Paris Grand Prix

**Bob Armstrong** · Thursday, 29th August, 2013, 10:57 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

A lot is at stake. This is GP # 6, and the last of the 2012-3 GP circuit.

The two top Grand Prix finishers enter the 2014 Candidates’ Tournament. Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) has already clinched first place and cannot be caught.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) sits in second on the GP at the moment, but has played his maximum 4 games of 6 in the GP. Fabiano Caruana (Italy) and Alexander Grischuk (Russia) are potentially able to overtake him for the Candidates position, depending on how they finish in this final GP.

Bob A

**Wayne Komer** · Sunday, 22nd September, 2013, 12:45 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix

Sunday, September 22, 2013

The final Grand Prix of the year begins today. Three players from the initial entry have stepped out: Sergey Karjakin, Peter Svidler and Teimour Radjabov have gone to be replaced by Evgeny Tomashevsky, Etienne Bacrot and Laurent Fressinet.

If either Fabiano Caruana or Alexander Grischuk wins the tournament outright and unshared, then he will get the final spot in the Candidates and put aside Mamedyarov.

For the others there is a considerable prize fund and GP points:

1st 25, 000 euros
2nd 22, 500
3rd 20,000
4th 17, 500
etc

25, 000 euros in Canadian is roughly $35,800.

Standing first unshared gives you 170 GP points or 140 if shared.
++++++++

Lots were drawn on Saturday by the players choosing champagne bottles. The pairings:

FIDE Grand Prix Series - Paris

Round 1 September 22nd

1. Fressinet, Laurent - Ponomariov, Ruslan
2. Grischuk, Alexander- Wang Hao
3. Caruana, Fabiano-Bacrot, Etienne
4. Ivanchuk, Vassily-Dominguez Perez Leinier
5. Nakamura, Hikaru-Tomashevsky, Evgeny
6. Gelfand, Boris-Giri, Anish

The games are streamed live at

http://paris2013.fide.com/en/main-page

Susan Polgar’s chess blog reports that live commentary will be given by GM Sergey Tiviakov

**Laurentiu Grigorescu** · Sunday, 22nd September, 2013, 08:55 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

So Radjabov withdrew? At least, "on paper", he could have played for Mamedyarov. The tournament and Grad Prix situation provides an opportunity for Grischuk or Caruana to prove themselves and win this. But who knows, Ivanchuk may beat them both, he did that before to better known players :-)

**Ken MacDonald** · Sunday, 22nd September, 2013, 11:05 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Originally posted by Wayne Komer View Post

Paris Grand Prix

September 21 to October 5

The Press Officer for this event, Alina l’Ami, has just provided details on the event and information to ChessBase:

http://www.chessbase.com/Home/TabId/...ch-290813.aspx

Participants

Fabiano Caruana
Alexander Grischuk
Hikaru Nakamura
Boris Gelfand
Leinier Dominguez
Ruslan Ponomariov
Wang Hao
Anish Giri
Vassily Ivanchuk
Etienne Bacrot
Laurent Fressinet
Evgeny Tomashevsky

The Venue

The church, Chapelle de la Villedieu, is the first milestone from Paris to Chartres on the pilgrimage route. I believe it is sixteen kilometres west of Versailles. You must see the photo of the playing hall in the article!

I can't think of a nicer "chess" vacation this year than to attend this Grand Prix.

[A popular train ride for tourists (including myself, as a student) was Paris-Versailles-Chartres-Le Mans, with a change at the Gare de Versailles]

Some English comments though:

- A la recherche du temps perdu seems an apt phrase at this point. Nicely designed it may be but that church looks like the sort of venue the e2e4 events were designed to get away from and one which most club players are all too familiar with. I should imagine the world's elite will be hoping the place is at least going to be heated.

- Ah, the distant memories of being an unwilling researcher into the temperature of perdition. My club currently play in a church hall - one with heating - so I think the novel choice of venue for this GP could be welcome and the atmosphere may give rise to some spirited chess. What will the temperature be in Paris at the end of Sept. and start of Oct? It may well be quite mild, and visons of hats, gloves & overcoats with frosty breath - as in some old Soviet Siberian tournament - is perhaps just fear of seasonal temperatures of an Englishman based in the Gulf. If they can organise the football World Cup in the desert in the middle of summer then this GP will be a doddle in comparison. Pop over to Paris to join the congregation and chill out.

