grinned goofily, clearly enjoying Sheva’s stumped expression. Both Vincent Keymer and Nordibek Abdusattorov also stared at him intently, and while they didn’t say anything, their gaze was full of scrutiny, ready to judge Sheva if he made the wrong move.

Honestly, while those two knew exactly Sheva’s achievement since last year up until now, they were still not convinced that Sheva was on the same level as them. After all, they had never played directly against him, and in their mind, watching the record of Sheva’s games a couple of times, they thought that they would be able to do better than Sheva’s opponents. This was the arrogance of the youngsters, and they had the capital to do so.

Sheva himself didn’t really think too much about it. No, if anything, his attention was still at the board, as there was a reason why he was stumped here.

’So, there is a trick here?’ He frowned, listening clearly to the conversation on the other side of the table. The hand that was about to pick up the piece stopped instantly, and his brain spun fast to think of every scenario on the board. Within a second, the boy found the best move here, and his eyes lit up instantly. ’Ah, so that’s it!’

If before, he wanted to exchange his bishop for the opponent’s knight, this time, he changed his approach. Instead of doing that, he took one pawn from the opponent’s side first, letting the white piece take the rook on D4 square, and exchanged it with a knight. Even though he would only get 4 points of material compared to the rook, which was worth 5 points, the amount of pawns that the black had would be enough to overwhelm the opponent later, and he was sure that the boys would understand his intention.

"Ah! That’s a great move!" Magnus’s eyes lit up when he saw Sheva’s maneuver, his head nodded in acknowledgement. "Sure enough, youngsters nowadays have guts, right?"

"Yeah, Wesley, it seems your trick is not working against him." Levon chuckled.

Hearing that, Sheva couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh. He himself didn’t even notice that he held his breath, but the praise was enough to ease the tension on his shoulder. ’At least, they acknowledge my move, so no one could complain about it.’ He smiled smugly.

Even though black was down one point worth of material, the game itself was still pretty much equal. As long as black could coordinate the bishop and knight for the rest of the game and utilize the pawn advantage in the future, getting a draw would be easy.

That was exactly what was going on in this game.

More exchanges were on the board, with pieces flying one after another like their lives didn’t mean anything. First, it was the queen, and then another pawn fell, leaving half of the board empty. Now, it was white with two rooks, a bishop, and three pawns against black with one rook, one bishop, one knight, and four pawns, and while at first glance, Sheva’s team was at a disadvantage, it was not easy for white to initiate an attack in this section.

Unfortunately, that was the only big thing that happened in this game. Other than Sheva’s attempt to be bold once, everything went quite quietly, with no major advancement being made.

Everyone still tried hard shuffling pieces back and forth, but in the end, once another exchange happened; this time one of white’s rooks and the black’s only rook died in the battlefield, both teams finally recognized that there was no way they could break this deadlock without committing a blunder, so the draw agreement was made, with Vincent Keymer shaking Levon’s hand firmly.

"That’s a good game." Anish nodded in satisfaction, setting up the board for another game.

"A good game, my ass." Magnus snorted in disagreement. "The game is so bleak and has no taste that I almost vomit, you know?" He retorted harshly. However, Sheva could agree with that sentiment, as, even though both players went perfectly, nothing significant really happened in about 60 moves that the game was played.

As Sheva nodded in approval, though, Magnus suddenly turned his gaze at him, making the boy startled and squirming uncomfortably. Before Sheva could ask, the man had already spoken first with a quite arrogant tone.

"Boy, you are good at playing explosive chess, right? Make sure you bring more fireworks, okay?!"

Sheva felt the corner of his lips twitching madly at that. However, he could only nod silently, as it was Magnus Carlsen who said it himself. He could also feel the hostility coming from the other boys, as this was basically Magnus saying that Sheva was already on the man’s radar, catching the GOAT’s attention.

’This is a new pressure, but also a new chance to make them remember my name.’ Sheva clenched his fist tightly. ’Let’s make sure that everything goes exactly my way first.’

Unfortunately, the veterans didn’t really give them time to discuss. While the youngsters treated this event as a war, the oldies just wanted to have fun, going with the flow while chatting with each other casually. They really took advantage of their years of fighting against each other to play flawlessly, while Sheva and the boys were quite fragile since they themselves didn’t really know what each other was thinking or would do in the next move.

’Maybe, just follow their example and go with the flow too?’ Sheva thought.

After the board was set up again with the time back at 3 minutes for both sides, they played the second game of the day. This time, it was Pragg who made the first move, followed by Levon Aronian from the veteran team. They went for the normal 1.d4, NF6 opening, which was something that Sheva himself didn’t really play that much.

’Oh, well, why would I think too much about it?’ Sheva shook his head, picking up the dark bishop from the original square. ’Magnus wants to see an explosion, right? Then, let’s fucking do this!’