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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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It would certainly appear Aronian has Giri's 'number'. With his win today, after playing down a Pawn for much of the game, Aronian now stands +6 -0 =3 vs Giri (at least according to chessgames.com).
Alexander Ipatov, who has the day off today, joins Mikhailo Oleksienko and Can Arduman commentating. They talk about the game Petrosian-L’Ami (Armenia-Netherlands). It is following Kramnik – Li from Round Three. Why did L’Ami go into this line? The guys go on to the next game, and L’Ami plays 28...Nf6, White replies with 29. Qxa5 and Black’s position collapses like a house of cards in a windstorm!
An Armenian on ChessBomb comments that there are five or six people in his Federation named Tigran Petrosian.
++++++++
In the rubber match Ukraine-Russia Nepo beats Kryvoruchko. Black’s queen is trapped on a1. They agree to draws on all the other boards. Russia is virtually assured of the championship.
Black is a pawn down in the opening and White has the better game and then Black move by move outplays White. The commentators think that 27.c4 was the turning point in the game but Stockfish doesn’t – it gives 35.Ndc3 as the time when Black took over.
ChessBomb viewers during the endgame:
- that a-pawn wins the game
- nice play by Aronian, he turned a very bad position into this very, very nice endgame
- Aronian is incredibly tenacious
- Aronian will be +2810 if he wins, won’t he?
- White’s knight and king are unable to help and Ra6 isn’t possible
- Oh, resign!
- Done!
++++++++
Nakamura is not playing today, so the last game is Amin (Egypt)-Durabayil in 79 moves after 5.5 hours.
Russia 13 MP, China 12 MP, Ukraine 12 MP, Armenia 10 MP, USA 9 MP, Netherlands 8 MP, Azerbaijan 7 MP, Germany 6 MP, Turkey 3 MP and Egypt 0 MP
Round Nine Pairings
Russia-Egypt, Armenia-Ukraine, USA-Netherlands, China-Turkey and Azerbaijan-Germany
Russia will almost certainly win the tournament with China and the Ukraine sharing second.
++++++++
The Ninth and Last Round starts tomorrow five hours earlier, which would be 3 a.m. Toronto/Montreal time.
+++++++++
Viewers’ Comments on Round Seven
- I was also ready to comment that after beating Kramnik in Kramnik style, Nakamura beat Meier in Carlsen style, but someone else already did. It's not just 'playing for a win in every game', but also the way he did it in this particular one: choosing an innocuous looking opening variation, playing very precise manoeuvres behind the lines, keeping little threats all the time. If you look closely at it, you see that it's not random shuffling, waiting for a mistake: there is always a slow, forward movement, keeping pressure, making the opponent feel uncomfortable, until he cracks. That is trademark Carlsen, and it was not what used to come to my mind thinking of Nakamura. Seems to me he is getting ready for the big fight one day, and not just with big words. I don't know where Meier really went wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it that Nakamura had accepted the draw after 61... Nb3. Impressive win.
- Again Tiviakov gets away with his qd6 scandinavian against Grischuk. Very neat. Giri also very impressive, going for a win against Kramnik like that. Still it seems he defeated himself in the end. But before the sac he cant have been worse. Fun event. Glad we see some real chess again after the chicken trench warfare of Anand Carlsen.
- "Glad we see some real chess again after the chicken trench warfare of Anand Carlsen."
Let me translate: "Glad we see some real gambling again after the much more sophisticated and correct play of Carlsen and the chicken match strategy of Anand, which didn't work at all."
- How do people like Loek Van Wely survive? Do they have rich parents? How do these "B-class GMs" generate money? They never win tournaments or anything.
