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Tromsø World Cup, Rounds 5 to 7
Friday, August 23, 2013
Round Five, Game One
Pairings – The Elite Eight
Tomashevsky-Kamsky
Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana
Kramnik-Korobov
Andreikin-Svidler
In the NCAA March Madness brackets, the fourth round is usually called Sweet Sixteen, the fifth, Elite Eight, the sixth, Final Four and the seventh, Championship.
++++++++++
The commentators are Nigel Short and Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, whom henceforth we shall call DJtG.
Nigel is a grandmaster and chess journalist. He ends up in controversies sometimes. One must note his match with Kasparov outside of FIDE in 1993. He shares a birthday (June 1) with the players Shamkovich and Szuba. He presently lives with his wife and family in Athens.
DJtG is a 56-year-old journalist and editor of New in Chess magazine, which he has built into, arguably, the best in the world. Lately, he was the commentator at the Alekhine Memorial and the Norway Supertournament. He is in to chess history and covered the important tournaments of the last two decades.
DJtG is rather scholarly and speaks measured sentences; viewers are having a hard time warming up to him this early into the finals.
This also may be due to the fact that yesterday’s tiebreak action was so intense that today’s play seems boring by comparison.
+++++++++
DJtG: Yesterday we watched a thrilling tiebreak day and you thoroughly enjoyed it.
Nigel: In particular, Tomashevsky, was the hero of the day. On Facebook there were several grandmasters, very strong players, who said it was one of the most remarkable comebacks they had ever seen. It was wonderful to be part of that. 169 moves – in my 43 years of playing chess, I have never played a game as long as that. I was giggling at the maneuvers. How did Tomashevsky make something out of very little? He just persevered. And Morozevich, in the second game, took the wrong course and played conservatively.
DJtG: And there was this final position where Tomashevsky could have mated Morozevich and didn’t. Some people were under the impression that he hadn’t seen it. Immediately after the game he told us that he had seen it.
Nigel: I think he had not seen it, but saw it after repeating the moves. Morozevich had seen it and proposed the draw. There was no reason not to take it.
++++++++
DJtG: What are your expectations of the matches?
Nigel: At this stage, they are all very strong players. The difference in elo between the players is very small. Arpad Elo, the inventor of the rating system, said a difference of twenty rating points is statistically insignificant.
I expect three or four tiebreaks.
There is a question as to what happens to Tomashevsky now? Yesterday he played all day, epic encounters. Does he take energy from his brilliant comeback or does he collapse in a heap? You never know which way it works. I am thinking of the Karpov-Korchnoi Match in Baguio in 1978, Korchnoi came back from being 5-2 down to 5-5 and everybody thought that the force was with him and that he was going to triumph in the last game and then he lost and lost horribly. You are never quite sure. Gata had it easier than Tomashevsky yesterday but you never know.
++++++++
DJtG: Of the 128 players who started in this tournament, 25 were Russians. Now there are four left.
Nigel: I have been talking to Gary Kasparov in the last few days and he has said that the level in chess in this event is pretty low. This may be a grumpy old man, who has retired from the game, saying that things were better in his day. What he did say is that Peter Svidler is in excellent form. Peter is the favorite over Kramnik in these matches.
+++++++
DJtG: Korobov is a highly rated player, whom we know little about. Everyone immediately liked him during his interview with Susan and Lawrence. He is very unpredictable in his answers and in his play.
There is a tweet question, which appears on the screen from Carl Portman. “If Korobov is the answer, what is the question?"
Nigel: I must tell you that Carl Portman breeds exotic spiders. I stayed at his house not too long ago. He had these enormous spiders there which he kept trying to get me to pick up. No thank you. I’m not touching them. He has a fabulous collection. I have no idea how to answer that question!
++++++++
Nigel: Caruana has spent a very long time (half an hour) on his move 16, where to move the bishop that has been attacked by white’s h3.
Caruana moves it back to c8 and then to b7. Will this time loss come back to haunt him?
++++++++
Deep thoughts from our friends on chessbomb:
Korchnoi is a sore loser, he accuses his opponents of hypnotism
He said that the Karpov team had a hypnotist, that Carlsen has hypnotic skills, and Mecking too
I have a magnificent book from Jan Timman and others on that match.