- Also not exactly Paris. The venue is as far from the centre of Paris as my home in Sevenoaks is from the centre of London. Allow an hour by taxi, or about 40 minutes from Orly airport.

http://paris2013.fide.com/en/main-pa...133-live-games

I am not sure if this is unique...

But, above the board, one can click on a CAM to see the actual board and players LIVE. I have never noticed this previously for other events.

**Mathieu Cloutier** · Sunday, 22nd September, 2013, 02:28 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Many organizers started doing that in the last few years. It's fun to have a look, but I certainly wouldn't follow a whole game that way.

**Gary Ruben** · Sunday, 22nd September, 2013, 02:39 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Originally posted by Mathieu Cloutier View Post

Many organizers started doing that in the last few years. It's fun to have a look, but I certainly wouldn't follow a whole game that way.

I watched Hikaru and it was entertaining. It's sure not like watching poker players.

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 23rd September, 2013, 12:48 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix

First Round

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Of the six encounters today, only one had a decisive result – Boris Gelfand beating Anish Giri. Both came to the press conference after and seemed rather light-hearted.

The interviewer is Alina l’Ami, Romanian WGM, married to Dutch grandmaster Erwin l’Ami.

It happens that Giri and Caruana both have the same trainer, Vladimir Chuchelov. The interviewers really wanted him to leave his hotel and come and answer questions on how he trains such high-level candidates.

Actually, in June of this year, he answered similar questions on chessdom.com

http://www.chessdom.com/interview-wi...mir-chuchelov/

Belgian Grandmaster Vladimir Chuchelov is accompanying Italian star Fabiano Caruana in the Thessaloniki Grand Prix. He kindly agreed to a short interview after the beginning of round 9.

Q: Vladimir, you are here in Thessaloniki as a trainer of Fabiano Caruana, who is sharing the second place after eight rounds of the tournament. How are you pleased with his progress?
A: Overall, it’s too early to say if we are pleased or not because there are still three rounds to go. He started the event confidently, although in the last few rounds I guess all the participants are getting tired and there are more mistakes and critical moments.
But as always happens in this kind of qualifying tournament I believe everything will be decided in the last round.
Q: You are also working with Anish Giri. Is this co-operation on the same level as you have with Fabiano or you dedicate more time to one of the players?
A: Well, it is difficult to say, because Anish was in the final school year and he was pretty occupied with exams and graduation.
I started to travel with Fabiano, to accompany him to all the tournaments, except for Wijk aan Zee, which was not very successful for him (laughing). That was the signal that I have to go like this.
Now that Anish has graduated, I will dedicate more time to him, but I think I will mostly accompany Fabiano in the tournaments.
Q: So what happens when they play each-other?
A: I have a rest day! (laughing)
Q: You have two trainees who are among the world’s best players. So what is your secret?
A: There is no secret, just a lot of hard work actually. In fact, I am also working with many other students.
Q: Do you believe that your chess education in Russia helped you to better prepare your students, or you have developed your own system?
A: In a way, I wouldn’t say there was some special education in Russia, we just benefited from the general environment where chess was loved and respected.
I have developed my own training methods throughout the years. I started to work in year 2000 when I switched to coaching and that is when I started thinking about concepts.
Q: Do you have time to compete in the tournaments?
A: No, not really. I only play a couple of games in German Bundesliga, but this is mostly because I want to meet some friends there.
Chessdom: Thank you very much for the interview.
++++++++

Caruana-Bacrot, Fressinet-Ponomariov, Grischuk-Wang Hao and Ivanchuk-Dominguez-Perez ended peacefully with repetition of position or perpetual. The Ivanchuk game only went 19 moves. Sofia Rules were applied and their spirit circumvented.