+++++++
(From the Official Site) - Of course the match of the round and perhaps the whole championship was the battle of Ukraine and Russia, number one and number two in the standings before today's round. Whoever wins the match would almost guarantee the championship and to play chess under such a stressful atmosphere is very hard, so the tournament condition could have a psychological impact on games and a decisive result becomes more possible. In the top fight Ivanchuk-Kramnik, the Ukrainian didn't want to play yet another Berlin and chose a pet line of famous grandmaster Sveshnikov in Giucco Piano. It was perhaps unexpected for Kramnik but he solved all his problems and when Ivanchuk missed a pretty tactic got a very slight advantage even, though nothing meaningful so the game ended in a draw. On the second board a good Scheveningen game was played between Karjakin and Korobov and in the end a draw was a quite deserved and good result, especially for Russia as they had the upper hand on fourth board. Moiseenko employed a Sideline against Grünfeld and surprised Grischuk but with accurate play Black achieved total equality and made an easy draw. The decisive result came from the Nepomniachtchi-Kryvoruchko game on the fourth board. Young Russian star Ian Nepomniachtchi got a nice advantage right out of the opening and pressing on the backward black pawn on c7 forced Black to play c6 and created another weakness on d6 to press. In the resulting unpleasant position with two rooks and queens, Kryvoruchko played a terrible blunder on 40th move with Qa1, leaving his queen alone in between the enemy forces. The game ended after two more moves when the black queen was entrapped. A very important win which probably brought the gold from Ukraine to Russia. Of course there's one more round and Egypt will try his best to cause a major upset against Russia but keeping in mind that Ukraine is playing Armenia, it's much more likely that the upset will rather come from the Armenian team.
The second most important match with regard to standings was played between China and Germany. It followed pretty much the same trend as the Ukraine-Russia match. On first three boards nothing really happened and all of them ended in draws. On the last board Yu used the predictability of Baramidze to his advantage and came well prepared for Breyer. When Baramidze gave up a piece for the attack, Yu easily fended off all the threats and won the game with an extra piece. With this win China almost guaranteed the third place and if Armenia beats Ukraine and they win against Turkey they can even have the silver.
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Wednesday, 4th December, 2013, 05:31 PM.
Russia-Egypt, Armenia-Ukraine, USA-Netherlands, China-Turkey and Azerbaijan-Germany
Kramnik, Vladimir (Russia) – Ezat, Mohamed (Egypt) Bd 1
The commentators say that things were going well for Kramnik at first and he relaxed. Then Ezat started playing like Tal and they pronounced that Kramnik had a dead loss.
The viewers’ comments on chessbomb show the shifting fortunes in this game:
-Two bishops and a rook vs a queen is easily 0-1
- Kramnik is losing to an IM..
- not just an IM, but an Egyptian called Mohamed
- Kramnik fighting for a draw
- nerves could get to ezat
- he’s staring down kramnik
- Qe5 is tricky LOL
- 41…Rd2+ var. black gets 2 pawns for B and gets rid of the a-pawn. But looks like a dead draw
- the queen is in control over the whole board
- kramnik is not going to happily shake for a draw here, he will finesse and finesse
- mohammed is playing too slowly
- what if kramnik draws?
- Even if ding wins and Kramnik loses, Russian and china would have equal match points and board points but Russia beat china, so they’d win
- Russia is champion
- China is first runner up
- Ukraine is the second runner up
- kramnik will simply outplay this patzer
- white has no time
- so we may yet see 1-0
- wow, this game will never end
- this game will BE analyzed
- its drawn??
- I've never studied a R + B + B vs Q endgame, anyone?
- I wonder why they are still playing. Is it Kramnik who is hoping for a blunder, or is it Ezat who is playing for a win?
- 63.Qd5+ was a mistake
- It’s pretty funny that an IM is about to knock Kramnick off the #3 spot
- Kramnik had a perpetual earlier but was too embarrassed to take it
- Sargissian-Moiseenko still going on, drawish but a small edge to white
- Ezat is making all the first moves recommended by Stockfish
Definitely the game of the tournament for me – could hardly leave the board for 2.5 hours! Missed my breakfast. Everybody watching – commentators and viewers kept changing the evaluation – Kramnik will win, Ezat will win. Neither player wanted to go for the draw and then finally, after 6.5 hours, a draw!
+++++++++++
Russia 15 MP, China 14 MP, Ukraine 14 MP, USA 10 MP, Armenia 10 MP, Netherlands 9MP, Germany 8 MP, Azerbaijan 7 MP, Turkey 3 MP, Egypt 0 MP
Official Website Summary –
After yesterday everyone's expectation was that Russia wins easily today against Egypt and with that the tournament too but a final drama was needed! The lowest seed, Egypt managed to give their much higher opponent a scare when after a dubious sacrifice by Ezat, Kramnik played very carelessly allowing his opponent to get a winning position.