Korchnoi is a mystic and loves parapsychological stuff. So you put a guy with a strange face in a seat (watching the match) and he starts raving.
He once played a game with the dead Maroczy
[The match referred to was the 1978 WCC between Korchnoi and Karpov. Karpov had, as part of his team, a Dr. Vladimir Zhukar. Of Game 4, it was written: Dr. Zukhar fixed an unbroken stare upon Korchnoi during the entire 39 minutes which Karpov devoted to [his 15th] move]
++++++++
Tomashevsky-Kamsky is a draw in 16 moves.
Andreikin-Svidler is also a draw, in 30 moves (repetition).
Svidler joins Nigel and DJtG.
Nigel: People, who are tweeting, are somewhat abusive about your pawn structure.
Peter: I can relate. I am a pawn up, but my pawns are not pawns in the classical sense
Nigel: In fact you have tremendous activity. You are pressing. But sometimes these positions can suddenly turn against you.
At one point in the opening Svidler went into a big think:
Peter: This is the reason I spent 25 minutes on 10….Qb6 and went for this endgame. I must start something immediately, I need to find a plan. If at some point I allow Nh4 and Bd3, he starts pushing me away and I have no counterplay.
The chessbomb people:
- Svidler is thinking looking at his shoes
- Svidler is in his deep think mode again - he is actually a freak of nature
- he basically plays blindfold
- Ivanchuk is a savant while Svidler is some other sort of natural genius.
+++++++
After four hours and about 45 moves, it appears Kramnik has a winning advantage over Korobov.
+++++++
In Vachier-Lagrave vs Caruana, the endgame is rook and white-square bishop each. White is a pawn up but has no great advantage.
+++++++
DJtG: Let’s take some tweets.
(reads) Kramnik already has qualified for the Candidates. What happens if he is number one or number two here?
Well, you would think that number 3 from this tournament would qualify. But the fact is that there are only two qualifications from this tournament. If one or two of those were to qualify, then that is it. That is no longer true because Aronian is out. If one has qualified, then the other qualifier will be chosen by average rating, which will be Sergei Karjakin, who is slightly ahead of Teimour Rajabov. The latter has been playing pretty badly lately and has dropped a lot of elo points.
Nigel: My question is wouldn’t there be an argument for using live ratings for the qualification. His near qualification from this event is dependent on past results and he has been playing horribly this year.
DJtG: So you think the ratings used should be more recent.
Nigel: Let me argue the other way. When I look at the elo list now of the top 100 players now, I see that one of the players is dead and hasn’t been taken off. So there is an argument for just having very recent ratings!
Nigel: (reads) What makes a prodigy being one yourself and now teaching your son? Is it hard work, talent? Some become GMs, others fade.
Nigel: My son enjoys chess and is a singer and a dancer and has appeared in a number of operas. He played in his first tournament at the age of 14. We know if you are not a GM by 14, you are on the scrapheap. Let my son enjoy his chess and being with his friends. You will always find that the very talented people have spent a huge amount of time immersed in their field. As a young player I played more games than anyone else in the north of England. I was playing 150 rated games a year and even a 180 and going to school too.
You have talent, but must put in the work as well. I disagree with Laszlo Polgar on this. He may think that the experiment on his daughters proved this, but I don’t. They were intelligent girls anyway.
++++++++
Vladimir Kramnik has won his game against Korobov.
Vladimir: I played quite badly. I understand that I could have mated in three at one point, move 37.
Nigel: That’s an exaggeration; it’s not quite a mate in 3.
The game went to move 51.
+++++++++
Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana was a draw after 61 moves.
A Grunfeld, Caruana prepared up to 12…Qb2.
Nigel: We had an incredibly long think by Fabiano. It was like there was a stuffed dummy at the board. What was going through your mind?
Fabiano: I was cursing myself for not checking this before the game. I had the position somewhere in my computer and I couldn’t remember whether I should put my bishop on c7 or d8 (move 16). I could have used the time later. You can’t think naturally about the move, you are trying to remember what you had on the computer and recreate it. In the end, I chose the wrong move.
DJtG: Maxime feels he missed a chance to win in this game. The one win in the matches was convincing even though the winner wasn’t convinced.