This is the description of the last game from the official site:

Nakamura, Hikaru ½-½ Tomashevsky, Evgeny  The game was a very sharp Marshall gambit (the triangle set-up one, not the Spanish Marshall) in which Tomashevsky found himself out of preparation rather quickly. Nakamura sacrificed a piece on move eleven (!) to obtain a strong attack against Black's king, but Tomashevsky played very precisely and counter sacrificed a rook (!) to obtain a very powerful counter-initiative. Nakamura had no choice but to counter by sacrificing another bishop and force the weakening of Black's king. The game ended in a draw by perpetual in what was definitely a very exciting game.
+++++++++

The commentator on the games is Sergei Tiviakov. He is 40 years old, born in Russia but now a naturalized Dutch GM. He has been to Canada playing in the 2007 and 2009 Montreal Internationals and in the 2007 Canadian Open in Ottawa.

He is knowledgeable and speaks very good English. But he is really the only commentator and we have seen, especially when Lawrence Trent and Judith Polgar were commentating, that talking without pause for five hours can be exhausting. I wonder if Sergei really knows what he is in for?

He had some nice words to say about Vassily Ivanchuk when he was doing the players’ profiles. He said that Vassily had the best memory in chess, that he knows everything in chess and that he can quote thousands of games – a regular chess encyclopedia.

Vassily came to his press conference carrying a long white bag, which I took to be his bottle of champagne. He had arrived too late for the opening ceremonies the day before and evidently had not got his bottle until today. He had a sports cap on and gave an exhaustive analysis of his game for fifteen minutes and then let Dominguez talk.
After answering two questions from the audience, the players were excused. But, Vassily looking at the final position on the screen in front of him, sat down and started to analyze aloud again!

There was this anecdote from the ChessPub Forum a couple of years ago:

A little story about databases and information: "A couple of top players are discussing their million-game databases when Ivanchuk passes by. Hey Chucky! How big is your database? 10,000 games, he replies. What - only 10,000? Yes I know! I try and try, but I can’t seem to remember more than 10,000 games". Story is from Quality Chess Puzzle Book by John Shaw, and he admits he doesn’t know if it is true, but he hopes so.
+++++++++++

Round Two

Monday, September 23, 2013

Tomashevsky-Gelfand
Ponomariov-Giri
Dominguez-Nakamura
Bacrot-Ivanchuk
Wang Hao-Caruana
Fressinet-Grischuk

Games start live at 15:00 Paris time which is 9:00 a.m. Montreal/Toronto time.

**Semii Kaur** · Monday, 23rd September, 2013, 08:06 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

An interesting discussion is definitely worth comment.

**Wayne Komer** · Monday, 23rd September, 2013, 11:48 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix

Round Two

Monday, September 23, 2013

Usually, in broadcasting these tournaments, there are first round glitches that have to be ironed out. Yesterday there was no way to retrieve the recordings made of the interviews. Today, you can do this. There is a facility to download via YouTube and the fidechannel.

The Houdini evaluation of moves is not on the main page but through chessbomb if you click on “game analysis”.

You don’t see any spectators but there are some watching the commentating of Sergei Tiviakov and the interviews of Alina l’Ami. The most prominent of these today was Vassily Ivanchuk, who gave some of his analysis after his game was finished.
++++++++

The first press conference was for the game Bacrot-Ivanchuk. Vassily was there in the sports cap again, with it poised jauntily on his head. Practically nothing came out of the interview about the game, which was a draw by repetition in 18 moves.
The next game at the press conference was Tomashevsky-Gelfand. Before the players came to the table Sergei wondered aloud, how much of the 20-move game was theory. With the encyclopedia of chess in the audience, viz Vassily Ivanchuk, it was not long before he got the answer, “All of it!”
Since Tomashevsky was one of Gelfand’s seconds in his match with Anand a peaceful draw by repetition of position was an understandable outcome.

After yesterday’s game with Nakamura, Tomashevsky said at the press conference that the line of the QGD, Semi-Slav played was in his book and he only had to remember his analysis, which was a challenging task. So, everyone wanted to go out and buy that book but couldn’t find what he had authored in English or in Russian.
Tiviakov wanted to drill him on this but it was just a simple mistake in interpretation.

ChessVibes comments:

- Even if Tomashevsky said "book" he meant his computer. There is no mystery here.

- Yes, seems like a case of meaning being lost in translation, the phrase probably was "in the book" as in "I was in the book for all of the game".

