Mr. Excitement

[Jack Maguire]

Given Alexander Morozevich sadly seems to have dropped off the face of the chess planet of late, perhaps it's high time to pass on his "Mr. Excitement" mantle to the 17-year-old Richard Rapport. From crushing Boris Gelfand with a Budapest Gambit in late January at Tata Steel 2014 to now regularly deploying the Dunst Opening (which he again played this morning in Reykjavik), I do believe he just raised his own opening bar 'craziness' several notches. His R3 Reykjavik game, Kjartansson vs Rapport, started 1.Nf3 e6 (relatively rare in itself) 2.g3 g5!?N (a seeming novelty, at least in the 600 games at chessgames.com in this position) 3.d4 g4!? (full marks for consistency). What other strong GM would have the cajones to move their g-pawn 2 of the first 3 moves? (:

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

Lol, I see that GM Alejandro Ramirez (who plays Rapport on board 2 today!) uses the same !?'s for Rapport's 2. ...g5!? and 3. ...g4!? yesterday in his Reykjavik report for ChessBase today.

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I see that Rapport's game is the 1st to finish today in Reykjavik with a lovely Queen sac mate (:

I also note that Richard returned to his totally unorthodox chess today with 1.Nf3 c5 2.c3!? - a near novelty with Stockfish already having Black slightly better (:

[Hans Jung]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I think GM Jobava is rivaling GM Rapport for the title of Mr. Excitement, tho GM Rapport's opening are definitely interesting !?!

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

After winning with the Dunst Opening in R1 at the Riga Technical University Open 2014, Richard Rapport is playing 'Bird's Opening' today in R3. Lol, Stockfish immediately has Black better at -0.25 after Richard's 1.f4.

Here's a rather fascinating interview/postgame analysis (22:40) with Daniel King and two of chess's best young minds, Maxiime Vachier-Lagrave and Richard Rapport (then barely 17) after their R1 encounter a little over a year ago at Biel 2013 where Richard played the 'Bird Variation' to the 'Spanish Game' (:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGtvSP-LH9Y

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I see now that Susan Polgar questioned Richard on his choice of "unusual openings" in a short (2:28) interview after the penultimate round in Tromso.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4vXaHcDsA

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

Israel's top young GM, Avital Boruchovsky, winner of both the 2012 European Individual Chess Championship and the 2013 European Club Cup, may well be having 'Bird' nightmares tonight after getting absolutely crushed in 31 moves by Rapport's 1.f4 (:

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I don't get what's wrong with the Birds opening. I had an opponent from Finland play the Birds against me in one of the correspondence Olympiads. I was happy to get out of it with a draw.

[Event "EM/OL14/G3/B5"]
[Site "ICCF Email"]
[Date "2000.09.25"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Soderberg, Kaj W (FIN)"]
[Black "Ruben, Gary (CAN)"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "A03"]
[WhiteElo "2434"]
[BlackElo "2234"]
[PlyCount "55"]
[EventDate "2000.??.??"]
[EventType "team (corr)"]

1. f4 d5 2. Nf3 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 Nf6 5. O-O O-O 6. d3 c5 7. c3 Nc6 8. Qe1 b6
9. h3 Qc7 10. Na3 Ba6 11. g4 e6 12. Bd2 Rad8 13. Rd1 Nd7 14. Qh4 Qd6 15. f5
exf5 16. gxf5 Nde5 17. Bh6 Nxf3+ 18. Rxf3 f6 19. fxg6 hxg6 20. Nc2 Ne7 21. Rdf1
Bxh6 22. Qxh6 Rf7 23. b4 Rdf8 24. Rf4 Rg7 25. Ne3 Bc8 26. bxc5 bxc5 27. Rh4 g5
28. Qh8+ 1/2-1/2

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I'm sure Avital would concur, Gary (:

Stockfish had Black better until Avital's 8th move today but doesn't in any way account for the 17th man, the clock. By move 8, Avital was already down a 1/2 hour on the clock and that soon stretched to a full hour. Surely an hour's worth of extra time is worth more than the 1/4 pawn advantage Stockfish gives to Black (:

Tangentially, the 17th man is the wont ally of all players of uncommon openings and why I wouldn't take engine evaluations too, too literally. The bottom line is that players like Jobava and Rapport (and Moro before them) keep winning with their eclectic opening repertoire (:

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I can see where the clock came into play. In my game I recall spending a disproportionate amount of time on that game. As I usually had 30 to 40 games going at the same time the clock became a problem for me as well.

I had planned to learn to play the Birds properly from the white side but never quite found the time. I have played the Birds from the white side over the years but never with the proficiency of my opponent in that game.

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

Rapport's 5.5/6 at the RTU 2014 has moved him up 8 places in the live rating, most notably passing Vallejo (Spain's best), Nepo, Jobava, Le Quang Liem (Vietnam's best), and Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Tomorrow's board one match against Hrant Melkumyan (a perfect 6/6), Levon Aronian's protege and 2nd (replacing Gabriel Sargissian in late 2011), promises to be an exciting affair. I suppose Hrant is now frantically studying what the hell to play against Richard's peculiar opening repertoire (:

[Jean Hébert]

Re: Mr. Excitement

I don't get what's wrong with the Birds opening. I had an opponent from Finland play the Birds against me in one of the correspondence Olympiads. I was happy to get out of it with a draw.

To me that result does not support the Bird's correctness. :)

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Mr. Excitement

To me that result does not support the Bird's correctness. :)

I suppose it gives a game. I used a copy of O'Connell's book for the theory. About 170 pages of games in small print. The Birds was used by players like Larsen who beat Petrosian and others with the opening.

White loses and draws in the book as well. It's not a sure thing.

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

Surprisingly, Jean, Houdini prefers 1.f4 (-0.07) to 1.b3 (-0.12) so there's a good chance that both Houdini and Stockfish will have Richard Rapport worse tomorrow after his very 1st move - unless he plays the other opening he's been partial to of late, the Dunst Opening, 1.Nc3, in which case both engines will still give White a small edge (plus 0.09).

[Jack Maguire]

Re: Mr. Excitement

If Hrant Melkumyan did try to prep for Richard Rapport's eccentric opening repertoire, I somehow doubt he looked at the Van't Kruijs Opening (1.e3). Richard continues to mine the "irregular" opening field.