Chess thread

[Tal]

Back to chess for a moment.

Round one of the Grand Prix saw two decisive games out of six. Teimour Radjabov continued his bad run from the Candidates, played a rarely seen opening against the Ruy Lopez called the Jännisch Gambit (or Schliemann Defence). It is one of his pet openings and becoming more accepted because it is getting played by the likes of Radjabov. Not yesterday, though. Caruana dealt with it very well and was never in any trouble.

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009529/zug-r01-morozevich-and-caruana-win-180413.aspx

Morozevich played nicely against Kasimdzhanov and his game was instructive - if you want to play through one, make it that one. The great Alexander Alekhine said that the best way to attack was to create a weakness. When he has one weakness, give him two. Two, give him three.

The idea is that the opponent has to get his pieces in awkward places to defend in comparison to where your pieces are to attack, which means you are much better placed to switch your attack to somewhere else when the villain has overcommitted.

Watch how Morozevich keeps the black pawn fixed on c6. It isn't going anywhere. Look at the mess Kasimdzhanov gets his pieces in trying to hold it. White just prods and pokes, swaps off some of the defenders and, when the time is right, he switches it to winning the weak pawn on the kingside. Black is in a complete mess by that point and resigns.

All the other games were drawn.

[Tal]

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009536/zug-r02-three-wins-three-draws-190413.aspx

Round Terri of the Grand Prix looked like this:

Rustam Kasimdzhanov 1-0 Gata Kamsky   
Veselin Topalov 1-0 Peter Leko
Hikaru Nakamura    ½-½ Anish Giri
Teimour Radjabov ½-½ Sergey Karjakin
Ruslan Ponomariov 1-0 Fabiano Caruana
Alexander Morozevich    ½-½ Shakhriyar Mamedyarov

Plenty of odd games, as two players who seemed sure to be about to win managed to lose.



Leko (left) was once the youngest Grandmaster. Topalov was once the world number one.

[millidonk]

Have you seen this with Kasparov?

[Tal]

Yes. All very silly.

[Tal]

All games were drawn in round three, so no change. Games and analysis here:

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009541/zug-r03-all-games-drawn-200413.aspx

The crosstable (early days) looks like so:

Click to see full-size image.

[Tal]

All drawn again in round four.

Five of the six games could have been decided in White's favour, but defence resisted attack every time.

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009549/zug-r04-all-games-drawn-again-220413.aspx



Kamsky and Nakamura fight for US honours.

[Tal]

So, where are the heavyweights while the cruiserweight are pummeling each other?

The Alekhine Memorial tournament remembers arguably the father of the modern game.



He played for Russia for some time, but (as mentioned much earlier ITT) switched allegiance to France. This comp is played half in The Louvre and half in St Petersburg.

And boy what a first round.

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009547/alekhine-memorial-starts-with-a-bang-220413.aspx

Chinese Champion Ding Liren defeated top seed Lev Aronian and World Champion Vishy Anand lost against British Number 1, Michael Adams.

Kramnik has a whole point lead over them both, thanks to his victory over World number 28, Nikita Vitigurov.

Kramnik will surely be looking to get a comp win in this first opportunity since he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in London. Who would back against him now?

[Tal]

I'm in the slightly awkward position of commentating on two tournaments simultaneously, so I hope this doesn't cause confusion.

To confirm, there are two tournaments going on:

- the latest round of the Grand Prix in Zug, Switzerland, sees 12 players competing for points, hoping to get into the next Candidates tournament in 2014.

- an invitational tournament in honour of Alexander Alekhine, with some of the heavy hitters (including some of this year's Candidates and the world champ) playing in Paris and St Petersburg.


The Grand Prix has a rest day today, but the Alekhine Memorial had another corker. Michael Adams won again and leads the field on 2/2. Easy to forget that he was once 4th in the world.

Aronian beat Kramnik in what looks to me like a textbook positional game. It was one where he got a small advantage early and then never let go. The position got harder and harder for Kramnik. Notice how Aronian looks to swap off the queens for a winning endgame and he uses that to his advantage, because Kramnik has to move out of the way.



http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009565/alekhine-r02-three-wins-again-adams-leads-220413.aspx

[Tal]

Mickey Adams going through his latest win.

He's an effortless player to watch. His pieces seem to be in the perfect position when he goes to attack. It is as though he second-guesses the defence and has his pieces in just the right spot for his attack, thereby saving himself a couple of manoeuvring moves.

[Tal]

French player Maxime Vachier-Lagrave played an absolute ripsnorter today to beat China's Ding Liren. It is straight out of the Don't Try This At Home manual, but what a clever way to fix the black bishop on f8, effectively making white a piece up forever and a rook up for the foreseeable future.

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009565/alekhine-r02-three-wins-again-adams-leads-220413.aspx

[MintTrav]

None of the players who took part in the Candidates have made good starts across those two tournaments, against supposedly slightly "weaker" opposition. Okay, Kramnik's loss was to Aronian, but the rest have held their own at best. I guess you could pick out individual reasons, like Radjabov already being slightly off his game and Gelfand having Draw as his default option, but these are the players who thought they could be World Champion, and now they seem to be struggling. Between them, it's Played 11, Won 2, Drew 5, Lost 4. Is it just that these events came too soon and they haven't had enough chance to recover? Or is there little difference between the top twenty?

[Tal]

Good question.

Possibly a little of both. I imagine Tyson Gay's next race after the Olympics was a toughie. But there's very little between the world number 5 and the world number 20.

http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml

In fact, look at the list above. There's very little to separate great clumps of players and a good tournament for someone in 50th could see them jump 20 or more places with ease.

If you play online and have a rating, you'll get a feel for just how good the "weaker" players are in these tournaments. They are complete players, gifted with the ability to combine brilliant tactics with a deep, theoretical understanding of the power of the pieces. They all eat Grandmasters for breakfast.

Everton are an excellent football team. If they beat United, people would be surprised but the commentators, the managers and the pundits would say "If you leave players of the quality of Fellaini unmarked and take your foot off the gas with this standard of team, you get what you deserve".

If anyone thought these chaps would be a pushover, they really won't now. I don't think that was really what was going on tbh but perhaps it was a little harder to get into the zone straight away.

[Tal]

Something for millidonk and the other virile sorts:

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009571/natalia-pogonina-nominated-girl-of-the-month-230413.aspx

Normal service to be resumed shortly

[Tal]

Normal service has resumed.

Round 3 of the Alekhine Memorial saw the leader lose and fall back into the pack, as Adams was defeated by the solid play of Boris Gelfand (one of the recent Candidates gets a win!).

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009580/alekhine-r03-gelfand-beats-adams-240413.aspx



Over in Zug, it was all change, with no fewer than five out of the six games ending in a victory. Here are the details and two excellently instructive annotated games:

http://en.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/PostId/4009577/zug-r05-five-decisive-games-240413.aspx

The crosstable now looks like this:

Click to see full-size image.

Topalov played the very much à la mode d3 Ruy Lopez (the Classical Ruy Lopez sees White build for a reasonably quick d4 break, but this line is more patient). It is one of my favourites as White and leads to some really interesting positions. Topalov played some astonishing chess, as Nakamura made the position very intense, where total precision was required at every juncture. Topalov handled the tricky stuff exceptionally well and deserved every last bit of the full point.

[Tal]

Danny King walks you through Karjakin's win over Mamedyarov.