Chess thread

[Tal]

Don't gamble and not into chess in anyway but Tikays Tips and this thread are the ones I look most forward to opening in the morning.

Very kind, smashedagain.

The thread is better for interaction and feedback, as there are a hundred different topics, angles and styles I can employ on here, if it is what people want. As it is, I try to find a balance between the "tech" stuff, the reports of tournaments, a few history lessons and player profiles, along with addressing questions people have.

As ever, happy to keep it running for as long as it is wanted.

[tikay]

Those two "Daily Reports" are beautifully written & balanced, Mr Spurs Bloke, even a chess ice-cream like me can understand.

Keep them coming please, they are little masterpieces in themselves.


Carlsen prodded and poked, getting tiny edges in the position until – to the amazement of the grandmaster commentators – he had a winning position. It was a triumph of endeavour and sublime skill in equal measure. There was a problem, though; he was running short of time and, in trying to make the time control, he blundered, missing the coup de grace and was lost.

[Tal]

There is always time for the players to relax and for the journos to get a "they are human" story.

This time, a game of basketball, organised by Lev Aronian.

Click to see full-size image.

Vallejo-Pons skins Karjakin.




Carlsen on the ball, with Aronian in pursuit and Karjakin - perhaps literally - keeping guard.




Karjakin did get the ball, too, and apparently was an adept finisher

[AndrewT]

Hilarious, Rex!

You aren't allowed computers or electronic devices of any kind in competition so it's odd that this was allowed at all.

Computers play so differently to amateurs it is usually easy to spot with a trained eye. There was a controversy during Kasparov's match with Deep Blue where he said the computer must be being helped by a human, as it couldn't possibly have seen the move with a computer brain. Never proved, of course.

The Turk was a fascinating story - please make sure you read that part of it, thread people.

Article today in the Washington Post about that Deep Blue match.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/26/nate-silvers-the-signal-and-the-noise/

[Tal]

Round 3 saw three draws, so it's as you were.

The games were all pretty complicated, so I shalln't say too much. The one you might want to look at is Calrsen's game against Karjakin.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8509

As played, Carlsen was the one pressing for a win, but he and his opponent both missed a little tactic that would probably have turned the game in the Russian's favour.

Scroll through the game but it's the position after Carlsen's 46th move that you should focus your attention on. The idea of it is to attack the pawn on e5, which he is now threatening with both the took and the Knight, with only the Black king defending. If White moves next, he plays took takes pawn check (Rxe5+) and the king has to move away.

The key to black's killer blow here is that the knight is doing two jobs: it is also covering the pawn on b2.

So, if black takes on b2 with his rook, the knight takes back and now fxe4 leaves the rook attacked by the king but without any squares. He is trapped.

So White loses a pawn and that might be enough.

It is unusual for one player of this level to miss that but both is a real rarity.

They are human!

[Tal]

Fabiano Caruana drew with

World Champion, Vishy Anand



Both conspicuously absent from the basketball.

Anand is more famously into astronomy.

[kinboshi]

Has anyone played the "immortal jellyfish variation" yet?

[kinboshi]

...or did they decide it was a load of old carp?

[Tal]

There is a game called "The Immortal", he says, not taking the bait.

I'll happily post about that another time.

[kinboshi]

There is a game called "The Immortal", he says, not taking the bait.

I'll happily post about that another time.

I thought you were robbed!

[Laxie]

There is a game called "The Immortal", he says, not taking the bait.

I'll happily post about that another time.

I thought you were robbed!

He was.  It was painful to watch too.  Just need work on your QM bullying techniques and you'll win some day.   

[Tal]

Some more pictures of the action - no RSQ answers involved (unless I win one, of course)

Click to see full-size image.

One taken by the world's smallest photographer.





Armenia's David Beckham (ish): Lev Aronian

[Tal]

Round four continued the entertainment with the headline game of the tournament so far: World number 1 versus World number 2: Carlsen v Aronian.

As we have seen, Carlsen has been getting into good positions from the middle stages of the game but has struggled to seal the deal, often as a result of the pressures of making the time control. In Aronian, he finds a man himself tipped to be World Champion one day and the most likely person to challenge Carlsen’s number one ranking in the near future.

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8516

The game itself was a familiar sight for Carlsen v Aronian games: an incredibly intense opening and middlegame that stems from a well-known and highly theorised first few moves (this time, a Ruy Lopez, Berlin Variation). There’s more in the game than I’d be able effectively to discuss – not least because it would take me hours to work it out myself! – but the key bit is Carlsen’s move 27, where he missed a tactic that Aronian could use to win. It’s the sort of thing a decent amateur would expect to spot during a game without any real direction (by that, I mean, it is easier to spot a tactic if someone tells you there is one there).

You can play through the games on the link above and, for those of you unfamiliar with how it works, the bold moves are the ones that were played, while the normal text moves are from the analysis – what could have been played instead.

It is interesting to speculate why, for example, someone might play the right move in a league match against me, but the World Number 2 would miss it against the World Number 1. Perhaps it goes back to our discussions on bluffing and the power of the mind; that there might be an assumption that Carlsen knows what he’s doing, so these great opponents don’t look for those moves. That seems a little simplistic to me, because these guys make moves like that naturally, but Aronian would play RxBf4 in a simultaneous display or a blindfold game against a random patzer a hundred times out of a hundred.

Sir Alex Ferguson complains that teams always play better at Old Trafford. Might the reverse be true against Magnus? Might some players not bring their A-Game when playing against a guy known to grind down the opposition? That is plausible. Everyone – even the very best – has a bogey player; someone who, no matter what the circumstances, you never seem to be able to beat.

Kramnik – the man who took Kasparov’s crown, no less – had a spell where he just couldn’t get close to Carlsen; every time he looked to be winning, Carlsen would wriggle out of it and they would draw. Every level game would see Carlsen carry on and outplay Kramnik in the endgame. Again, this is the man who beat Kasparov by playing solid openings and outplaying Kasparov in the end game…and he is being taken to school by a whipper-snapper.

No sport is exempt from these phenomena, but it is always interesting when you see a great player missing something a section of the crowd would probably have spotted.

The amusing part of these debates is the armchair commentators like myself. I watch a footballer on a billion pounds a week get round the keeper and put the ball wide of the goal and I laugh at him, joke about how rubbish he is and sing “What a waste of money” from the stands. If the manager were to pull me down and say “come on, son, you’re up”, in the same situation, I don’t get past the centre-half and, if I do, I don’t beat the keeper. We don’t always appreciate the movement that got the player into the position to miss. 

The same can be said in chess, where I have described a surprising oversight and gone into all sorts of debate over why it happened, but only mentioned in passing the incredible recollection and calculation required to get to that position.

In the other games, Caruana beat Vallejo-Pons comfortably and he is the clear leader after 4 games. Anand has not exactly lit up the tournament and this is a theme that has seemingly dogged him for a goodly while, now. His games aren’t boring, but they won’t get reported when compared to Caruana or Aronian’s flamboyance or Carlsen’s surgical beauty.

[Tal]

OK so you read this thread from time to time but the techy stuff of what is going on in the games is a few levels above you. You'd quite like to know a bit more, even though you still enjoy the stories.



The first part of an explanation of how to play chess. It assumes you know how the pieces move and not much else. Hopefully, that's the level of a decent percentage of the thousands of people (ish) who read this thread every day.

Any questions, post them on here.

[smashedagain]

Perfect lesson for beginners. Answered a couple of questions I was afraid to ask and learnt so much.

Why do they use a clock and if your time runs out what happens?