On the other boards the score was 2-1, the decider coming from the Russia's top scorer Nepomniachtchi again, so a win by Ezat would result in a match draw! Just like against Ukraine, Egypt came close to the point once again; only to fail at the very end. Ezat didn't play as precise as he should and when Kramnik managed to push his pawn to a7 and exchange the king side pawns the position became equal and even became a little dangerous for Ezat but finally the game resulted in a draw. By barely beating Egypt with the score 2,5-1,5 Russia became thus the champion, a very important result for them after years without a success in team championships. Congratulations to the Russian team for their fine showing and championship title!
The second place was China's who won against Turkey 3-1 today although they finished the tournament with the same number of points as Ukraine. That is due to the fact that China gathered more points on individual boards compared to the Ukrainian team. Ukraine, who were leading for most of the tournament had a tough opponent, Armenia, in the final round but still they managed to beat them 2,5-1,5 to get the third place thanks to the fine win of Korobov on second board.
Starting with the medal winners Russia, China and Ukraine we congratulate all teams for their efforts and wonderful games they created on the board. It's been a wonderful championship, rich in chess content and it was a joy for chess fans to follow all those hard battles on the chessboard between world's finest players.
+++++++++
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Thursday, 5th December, 2013, 11:17 AM.
Reason: added standings
(Chessdom) - The team of Russia – Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk, Sergey Karjakin, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Nikita Vitiugov – is the World Team Chess Champion 2013. With 15 match points (7 wins, 1 draw, 1 loss), the team of Russia takes the gold medal. The other medals were divided on first tiebreak of game points, as China and Ukraine both finished with 14 match points (7 wins, 0 draws, 2 losses). Silver is for China with 23 match points, bronze is for Ukraine with 22 match points.
This is the fourth World Team Championship title for Russia. Besides the one in 2013, they have won the gold in 1997, 2005, and 2010. This is the first time Kramnik, Karjakin, and Nepomniachtchi are part of the winning team, for Vitiugov this is a second title, while it is the third title for Grischuk.
Board medals were also awarded at the closing ceremony.
Aronian had an effective rating of 2896, Nakamura 2817 and Ivanchuk 2805. Three other performances of note – Nepomniachtchi 2858, Bu 2844 and Korobov 2801.
+++++++++
(ChessBase) - Nakamura had a very good tournament and is now third in the live rating list, ahead of Kramnik. He is only the third American in ratings history to enter the top three after Fischer and Kamsky.
His game against Ehlvest in the 2009 US Championship seems to be the basis for the queen sacrifice in Kramnik-Ezat:
(on Kramnik-Ezat – for game, see Summary of Round Nine)
- Ezat took a brave decision to go for this line, and it proved to be a sensible choice, as Kramnik was forced to calculate concrete variations where he might have expected to coast to a win, against a simple IM. During the game, the Houdini commentary at some point in the endgame gave -1.49, but that was nonsense. The line given, winning the a-pawn, ended in a position that's a draw according to the tablebases. But then Kramnik would have had to suffer for an extra 50 moves... The only other moment I have seen where Ezat had serious chances was at move 31, where Bg5, to provoke the weakening 32 f4, looks strong. If 31... Bg5 32 f4 Rd3 33 Qxe6!? fxe6 34 fxg5, black has an extra pawn in the rook endgame. But I agree Kramnik probably wasn't too happy for a few hours!
- Ezat played as if he had nothing to lose, fair enough - similar approaches are 'not unheard of' in Swiss opens and sometimes lead to a "full upset". A matter of opinion whether a 'more correct' approach would have been cowardish as opposed to brave (lots of grey in between, of course).
BTW the only high-level predecessor (there's also a game between 2300ish players, Belgrade 1980) for this queen sacrifice seems to be Ehlvest-Nakamura, US Championship 2009. The way Ehlvest responded (soon returning an extra exchange), it finished in a relatively straightforward draw, neither side was in major trouble.
- Maybe more practical examples are required to find out if the queen sacrifice is playable (without its surprise value!?), even if it isn't fully correct. I would find it hard to believe that the sacrifice is correct, even if elements of the black compensation gradually became clear to me: weakness of d4 and to some extent the long diagonal a8-h1, lack of own weaknesses so white doesn't really have targets - is this enough in the long term? The game continuation where black obtained a strong passed d-pawn wasn't all forced but plausible!? [Even if, or exactly because I am a relatively weak player, I am interested in opinions by stronger ones ...]