- the official report was changed to read: "Tomashevsky believed he was following his home preparation, but unfortunately couldn't remember the lines...he didn't anticipate this critical and forcing variation would appear on the board; for Nakamura the situation was much the same." So Tomashevsky had checked this months to years ago, not last week or the evening before the game!?
++++++++++

A Dutch player came in yesterday to assist Anish Giri, as his second. He spent five hours last night working analyzing some theoretical variations.
He is Robin van Kampen, born in 1994, a grandmaster and a prodigy. He achieved his grandmaster title at the very early age of 16 years, 8 months.
Anish Giri meets Fabiano Caruana in Round 9 on October 2. Van Kampen, evidently will be helping Anish then but it is not clear to me how much help Fabiano will get from Vladimir Chuchelov.
Robin helps Anish prepare and is here for the length of the tournament. He took 3rd place in the Dutch Championship and his rating went above 2600, which means that he qualifies for the Dutch team in the European Team Championship. Last year was his first year as a chess professional, not being in school any more. He is a young player to watch.

Other pairings and results

Sergei and Robin analyze the games in progress.

Ponomariov-Giri was a perpetual in 50 moves. Afterwards Ruslan talked about his living in Spain, which he has done for about a year.

Dominguez-Nakamura was all theory up until move 21 and ended in a perpetual in 44 moves. After, Sergei kept giving his suggestions to Nakamura about how to play the position and Hikaru appeared to be nettled.

CV Note: Please, please, please, take out Tiviakov from the commentary room.
He is a very good player indeed, no doubt about it, but has not a clue about what he's doing in front of a camera.
He dared to discuss a variation with Naka move by move, not the ideas, nor the moves, but actually challenging him to respond to his moves. Ridiculous!

Wang Hao-Caruana. The official site says, “In all their previous encounters, Caruana had played with Black against Wang Hao. The score was simply devastating: 4.5 - 0.5 to the Chinese player's favour. If Fabiano had hoped that in Paris he would get White against his Nemesis, the drawing of lots must have disappointed him rather bitterly: he was to have Black once again. And yet, he managed to cross this difficult psychological barrier and change the rather unfortunate trend by making a draw, true, not without some share of suffering.”

Wang Hao specialized in advertising at Beijing University.

Sergei says that strong players rise in China but then disappear completely. What is happening to them? Wang Hao says they have gone into other fields perhaps because they have to pay out part of their winnings.
As for prize money, Wang Hao says the Chinese players used to give 60 to 70% of their winnings to the Chinese Chess Federation. Now, it is more like 50%. The Federation does not pay their travel expenses or accommodation and yet takes 50% of all winnings.
Also, Europe is far from China, even with air travel, which is expensive and the players prefer to play in Asia.
One gets the idea from what he has said that the collective team effort to support Chinese players has given way to the Western method of individual players with seconds.

Sergei, after four hours sitting in his seat without a break, is starting to get very opinionated! I am glad when Fabiano and Wang Hao depart.
++++++++++

The last game to finish is Fressinet-Grischuk, with Sasha making a bad move coming out of the time control and losing the sole game of the round.

One of the chessbomb viewers made up a cute poem during the game: Grischuk's passion is rugged and raw / He is not satisfied with a draw! / Taking leave of his senses / He storms those defences / And attacks Laurent's fist with his jaw
+++++++++

For a tournament near Paris, I have not heard one word of French, just English. They really have not shown shots of the mediaeval church they are playing in or the Paris sights. Some have thought the tournament dull so far but perhaps things will pick up.

- for me.. this grand prix is failing to create any spark of chess enthusiasm for some reason

- If twelve 2700+ players, including six 2750+s isn't interesting to you, well that's your opinion ... .

The pairings for Round Three tomorrow:

Grischuk-Ponomariov
Caruana-Fressinet
Ivanchuk-Wang Hao
Nakamura-Bacrot
Gelfand-Dominguez

**Laurentiu Grigorescu** · Tuesday, 24th September, 2013, 06:10 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

So far, does not look good for Grischuk. It should not be quite indifferent who wins this last Grand Prix, as there is still one place (the special guest one).

The low interest in this Grad Prix tournaments - I think the idea was to emulate the Grand Prix of the late 80s. But can these 2700+ players emulate K-K, Nunn, Portisch, Timman, etc.?