Nigel: A lot of self-flagellation there. Join us tomorrow. Four have to go either tomorrow or in the tiebreak.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Round Five, Game One
Pairings – The Elite Eight
Tomashevsky-Kamsky
Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana
Kramnik-Korobov
Andreikin-Svidler
In the NCAA March Madness brackets, the fourth round is usually called Sweet Sixteen, the fifth, Elite Eight, the sixth, Final Four and the seventh, Championship.
++++++++++
The commentators are Nigel Short and Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, whom henceforth we shall call DJtG.
Nigel is a grandmaster and chess journalist. He ends up in controversies sometimes. One must note his match with Kasparov outside of FIDE in 1993. He shares a birthday (June 1) with the players Shamkovich and Szuba. He presently lives with his wife and family in Athens.
DJtG is a 56-year-old journalist and editor of New in Chess magazine, which he has built into, arguably, the best in the world. Lately, he was the commentator at the Alekhine Memorial and the Norway Supertournament. He is in to chess history and covered the important tournaments of the last two decades.
DJtG is rather scholarly and speaks measured sentences; viewers are having a hard time warming up to him this early into the finals.
This also may be due to the fact that yesterday’s tiebreak action was so intense that today’s play seems boring by comparison.
+++++++++
DJtG: Yesterday we watched a thrilling tiebreak day and you thoroughly enjoyed it.
Nigel: In particular, Tomashevsky, was the hero of the day. On Facebook there were several grandmasters, very strong players, who said it was one of the most remarkable comebacks they had ever seen. It was wonderful to be part of that. 169 moves – in my 43 years of playing chess, I have never played a game as long as that. I was giggling at the maneuvers. How did Tomashevsky make something out of very little? He just persevered. And Morozevich, in the second game, took the wrong course and played conservatively.
DJtG: And there was this final position where Tomashevsky could have mated Morozevich and didn’t. Some people were under the impression that he hadn’t seen it. Immediately after the game he told us that he had seen it.
Nigel: I think he had not seen it, but saw it after repeating the moves. Morozevich had seen it and proposed the draw. There was no reason not to take it.
++++++++
DJtG: What are your expectations of the matches?
Nigel: At this stage, they are all very strong players. The difference in elo between the players is very small. Arpad Elo, the inventor of the rating system, said a difference of twenty rating points is statistically insignificant.
I expect three or four tiebreaks.
There is a question as to what happens to Tomashevsky now? Yesterday he played all day, epic encounters. Does he take energy from his brilliant comeback or does he collapse in a heap? You never know which way it works. I am thinking of the Karpov-Korchnoi Match in Baguio in 1978, Korchnoi came back from being 5-2 down to 5-5 and everybody thought that the force was with him and that he was going to triumph in the last game and then he lost and lost horribly. You are never quite sure. Gata had it easier than Tomashevsky yesterday but you never know.
++++++++
DJtG: Of the 128 players who started in this tournament, 25 were Russians. Now there are four left.
Nigel: I have been talking to Gary Kasparov in the last few days and he has said that the level in chess in this event is pretty low. This may be a grumpy old man, who has retired from the game, saying that things were better in his day. What he did say is that Peter Svidler is in excellent form. Peter is the favorite over Kramnik in these matches.
+++++++
DJtG: Korobov is a highly rated player, whom we know little about. Everyone immediately liked him during his interview with Susan and Lawrence. He is very unpredictable in his answers and in his play.
There is a tweet question, which appears on the screen from Carl Portman. “If Korobov is the answer, what is the question?"
Nigel: I must tell you that Carl Portman breeds exotic spiders. I stayed at his house not too long ago. He had these enormous spiders there which he kept trying to get me to pick up. No thank you. I’m not touching them. He has a fabulous collection. I have no idea how to answer that question!
++++++++
Nigel: Caruana has spent a very long time (half an hour) on his move 16, where to move the bishop that has been attacked by white’s h3.
Caruana moves it back to c8 and then to b7. Will this time loss come back to haunt him?
++++++++
Deep thoughts from our friends on chessbomb:
Korchnoi is a sore loser, he accuses his opponents of hypnotism
He said that the Karpov team had a hypnotist, that Carlsen has hypnotic skills, and Mecking too
I have a magnificent book from Jan Timman and others on that match.
Korchnoi is a mystic and loves parapsychological stuff. So you put a guy with a strange face in a seat (watching the match) and he starts raving.