As to "cowardish", I used this term just as the exact opposite of 'brave' - playing correct moves can't be cowardish IMO. If something from a weaker player is arguably cowardish, then playing/begging for a draw from the very start - e.g. Slav exchange variation followed by swapping pieces as quickly as possible. But - as I like to say about any type of move or, going further, plan: "it's a legal move".
- From an earlier thread - "By the way Kamsky is the one and only reason we didn't medal. Nakamura, Onischuk and Akobian handled business. Robson did alright considering he is just a kid and is not a chess professional but Kamsky is washed up and was nothing but dead weight. We still finished fourth and we are not a chess nation so it was a solid result for us. Russia should win it is their national sport and we still took them head to head."
Huh huh huh? There were up to five reasons why the USA didn't medal, the five matches they didn't win - and blame seems rather evenly spread over all players: Kamsky for losing against Ukraine, Nakamura for blowing a drawn rook endgame against Aronian, Kamsky and Robson lost against China, Robson against Turkey, Akobian against the Netherlands. Maybe Kamsky performed worst, but who else should have played on board 2?
"We are not a chess nation" - that's why three out of five players are imported from chess nations? And what does 'we' actually mean? How exactly did you support the US team?
(from a Russian forum)
- My congratulations to our men’s team, but for the sake of objectivity, the result is perfectly ordinary. The strongest team headed by Kramnik took first place without luck. Why should this perfectly, very predictable event cause puppy dog enthusiasm?
[In Round Eight, Russia vs the Ukraine, the top three boards were draws. In Nepomniachtchi-Kryvoruchko, the latter blundered on the 40th move and let his queen get trapped. The game is given in the summary of Round Eight.]
- C’mon, rejoice! The Russian final victory in this tournament was brought about in fact by one tragicomic Kryvoruchko move. An exceptionally lucky coincidence for us, no more. The final success was because of an opponent’s lapse.
- The result is good but nothing extraordinary. Honestly, the formula “three draws and a Nepomniachtchian victory’ shouldn’t have us going into raptures!
- I will rejoice. It is said that five minutes of laughter will replace a loaf of bread. And I will rejoice in the present victory. But we shouldn’t forget that our favorites have not won in the Olympics since 2002. Remember the grasshopper who had fun, fun, fun and then winter came!
- The Russian team won the most team points and won against the major competitors. These are the facts – the rest is guff!
- The Russian national team, being the clear favorite, once again crashed at the start, then got it together and showed the expected result. These also are the facts.
- Well, this expected result was not on the team’s merit but a consequence of the eclipse of one of its opponents in a completely drawn position. Our victory with all its honours was presented to our team on a silver platter and in the final round, that platter nearly broke.
that Kramnik-Ezat, GM vs. IM game was crazy.
Ezat has shown tons of preps as homeworks. He's picking top moves suggested by Houdini 3 from the moment of Queen sac till the rook exchange!
that's like 20 moves!!!
i was surprised to see that Wang, Hao did not play for China's Board #1. It would be more exciting if he plays on Bd1 against Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Nakamura etc.
Last edited by Neal Pan; Saturday, 7th December, 2013, 03:45 AM.
It evaluates the team’s performance and also contains these hitherto unreported time trouble infractions:
This match (Ukraine-USA, Round One) also witnessed an incident on board one as Ukrainian first board Vassily Ivanchuk quit keeping score around move 30 with two minutes on his clock. This was a no-no as the time control was 40 moves in 100 minutes with a 30 second increment per move. A condition of this time control is the players must keep score at all times. The arbiter for each match is supposed to immediately ask a player to write their moves if they fall behind. Failure to comply can result in penalties leading up to forfeiting the game.
Unfortunately the game Ivanchuk-Nakamura led to an awkward situation as the arbiter was observing other games when Ivanchuk stopped recording and by the time he was asked to update his score he refused - understandable as being forced to enter eight move pairs with two minutes on his clock was not where he wanted to focus his attention.
The incident was resolved when the players made the time control and agreed to a draw, but a similar situation occurred in Round Two in the game Li Chao - Ivanchuk when the latter again failed to keep his scoresheet up to date. This time the arbiter was quicker to take action but the only response he got from Vassily was an outburst which showed what a rich language Russian is for conveying strong feelings. The situation was only resolved when the Ukrainian team captain Alexander Sulypa stepped in and had Ivanchuk update his score to avert a possible forfeit.
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