Chess: Tal Memorial 2012

[Tal]

Oh THAT Kasparov game! Yes it's a work of art.

The book was made into a film starring Joe Montagna, Sir Ben Kingsley and Lawrence Fish burn.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0108065/

I seem to recall it being called Innocent Moves here.

In terms of studying games, my advice would be to look more at older games, where the positions were less double-edged. Alekhine is the man who IMO started the modern style of play. He was a fascinating character and I'll happily find some interesting games when this comp finishes.

[tikay]

Yep, but film not anywhere near as good.

Half hoped you would say that, it is rarely the case in my limited experience, films, by necessity much shorter, tends to dumb down the detail and nuances. Papillon was the nut example.

[Tal]

I really need to type more quickly on my phone...

[The Baron]

Thanks Longy - that game is obviously awesome but this was the one that made me go wow. I think ridic sacs are always the most astonishing to watch.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018625

[Tal]

Evening all

Round 6 has come to a close and this was not a day for top quality chess. Early indications suggest a few missed opportunities by most of the field today. As with any game where concentration is so intense, there are off-days. This is, of course, only by the standards of the top players in the world, of course, but you get used to seeing them play so accurately all the time that it is a bit of a shock when you see the odd slip.

In Grandmaster terms, a slip/error/blunder needn't be leaving your queen to be taken or getting checkmated straight away; it's more subtle. The game between Kramnik and the bottom player Tomaschevsky saw the former World Champion take the lead in the game, but he let it slip, only for Tomaschevsky to make a mistake and give the game back to a - presumably - grateful Kramnik. It was a long game and not necessarily one I'd recommend as particularly instructive.

It reminds me a bit of a snooker match where the two players take it in turns to get in the balls, miss a black off the spot and retire to their chair shaking their head. Eventually, one of them happens to pot the last black and thanks his lucky stars.

Round 6: Thursday, June 14, 2012
Fabiano Caruana 1-0 Luke McShane
Vladimir Kramnik 1-0 Ev. Tomashevsky
Alex. Morozevich 0-1 Hikaru Nakamura
Magnus Carlsen ½-½ Levon Aronian
Alexander Grischuk ½-½ Teimour Radjabov

The rules of the tournament are that each player has 100 minutes to make their first 40 moves. After that, they each get a further 50 minutes (added on top of whatever they have left) to make the next 20 moves each. If they are still going after 60 moves each, there is an extra 15 minutes added to each player’s clock for the rest of the game. On top of all of that, every time a player moves, 30 seconds is added to their clock. This last bit is a relatively new thing, since the advent of digital clocks, and tends to be reserved for the higher level tournaments.

The leader of the tournament, Morozevich, managed to lose a game he was winning for most of it, after getting into trouble at the time control. Morozevich got into the thirties and just let the pressure slip, with US player Nakamura – a brilliant player of bullet chess, in which you get just one minute each to make all your moves (check it out on Youtube) – finding some cheeky tactical wriggles to get out of trouble. He wriggled so well that he got into a winning position and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

With Kramik’s win, he joins Morozevich in the lead, with the chasing pack closing in.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8244

At the bottom is the crosstable for the results so far. The four digit numbers on the left are the players’ international ratings and the results on the right track how they are performing against their ratings. The final bit (+ and -) records how their rating will be affected after this tournament.
     

[thetank]

Great thread.

What's going on with the world championship cycle? I know it's been a bit of a farce for decades now. There's a big Vishy Anand vs Magnus Carlsen shaped hole in the universe wot needs to be filled.

If chess wants to make a mark of the public's consciousness I think the way forward is more high profile player vs player matches rather than tournaments. If a single game of chess is like a round of boxing, you want to see the two heavyweights go at it for 12 rounds and see who is left standing. Feels like a question has been answered at the end of it.

The super tournaments never seem to answer anything, they just create more questions.

[sovietsong]

<3 tank

[Tal]

Anand has just retained the world title, having defeated Gelfand. That was a series of matches, like you've described. In a couple of years, we will hopefully have a world champion who is genuinely in the top two in the world.

Carlsen has only last year agreed to be involved in the competition to win the right to take on anand. He had previously argued that it should be a big tournament (as is the case with most sports, after all) that decides the world champion. After some wrangling, carlsen has decided things are more agreeable and he is back in the game.

The farce of the world championship is nothing new in chess. Kasparov and Short played for one world title while Karpov held another. It became more like boxing then I suppose!

I like the idea of matches but I think it should be at least 12 matches, as you end up with people being frightened to lose, which inevitably leads to bore draws like we saw this spring.

[thetank]

I want the players to knock lumps out of each other till one is left standing. With an aim to making matchplay as similar to boxing as possible, my idea for a format is this...


8 week long matches. First to 3 wins.

Twist is you can only score as black. (blitz game or games to decide who starts as black)

Draws count for nothing. You play again with the same colour pieces.

The white player can start the next game as black in these 3 scenarios.

-If White wins colours are switched.
-If Black wins (they score a point!) and colours are switched.
-After 3 consecutive draws colours are switched.

Matches could last as little as 5 games, could go the distance. Maximum number of games is 48. (8 weeks of 6 games/week)

If no winner by then, whoever has the lead wins. Otherwise, the one with the most white wins is the winner.
If both players have the same amount of points and white wins the match is a tie. (if applicable, title retained by whoever holds it)



I would expect matches of this format to often go into the final week one side knowing they will lose unless they get that knockout black win.
 
