If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
Policy / Politique
The fee for tournament organizers advertising on ChessTalk is $20/event or $100/yearly unlimited for the year.
Les frais d'inscription des organisateurs de tournoi sur ChessTalk sont de 20 $/événement ou de 100 $/année illimitée.
You can etransfer to Henry Lam at chesstalkforum at gmail dot com
Transfér à Henry Lam à chesstalkforum@gmail.com
Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
Some Basics
1. Under Board "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQs) there are 3 sections dealing with General Forum Usage, User Profile Features, and Reading and Posting Messages. These deal with everything from Avatars to Your Notifications. Most general technical questions are covered there. Here is a link to the FAQs. https://forum.chesstalk.com/help
2. Consider using the SEARCH button if you are looking for information. You may find your question has already been answered in a previous thread.
3. If you've looked for an answer to a question, and not found one, then you should consider asking your question in a new thread. For example, there have already been questions and discussion regarding: how to do chess diagrams (FENs); crosstables that line up properly; and the numerous little “glitches” that every new site will have.
4. Read pinned or sticky threads, like this one, if they look important. This applies especially to newcomers.
5. Read the thread you're posting in before you post. There are a variety of ways to look at a thread. These are covered under “Display Modes”.
6. Thread titles: please provide some details in your thread title. This is useful for a number of reasons. It helps ChessTalk members to quickly skim the threads. It prevents duplication of threads. And so on.
7. Unnecessary thread proliferation (e.g., deliberately creating a new thread that duplicates existing discussion) is discouraged. Look to see if a thread on your topic may have already been started and, if so, consider adding your contribution to the pre-existing thread. However, starting new threads to explore side-issues that are not relevant to the original subject is strongly encouraged. A single thread on the Canadian Open, with hundreds of posts on multiple sub-topics, is no better than a dozen threads on the Open covering only a few topics. Use your good judgment when starting a new thread.
8. If and/or when sub-forums are created, please make sure to create threads in the proper place.
Debate
9. Give an opinion and back it up with a reason. Throwaway comments such as "Game X pwnz because my friend and I think so!" could be considered pointless at best, and inflammatory at worst.
10. Try to give your own opinions, not simply those copied and pasted from reviews or opinions of your friends.
Unacceptable behavior and warnings
11. In registering here at ChessTalk please note that the same or similar rules apply here as applied at the previous Boardhost message board. In particular, the following content is not permitted to appear in any messages:
* Racism
* Hatred
* Harassment
* Adult content
* Obscene material
* Nudity or pornography
* Material that infringes intellectual property or other proprietary rights of any party
* Material the posting of which is tortious or violates a contractual or fiduciary obligation you or we owe to another party
* Piracy, hacking, viruses, worms, or warez
* Spam
* Any illegal content
* unapproved Commercial banner advertisements or revenue-generating links
* Any link to or any images from a site containing any material outlined in these restrictions
* Any material deemed offensive or inappropriate by the Board staff
12. Users are welcome to challenge other points of view and opinions, but should do so respectfully. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Posts and threads with unacceptable content can be closed or deleted altogether. Furthermore, a range of sanctions are possible - from a simple warning to a temporary or even a permanent banning from ChessTalk.
Helping to Moderate
13. 'Report' links (an exclamation mark inside a triangle) can be found in many places throughout the board. These links allow users to alert the board staff to anything which is offensive, objectionable or illegal. Please consider using this feature if the need arises.
Advice for free
14. You should exercise the same caution with Private Messages as you would with any public posting.
This game from the Hasselbacken Chess Open has two experienced grandmasters, Mikhalevski (Israel, 2520) and Onischuk (Ukraine, 2628). The game went on till closing time and the two commentators, Jon Westerberg (b. 1994) and Ulf Andersson (b. 1951), had to close up shop while it was still in progress.
It was Q vs two knights. The usual theoretical assessment in pawnless endgames is Q vs B+B draw, Q vs B+N win and Q vs N+N draw. But it is easier for the defender to go wrong and the queen wins. Helpful advice is often, “Just make a fortress with your knights and hide your king with it”. How one actually does this is quite another story. Ulf talked of making a "shield".
Let us see how the grandmasters handled it.