**Wayne Komer** · Tuesday, 24th September, 2013, 11:21 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix

Round Three

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Sergei Tiviakov’s guest today was Anastasia Sorokina. She is an International Arbiter from Australia. She started to play chess when she was five. She is from a chess family and her uncle is Viktor Kupreichik. (You remember that he was the subject of the 1986 book “Uncompromising Chess” by Gene McCormick). She is an international master who played her last game in 2007. She was born in Minsk in Belarus. Her chief dream as a girl was to see koalas and kangaroos. When she was invited to work in a chess in schools program in Australia, she decided to stay there. She participated in the 2004 Olympiad in Calvia, Majorca for the Australian team. She stopped playing chess in 2007 because a good friend of hers died.
She became an International Arbiter in 2002. Last year Emil Sutovsky asked her to arbitrate, so she worked at Tashkent and this year at Beijing.
She works out of Minsk because it is easier to travel from there than from Australia. She will stay four or five years in Belarus and then return to Australia.
She has a chess school in Minsk. It just started in September and chess lessons are offered to children from the age of three to six. Normally, kids start to play chess at 7 or 8, which is too late to learn chess. Beginning at a younger age is indicated. Her daughter at 4 knows the names of the pieces but prefers gymnastics to chess. It was her choice.
++++++++++

Things are finally heating up and becoming more interesting. There were four White wins today and two draws.

Giri-Tomashevsky went 24 moves and was drawn by repetition of moves.

Grischuk-Ponomariov was a hard-fought draw of 86 moves. When he was rushing to meet the 40th move time control, I saw Sasha stop writing down his moves and then when he had passed, calmly putting in the five or so of his and his opponents on the score sheet. This appears to be all right according to Article 8 of the Laws of Chess: If a player has less than five minutes left on his clock at some stage in a period and does not have a time of 30 seconds or more added with each move, then for the remainder of the period he is not obliged to meet the requirements of Article 8.1 (recording his own moves and those of his opponents, move after move).

At one point in the game, Alexander got up from his chair and looked at one of the screens and saw that his game and Gelfand’s had the same position!

Speaking of chairs, each player gets an executive chair, personalized to his height etc. Each chair has the player’s name on it and he uses that chair for the tournament.
At the beginning of the third round, Grischuk was unhappy with his chair and changed it for a simple wooden one. When asked by Ms. l’Ami why he did that, he said, “It was too comfortable, and I would probably have fallen asleep!”
+++++++++++

Ivanchuk-Wang Hao did not start out well for Vassily. He completely missed 16…h6. Sergei Tiviakov doesn’t let him explain further but tells him how the French Defence should be played. This was one of four occasions when I wanted to tell Sergei to let the players talk and not intrude himself into the conversation.
In the 4th hour Wang Hao suffered what he said was 'a lack of concentration' which made him 'miss many tricks and variations'. At move 46 it was already White who was playing for the win. Black made a couple of more mistakes and resigned on the 60th move. Wang Hao looked exhausted at the press conference. Vassily was his usual self, talking about his new cap with the Eiffel Tower on it. He and Peter Svidler are two of the most entertaining players on the circuit.
++++++++

Caruana-Fressinet – the first meeting between these two players. Fabiano beat Laurent in a double rook ending in 36 moves.
Nakamura-Bacrot had Bacrot forced to sacrifice a piece and then not getting enough compensation. He seemed depressed and said, “I played bad”. Nakamura sympathized with him and said, “Everybody plays a bad game sometime. I got lucky today, it’s not as if I played a great game”. There was a lot of tension in the press conference because Sergei wanted to know more about that move.
Tiviakov asks about Nakamura’s activities with the St. Louis Chess Club and then discusses something he just read about housing poor people in a project. Hikaru has had enough of that and says, “Let’s try to be professional; this is not about St. Louis, this is a chess tournament. It is not the time to be talking about socio-economic issues.”

I wondered if I was reading too much into the player’s reactions to Sergei, but at ChessVibes read these comments:

- a cynic I guess.. this was just awful.... no need to comment any further. Tiviakov is not a great player but above all dull and a lousy English speaker besides that he can't get a discussion going while l’ami can’t be listened to because of bad language skills and a soft voice. These videos are just a parody of what we used to get.... On a scale from 1 to 10 I can't give it a number... my god this is bad!