Eight weeks might seem like a long time, but I think it gives a chance for narratives to develop. Seems that the only people who understand what the grandmasters are doing is other grandmasters, the rest of us will need a bit of drama to stay interested. 

[Tal]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE_World_Chess_Championship_2006#section_2 check out the section called bathroom controversy

[moonandback]

love the thread rediscovered chess this year after my daughter joined our local club. I actually quite like watching the games streamed live trying to guess what the next move will be normally wrong as im a chess fish! in breaking news mcshane looks like beating Kramnik today link> http://talmemorial2012.live.whychess.org/

[Tal]

After a rest day on Friday comes the final push, in the form of a game on three consecutive days. As if it wasn't close enough,Morozevich and Kramnik lost, meaning that there are now 5 (yes FIVE) players tied for first.

Round 7: Saturday, June 16, 2012
Teimour Radjabov ½-½ Fabiano Caruana
Levon Aronian ½-½ Alexander Grischuk
Hikaru Nakamura ½-½ Magnus Carlsen
Ev. Tomashevsky 1-0 Alex. Morozevich
Luke McShane 1-0 Vladimir Kramnik

So the bottom two beat the top two! Luke McShane defeated Vladimir Kramnik with an excellent game, including a nerveless finish under time pressure, with a queen each left, parading about the board at speed. Luke is an investment banker by trade, I believe, and used all his experience to good effect against the man who took Garry Kasparov's crown.

http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8253 gives you the latest games. If you see underneath the chessboard there is a Manhattan graph, this tells you who the computer reckons is winning (above and green is white; below and red is black) and the higher the Manhattan, the better the position.

As you will see from the cross table, nine of the players are within a point and all ten are able to win it. Ordinarily, the number of draws would be an indication of a boring tournament. It hasn't been sensational but there has been drama, good and bad play and players have gone for it. Few games have been under 30 moves.

Carlsen leads the tournament on a tiebreak and with the two lowest ranked players left, it is in the bag, right? I had the pleasure of being in London a couple of years ago to see Carlsen beaten by Luke. Magnus will take nothing for granted.

[Tal]

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8258

The penultimate round has just finished and I bring these results to you like a freshly made pie on a Disney windowsill:

Round 8: Sunday, June 17, 2012
Fabiano Caruana 1-0 Vladimir Kramnik
Alex. Morozevich 0-1 Luke McShane
Magnus Carlsen ½-½ Ev. Tomashevsky
Alexander Grischuk 1-0 Hikaru Nakamura
Teimour Radjabov ½-½ Levon Aronian

This was moving day and the World number 8, Italian/American Fabiano Caruana won convincingly against Kramnik to take the sole lead. Morozevich - who had been leading a couple of days ago - lost for the second day in a row; this time, to Luke McShane, who continues to impress.

Fabiano is just 19 years old. If he wins tomorrow, this tournament will be regarded as being his top performance and, having come second equal in one of the big tournaments (in Wijk aan Zee) in January, it would be unfair to call it a complete shock.

McShane turned the attacking brilliance all the way up to eleven today, sacrificing a rook for a knight to expose the White centre. I would encourage you to look at the game, as it is a real advertisement for how, if your pieces are causing the opponent more trouble than his you, it often doesn’t matter whether you have more bits than him.

Have a look at the position after 27.Nc4. Black has two fantastic knights, imperious and practically immovable. When the dark-squared bishop got involved, Morozevich – to use a poker term – must have been hating life. On move 33, McShane then saw a neat combination and got his material back, blowing open the space around the White king in the process. After that, it was just an exercise in technique, in order to finish Morozevich off.

By Super-GM standards, very little happened in the game between Azerbaijan’s Radjabov and Armenia’s Aronian and they shook hands for a draw shortly after they were allowed (the rules of this particular tournament forbid draw offers before 40 moves have been made each).

Nakamura hasn’t had it easy this tournament and his risk taking became his undoing against Grischuk, who engineered a beautiful position, with two rooks pointing squarely at the opposition king. He carefully avoided giving Nakamura a sniff and took the point.

As for Magnus Carlsen, he had a level position against Tomaschevsky but he knew that half a point wouldn’t be enough. He threw the kitchen sink at his opponent, creating imbalances in the position (this is a very important idea: the temptation is always to make moves on the same side of the board as the other guy, be it to attack or defend. If you go the other way, though, the position becomes more unclear and it requires more careful treading if you are going to win the game – do I get there before him?). As Tomaschevsky defended to the bitter end, Carlsen was still finding ways to keep life in the position, despite being hideously short of time, forcing his opponent to find the best move on the board or lose. Unfortunately for the World Number 1, Tomaschevsky’s resolve was unwavering and he had to settle for a draw.

All this leaves the situation going into the last game tomorrow as:

Caruana 5
Carlsen and Radjabov 4.5
Morozevich, Grischuk, Kramnik and McShane 4
Nakamura and Aronian 3.5
Tomaschevsky 3

Aronian v Caruana
Nakamura v Radjabov
Tomaschevsky v Grischuk
McShane v Carlsen
Kramnik v Morozevich

Still time for more surprises, so roll on tomorrow!

[Tal]

You might want to know what the current chipleader looks like...

Click to see full-size image.

Here is young Mr Caruana.

Anyone else think he looks a little bit like Screech from Saved by the Bell?

[The Baron]

Really enjoyed McShane's game. Especially with the black pieces. He always seems to have the initiative.