Hasselbacken Chess Open 2016
Round 8, May 7, 2016
Mikhalevski, Victor – Onischuk, Vladimir
E95 King’s Indian, Orthodox
Peru's top GM, 49-year-old Julio Ernesto Granda Zuniga, scored a remarkable 8.5/9 (giving up a lone draw in R2) at the V Open Internacional LLucmajor 2016 and is now less than a point away from elite 2700 status at 2699.3. I suspect he may well be the oldest GM ever to first chase these lofty heights. Here's his final R9 win.
Recently, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, while commentating at the Gashimov Memorial, advocated a new rating for a player resulting from his play in team tournaments. The grandmasters asked, all thought that one didn’t need another rating.
Good, makes sense. But perhaps the following could be used by Ljubo in his argument!
The French Teams Championship has been taking place from May 28 to June 7, 2016 at Drancy.
Colin McGourty sets up the action at chess24.com:
In sporting terms this year’s event was again a two-horse race, with Clichy and Bischwiller both going into their penultimate round clash on the back of eight wins and one draw. In 2015 Bischwiller had won 2:1 (only victories count for the official scoring), with Anish Giri scoring a crucial win on top board. This year Giri was busy in Shamkir, and Clichy, who had won three titles in a row from 2012-4, eased to victory.
But here is the controversial bit about feeding your best player with whites and possibly inflating his individual rating:
It was Maxime Vachier-Lagrave who caught the eye, though. The team tactics were to give the French no. 1 the white pieces as often as possible, and with six wins in seven games with White he didn’t disappoint! He’s up to world no. 4 on the live rating list, and hit a new peak live rating of 2795.4 during the event.
The Masters Tournament at Leon, Spain took place last week. The time control was 20 minutes plus 10 seconds increment and the players were Vishy Anand, Wei Yi, David Anton and Jaime Santos Latase (both Spain).
There were four-game matches and the anticipated final came between Vishy Anand and Wei Yi.
(Peter Doggers at chess.com) – “This one also saw just one decisive game; Anand won the first in a Giuoco Piano where apparently there's still something new under the sun — the position after White's 11th move looks completely normal but Nf1-g3 there turns out to be the novelty. Anand kept an advantage and won a good game, although it looks like he missed a fairly easy win at some point.
Anand then held the second game to a draw fairly comfortably. The third was more interesting and just like in his match with Santos, Wei wasn't afraid to enter the exact same variation. On move 11 Anand sacrificed a pawn (it's hard to imagine he blundered it?) and got good play for it. And some point he missed that Wei could reach a promising ending, but Anand defended well to hold it.
The last game wasn't too bad either; also here Anand was enough in control to draw without problems. “I always feel at home here, ” said Anand at the closing ceremony. No wonder; the Indian GM won the tournament a record nine times (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2016). He will now travel to Leuven, Belgium to join the Grand Chess Tour.”
Games of the Final
29th Leon Masters
Leon, Spain
Round 2, Game 1, June 12, 2016
Anand, Vishy – Wei Yi
C50 Giuoco Piano
Two computer games today. One very recent, to fulfill the title above and one very old, to recall a significant moment in chess history.
TCEC (Top Chess Engine Championship) is a computer chess tournament organized and maintained by Chessdom in cooperation with Chessdom Arena. The goal is to provide the viewers with a live broadcast of long time control, quality chess - played strictly between computer chess engines created by different programmers. One Season is divided into several Stages and lasts about 3-4 months. The winner of the Season will be the TCEC Grand Champion.
Now in Season 9, previous Grand Champions have been:
Season 8 Komodo
Season 7 Komodo
Season 6 Stockfish
Season 5 Komodo
Season 4 Houdini
Season 3 N/A
Season 2 Houdini
Season 1 Houdini
In a column dated June 16, 2016, Jonathan Tisdall had this game between two chess engines and commented:
I was really impressed by one magnificently deep tactical performance by one of the strongest players the world has ever seen. While we wait for our flesh and blood heroes to resume battle, you could do much worse than follow the adventures of Mr. Stockfish.
Tisdall says after move 25.Qh5: If White wasn’t rated 2995 I would have been unable to restrain myself from criticizing what has looked like a silly sequence of time wasting. Black responds with a very original attacking idea backed up with the depth of calculation only a 3400 player can provide. Sit back, enjoy, replay, contemplate, ask your engine.
________
The old game I mentioned above is from the Kramnik- Deep Fritz Match of December 2006.