He once played a game with the dead Maroczy
[The match referred to was the 1978 WCC between Korchnoi and Karpov. Karpov had, as part of his team, a Dr. Vladimir Zhukar. Of Game 4, it was written: Dr. Zukhar fixed an unbroken stare upon Korchnoi during the entire 39 minutes which Karpov devoted to [his 15th] move]
++++++++
Tomashevsky-Kamsky is a draw in 16 moves.
Andreikin-Svidler is also a draw, in 30 moves (repetition).
Svidler joins Nigel and DJtG.
Nigel: People, who are tweeting, are somewhat abusive about your pawn structure.
Peter: I can relate. I am a pawn up, but my pawns are not pawns in the classical sense
Nigel: In fact you have tremendous activity. You are pressing. But sometimes these positions can suddenly turn against you.
At one point in the opening Svidler went into a big think:
Peter: This is the reason I spent 25 minutes on 10….Qb6 and went for this endgame. I must start something immediately, I need to find a plan. If at some point I allow Nh4 and Bd3, he starts pushing me away and I have no counterplay.
The chessbomb people:
- Svidler is thinking looking at his shoes
- Svidler is in his deep think mode again - he is actually a freak of nature
- he basically plays blindfold
- Ivanchuk is a savant while Svidler is some other sort of natural genius.
+++++++
After four hours and about 45 moves, it appears Kramnik has a winning advantage over Korobov.
+++++++
In Vachier-Lagrave vs Caruana, the endgame is rook and white-square bishop each. White is a pawn up but has no great advantage.
+++++++
DJtG: Let’s take some tweets.
(reads) Kramnik already has qualified for the Candidates. What happens if he is number one or number two here?
Well, you would think that number 3 from this tournament would qualify. But the fact is that there are only two qualifications from this tournament. If one or two of those were to qualify, then that is it. That is no longer true because Aronian is out. If one has qualified, then the other qualifier will be chosen by average rating, which will be Sergei Karjakin, who is slightly ahead of Teimour Rajabov. The latter has been playing pretty badly lately and has dropped a lot of elo points.
Nigel: My question is wouldn’t there be an argument for using live ratings for the qualification. His near qualification from this event is dependent on past results and he has been playing horribly this year.
DJtG: So you think the ratings used should be more recent.
Nigel: Let me argue the other way. When I look at the elo list now of the top 100 players now, I see that one of the players is dead and hasn’t been taken off. So there is an argument for just having very recent ratings!
Nigel: (reads) What makes a prodigy being one yourself and now teaching your son? Is it hard work, talent? Some become GMs, others fade.
Nigel: My son enjoys chess and is a singer and a dancer and has appeared in a number of operas. He played in his first tournament at the age of 14. We know if you are not a GM by 14, you are on the scrapheap. Let my son enjoy his chess and being with his friends. You will always find that the very talented people have spent a huge amount of time immersed in their field. As a young player I played more games than anyone else in the north of England. I was playing 150 rated games a year and even a 180 and going to school too.
You have talent, but must put in the work as well. I disagree with Laszlo Polgar on this. He may think that the experiment on his daughters proved this, but I don’t. They were intelligent girls anyway.
++++++++
Vladimir Kramnik has won his game against Korobov.
Vladimir: I played quite badly. I understand that I could have mated in three at one point, move 37.
Nigel: That’s an exaggeration; it’s not quite a mate in 3.
The game went to move 51.
+++++++++
Vachier-Lagrave-Caruana was a draw after 61 moves.
A Grunfeld, Caruana prepared up to 12…Qb2.
Nigel: We had an incredibly long think by Fabiano. It was like there was a stuffed dummy at the board. What was going through your mind?
Fabiano: I was cursing myself for not checking this before the game. I had the position somewhere in my computer and I couldn’t remember whether I should put my bishop on c7 or d8 (move 16). I could have used the time later. You can’t think naturally about the move, you are trying to remember what you had on the computer and recreate it. In the end, I chose the wrong move.
DJtG: Maxime feels he missed a chance to win in this game. The one win in the matches was convincing even though the winner wasn’t convinced.
Nigel: A lot of self-flagellation there. Join us tomorrow. Four have to go either tomorrow or in the tiebreak.
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