- I do think the players are not at all happy with these commentators...in fact it's a disgrace

- On a different note, I cannot help predicting that one of these days, one of the players is going to get real mad at Tiviakov's line of interrogation :)

Well, he has a difficult time being the only commentator. Today, during the sixth and seventh hours of play, he would comment on two or three moves and then shut off until a couple of more were played. He seemed very tired.
+++++++

Gelfand-Dominguez: Gelfand quickly got an advantage in a rare line of the Queens Gambit. He managed to launch his isolated pawn forward to d5 to which Black was forced to play e6-e5. He continued to play powerfully, getting a big advantage and increasing that to a winning position. It also cost him a lot of time on the clock; however, just before the time-control he missed the chance to wrap things up. An endgame resulted with Q and pawns vs R,B and pawns. It ground on and on to a point where White’s Q was traded for the B and he queened a pawn (move 80). Move 82 had the endgame of K+Q vs K+R. What is the maximum number of moves to mate? HIARCHS says 18 moves after 1. Kc5
{FEN: 2k5/5Q2/3r4/1K6/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1}

Dominguez finally resigned at move 97.

- I think Gelfand could have cut off 8 moves with 86.Qd8+! Kb7 87.Qd4! Kb8 88.Kb6 Rb7+ 89.Ka6 to get the final position of the game. I am surprised he didn't know or didn't remember this maneuver. Still it wasn't exactly a race to the 50 moves rule, Q vs. R usually wins quite comfortably, with Peter Svidler as one of the few "sinners" allowing a draw against - Boris Gelfand in 2001 :)

So, after three rounds, White has won six games, Black none.

The pairings for Round Four, tomorrow, are below with the number of accumulated points after the names in brackets:

Ponomariov(1.5)-Tomashevsky(1.5)
Dominguez(1)-Giri(1)
Bacrot(1)-Gelfand(2.5)
Wang Hao(1)-Nakamura(2)
Fressinet(1.5)-Ivanchuk(2)
Grischuk(1)-Caruana(2)

**Wayne Komer** · Thursday, 26th September, 2013, 02:47 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix Round Four

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Sergei Tiviakov’s interview is a revealing look at a top chess trainer and coach.

Vladimir Chuchelov, a famous coach, originally from Russia but now lives in Belgium.
I was born in Moscow and studied at the famous chess school, which had Abram Khasin as one of the coaches. Until the age of 17, I was involved in chess as a youth player in championships and Soviet events. I was playing for the Army club in 1989-1991, stationed in Berlin, just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The first international event was played in Belgium, in the German-speaking region, the capital, Eupen, and it is my first stop and I have lived there for twenty years.

I was there for ten years in my profession as a chess player. For my debut, I was invited by the famous Dutch grandmaster Jeroen Picket to Wijk aan Zee in 2002, a top event and the first year that Kasparov was not playing. I didn’t stay there very long because it is very cold in winter and I got a severe cold. Jeroen was one of the strongest players in Holland. He stopped playing chess and now lives in Monaco and is the personal secretary of businessman Joop van Oosterom.

The next year I was asked by Loek Van Wely, another Dutch star, and I stayed for the whole tournament. He had a chance to win the tournament. I began to think it would be good to be the second of a top player and then to switch to become a trainer. The analytical side of chess was always more interesting to me than the competitive side. The main quality of a trainer is patience! Anyway the idea took a year, from 2003 to 2004 to develop. The real training concept came years later in 2007. Initially you have to gain the experience of other leading coaches and combine teaching from the club player to the top. You have to create some concepts, not use the stuff of others, trainers like Shereshevsky.
Most of my students are really top players or young talented players – usually with a rating from 2000 to 2600. I accept talented players who want to work with me and there are many parents in Holland who want me to work with their children.

The longer you stay in your profession, the more experience you gain – time works for you. For the player, time works against you.
Initially I didn’t have too many students. But training is a profession and I worked at it eight hours a day. When I began to get students, I had much less time.

When I am working with very strong players, they are stronger than I am. I give practical experience and the understanding of chess. It is hard work and I don’t take vacations. We use a lot of computers and we have to give direction to the computers. The players have to get a big overview of everything. I had quite a narrow opening repertoire and the same type of positions and so could not become a really top player. But I have to teach a broad opening repertoire. We work 150 days a year analyzing the game and the openings. During a tournament it is just preparing for the opponent.