In Game 2, Vladimir Kramnik played another wonderfully profound game, piling the pressure on Deep Fritz on the black side of a Queen's Gambit Accepted, and taking the computer to the edge of defeat. As usual the computer defended tenaciously and by move 34 Fritz had equalised and the game was clearly drawn. And then Kramnik overlooked mate in one!
Man vs Machine, Bonn, Germany
Game 2, November 27, 2006
Deep Fritz 10 – Kramnik, Vladimir
D20 QGA
After smoothly gaining the advantage Kramnik continued to play quickly, perhaps a little too quickly. On move 33 he captured on c1, apparently believing that Black was winning easily after 33..Bxc1 34.Nxf8 Qe3. Since that move contains a fatal flaw, 33..Re8 should have been played. Black's queenside pawns would still give him chances. Instead, Kramnik played one of the most unbelievable blunders ever seen at this level of chess, allowing mate in one with a half and hour still on his clock. The win was already gone by this point, Fritz having several ways to play for a perpetual check draw by repetition after 34..Kg8 35.Ng6. White will check with the queen next and then repeat with the knight. Still, that would have been a much more equitable way to end the game.
Kramnik played the move 34...Qe3 calmly, stood up, picked up his cup and was about to leave the stage to go to his rest room. At least one audio commentator also noticed nothing, while Fritz operator Mathias Feist kept glancing from the board to the screen and back, hardly able to believe that he had input the correct move. Fritz was displaying mate in one, and when Mathias executed it on the board Kramnik briefly grasped his forehead, took a seat to sign the score sheet and left for the press conference, which he dutifully attended.
Cuba is for Vassily Ivanchuk what León, Spain is for Viswanathan Anand and Dortmund, Germany is for Vladimir Kramnik. Ivanchuk feels at home in Cuba where he won the Capablanca Memorial for the seventh time. (Peter Doggers at chess.com)
The 51st tournament was held in Varadero, 140 km from Havana from June 9 to 19. I fear that telecommunications are still not what they should be in Cuba because game scores were occasionally dropped in the transmission.
The Elite is a six-player double round-robin with Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba), Zoltan Almasi (Hungary), Ivan Cheparinov (Bulgaria), Yuri Kryvoruchko (Ukraine) and Lazaro Bruzon (Cuba).
Ivanchuk won the tournament with an undefeated 7 out of 10 score. I believe that Bruzon got sick and forfeited two games.
Three games from Ivanchuk at his best.
51st Capablanca Memorial
Round 2, June 10, 2016
Ivanchuk, Vassily – Almasi, Zoltan
A46 Queen’s Pawn, Torre Attack
(Doggers) - The tournament winner took home 1800 CUC (about $1800) and 17.6 Elo points to reach a virtual #30 spot in the rating list. Who wouldn't like to see an even bigger comeback for Ivanchuk?
Online Comments
- Why don't the world's very best players play in this tournament ? , does anyone know ? If I was a top player I would make it my duty to honour Capablanca , is it lack of prize money ? Political ? , can someone please tell me ?
- “The tournament winner took home 1800 CUC …”
1800 CUC = $1808
- Cuba does what it can (afford) to honor their greatest chess player. Setting and financial conditions aren't attractive enough to attract/motivate the very strongest players, but it is IMO good that there are also tournaments for low 2700ish to high 2600ish players (Poikovsky is the other one coming to my mind).
- Of course the world top selects the most glamorous and/or financially attractive events. Wijk aan Zee might be an exception: less glamorous and probably paying less than most other supertournaments - but players have respect for its long tradition and remember that the event "cared about them" well before they entered the absolute world top.
Capablanca Memorial probably didn't even try to invite top10/top20 players, well aware that they can't provide conditions comparable to their other events. Not just this year when it happened to coincide with the Chess Tour, organized at short notice probably after the Capablanca Memorial field was already finalized. They wouldn't say no if a world-top player approached them "I love Capablanca and would like to honor him, I am happy with whatever you can offer" - but it won't happen. Ivanchuk, who also participated when he was top10, was an exception as he really seems to like this event - some say (a bit but not entirely in jest) that it reminds him of the former Soviet Union. Dominguez was another exception for obvious reasons. Else it was always for players who do not (yet) get plenty of other invitations, names include Wesley So (in 2014), Yu Yangyi, Andreikin, Eljanov, Nepomniachtchi, Le Quang Liem, Vallejo - not surprising that many are from (ex-)communist countries.