In this tournament I am helping only Fabiano. Robin is helping Anish. That is the logical thing to do. I have a rest day when they play each other.
I have been coaching the Dutch team in the European and World Team Championships since 2008. I am on permanent salary with the Dutch Federation. We have group sessions four days before the event, exercises and preparation.

There has been some discussion when we did not choose the Dutch Champion for the Dutch National Team but instead Robin van Kampen, who is young and making a lot of progress.

In the next ten years I see great things for Caruana and Giri and for the woman player from Kazakhstan, Zhansaya Abdumalik. I also liked what I saw of Yi Wei from China at Tromso.
+++++++++

Wang Hao-Nakamura was the first game to finish. It started from a Reti and was asymmetrical and finished with a symmetrical R + three pawns ending.
At the press conference, Hikaru sat as far away from Sergei as possible and all was peaceful.
++++++++

Bacrot-Gelfand was the second game to finish. By move 30 there was little left in the position and so a draw by repetition. Strangely, Bacrot has never seen the Palace of Versailles, and so will join the free day visit with the other players tomorrow.
++++++++

Ponomariov-Tomashevsky was also a draw, a perpetual in less than 30 moves. Ruslan might join the tour but even though it is at 3:30, he wants to be called. A rest day is a day when he can sleep in and not worry about zero tolerance. He wonders why the tournament isn’t actually being staged in the Palace at Versailles. He says that he is eating well at his hotel, not oysters and champagne for breakfast, but well.
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Dominguez-Giri - Anish Giri came well prepared and blitzed out his first 20 moves or so without thought. His second, Robin van Kampen, watching the game in the press room, also seemed to enjoy the course of the game. Then something went wrong on the 21st move for Black, the f7 pawn fell and Dominguez had little trouble converting it into a win.
+++++++++++

Fressinet-Ivanchuk – Laurent seemed to be cruising along to a win. He passed the time control at move 40, thought for five minutes and then played 42.Nc7. Sergei, commentating, could not believe this and would talk of nothing else – especially at the press conference.

Sergei – You were very quick to make a mistake after the time control. You didn’t even think.

Laurent – Of course, I thought.

Sergei – But maybe two or three minutes, when you had 55 minutes on the clock!

Myself, Vassily, Alina, all embarrassed. Laurent angry and Sergei, smirking. Is this any way to run a press conference?

So, Black finally has won a game.
+++++++++

Grischuk-Caruana – this should be the premier game since they have most to gain by winning the tournament. Caruana said he was being pressed in the middle game but his defence held and the result was a draw. Neither player would predict winning the tournament since they are behind Gelfand and Ivanchuk (and others) in the standings and we are only at Round Four.
Grischuk played from his simple wooden chair today.

We did learn why everyone is showing up at the press conferences – there is a 500 euro fine if they don’t.

Round Five is scheduled for Friday, September 27. The pairings:

Nakamura(2.5)-Fressinet(1.5)
Gelfand(3)-Wang Hao(1.5)
Giri(1)-Bacrot(1.5)
Tomashevsky(2)-Dominquez(2)
Caruana(2.5)-Ponomariov(2)
Ivanchuk(3)-Grischuk(1.5)
++++++++++++

Tomorrow is a free day.

**Kerry Liles** · Thursday, 26th September, 2013, 09:29 AM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

Originally posted by Wayne Komer View Post

We did learn why everyone is showing up at the press conferences – there is a 500 euro fine if they don’t.

Interesting! Sometimes the press conferences can be pretty brutal
(although it is always nice to watch and listen to Anastasia Karlovich for example).

It must be particularly annoying to attend the press conference after pooching a game.

**Hans Jung** · Thursday, 26th September, 2013, 12:03 PM

Re: Paris Grand Prix

I cant believe someone has not advised Tiviakov. Cant he see what he is doing. Part of the job of a good commentator is to bring forth the interesting points of the competitors. Criticism, negativity, and one-upmanship should lose you a commentators position quite quickly. (doesnt he care or does he fell he is above reproach?)

Paris Grand Prix

Paris Grand Prix

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