So far it makes sense to me - I do understand the point made by others but don't consider it "a shame". As memorials go, Capablanca ("ancient chess history") can't quite compete with Gashimov (many participants still knew him) or Tal (the older currently active players still followed the late stages of his career) - but here also the tournaments provided better conditions (while it lasted as far as Tal Memorial is concerned).
At the same time Komodo competed with five other programs in a double round robin tournament of ten rounds in the 22nd World Computer Chess Championship at Leiden University, organized by the International Computer Games Association (ICGA).
(Frederic Friedel in ChessBase) - The reigning 21st World Computer Chess Champion was the program Jonny, written and operated by Mark Zwanzger, Germany. Jonny was running on 2400 (!) AMD x86 cores, its main challengers Komodo and Shredder ran on 48 and 32 Intel cores. The tournament ended in a tie for first, with both Komodo and Jonny scoring 7.5/10 points.
The rules required a play-off to determine the new Computer Chess Champion. The playing time was 45 minutes plus 15 seconds per move for each side. Two games were played, both ending in draws, in 53 and 65 moves. The second play-off saw playing times reduced to five minutes for the game plus five seconds increment per move. Again the outcome was 1-1 (two draws). Thus a third play-off had to be played. This had time controls of three minutes per game plus five seconds increment per move. The first game ended in a draw, and the second game was a win for Komodo.
Komodo is a UCI chess engine developed by Don Dailey, Mark Lefler, and supported by chess author and evaluation expert GM Larry Kaufman. Over the years it has been consistently rated in the top three on most major chess engine rating lists. Currently it is number one.
The two games that Komodo won against Jonny:
22nd World Computer Chess Championship
ICGA Leiden University
Round 5, June/July 2016
Komodo - Jonny
C54 Giuoco Piano, d3 Variation
Ding Liren and Alexander Grischuk are playing a friendly 4-game match in Wenzhou, China, from 19-22 July 2016. The games are with classical time control and the prize fund is 30 000 USD, with 20 000 USD going for the winner of the match.
This is a second preparation match for Ding Liren. He recently played a similar format against Wesley So in Shanghai, which he won 2.5 to 1.5.
Rate of play:
90 minutes in 40 moves +
30 minutes all moves +
30 seconds for each move
starting from move 1
* If the match is drawn the players compete in two games of
25+10 rapid chess, then if needed two 3+2 blitz games and, finally,
one Armageddon game where White has 6 minutes to Black's 5,
but a draw counts as a victory for Black.
_______
The first game ended in N vs N+P but Grischuk carried it off.
Wenzhou Match
Game 1, July 19, 2016
Ding, Liren – Grischuk, Alexander
E60 King’s Indian Defence
You know the Poikovsky Karpov Tournament that takes every year in Poikovsky, a town in Khanty-Mansiysk region of Russia, in honour of the twelfth World Champion?
This extraordinary position from the fifth round:
Poikovsky Karpov Tournament 2016
Round 5, July 28, 2016
Jakovenko, Dmitry – Kovalenko, Igor
E70 King’s Indian Defence
It looks like this game may have set a record for the longest decisive no-capture game. Tim Krabbe's chess records site reports 31 moves as being the (former) record.
The Top Chess Engine Championship goes on. Here, courtesy of chessdom.com, is the situation now:
Stockfish, the open source engine by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba, Joona Kiiski, Gary Linscott, et al., has surged ahead in the standings of the Top Chess Engine Championship. After twenty rounds, Stockfish has 14,0/20, a point and a half more than the closest opponents.
The jump of Stockfish comes after two consecutive victories. In round 19 Stockfish defeated its main contender Komodo while in round 20 it won a game vs the always tough Gull.
Komodo, which was equal with Stockfish up to that point lost its direct match in round 19 and then drew with Rybka as white thus dropping 1,5 point behind the first position in the standings.
This was used by Houdini 5 dev. The new engine by Robert Houdart drew with another of the medal contenders Fire 5 and later defeated Jonny. Thus, now it is now equal to Komodo in the standings, sharing 2nd-3rd position with 12.5/20.
With Fire being close by at 4th position, we are ahead of one of the most disputed qualification stages of TCEC ever. Adding to the mix the fact that this is the strongest by ELO chess championship in history, the chess fans are up for a treat in the remaining rounds.
The games referred to above:
TCEC Season 9, 2016
Stage 3, Round 19, Aug. 7, 2016
Stockfish (3224) – Komodo (3220)
B43 Sicilian, Kan
Tweet
Comment