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Yup. There is a piano recital, I see Fabiano Caruana and lots of glasses of wine being consumed. I had to login using some social media. They are switching back and forth from the pianist to the gathering and you get little glimpses of the players chatting merrily away... Anand and Svidler are there. I bet it was a difficult ticket to get in Москва́ this evening.
Hal Bond was just mentioned as Deputy Chief Arbiter. A shout from the back of the room evoked a quizzical look from the speaker. Perhaps there are some Canucks back there, cheering Hal's presence? Heh.
A Modern Dance presentation now. Didn't expect that. A couple in running shoes. Behind the dancers, the screen changes into geometric, chess-like, and other shapes and patterns. Light and dark. Lines and curves. Interesting.
Last edited by Nigel Hanrahan; Thursday, 10th March, 2016, 02:01 PM.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Just heard Hal Bond announced as deputy arbiter. It may have been "deputy chief arbiter". The female announcer is cute, the male looks like an unmade bed. I hope the English is better on the commentary.
It is hard to know what to do with the confusion regarding reporting the games.
I got an email password from worldchess.com and was able to watch the games after they were in progress for an hour or two.
There hasn’t been a televised tournament that has gone smoothly in the first two rounds. There are always glitches. I find the sound here sometimes deafening, rocking the whole house.
The two main commentators are Alexandra Kosteniuk and Evgeny Miroshnichenko. Alexandra is confident and poised and one of the best female commentators.
Evgeny we have seen before, notably at the European Rapid and Blitz 2015 in Minsk and at Khanty-Mansiysk Grand Prix 2015.
Both have an excellent command of English.
They are joined by their man on the floor, Egor Piskunov. He is a tall and handsome presenter, whose main job is to explain what is going on to the average person, who doesn’t really know a great deal about chess. He had a comment that almost floored me when he asked it of Evgeny at the end of the broadcast:
It is a mystery to me why Magnus isn’t here watching this. Perhaps he will show up for the later rounds.
The World Champion sitting in the audience watching the games is something that would never occur to me. WCs just do not do that.
The motif seems to be black and white. The boards are black and white and all the logos. BMW is an advertiser as is Tashir and the Restaurant d’Aragon.
A cartoonist does time-speeded cartoons of the players on a white board with felt-tips. Very clever.
_______
Evgenyi has quizzes with prizes. The two questions today are:
1) When was the first international chess tournament in Moscow?
2) When and where was the first Candidates tournament?
(Answers given at the end of this post)
______
Boris Gelfand, fresh from the Aeroflot Tournament is a guest.
The players in each match come to explain their moves in a post-mortem with either Evgeny or Alexandra.
The games of the first round have already been given in this thread. For the record, the opening and result:
1) The first international chess tournament in Moscow was in 1925.
There were eleven foreign masters and ten Soviet masters. Efim Bogoljubow won first place ahead of Lasker and Capablanca.
2) The first Candidates was Budapest 1950. David Bronstein and Igor Boleslavsky tied for first and Bronstein won the play-off.
The Hague/Moscow tournament of 1948 was not a Candidates since the winner became World Champion and, of course, Botvinnik won ahead of Smyslov, Reshevsky, Keres and Euwe.
_______
This is posted more than two hours after the end of the broadcast so presumably I will not be receiving a threatening letter from Shekhovtsov & Partners.
I have said that, in my experience, there are always technical glitches in the first two rounds of chess broadcasts. These today, courtesy chess.com:
(Andrew Martin) – just tried to log in to the official Candidates site. It took my email and then told me that the maximum number of viewers had been reached.
(World Chess) – Denial of service attack ongoing against worldchess.com – genuine chess fans suffering as a result
Even for the official commentators, GMs Alexandra Kosteniuk and GM Evgeny Miroshnichenko, it was tough to follow the games and therefore not easy to do their job. They were using Chessbase for their analysis but, as it turned out, Chessbase had taken Agon's legal threats seriously and decided to not transmit the games live.
Therefore the commentators had to enter their moves manually, and they were using Chessbomb to get the moves — one of the sites that had decided to ignore the legal threats, together with e.g. ICC, Chess24 and e.g. Der Spiegel.
Ilya Merenzon, CEO of Agon, told Chess.com that he has already sent a cease and desist letter to these sites. The letter mentions that under Russian law “the maximum punishment for Illegal Receipt and Disclosure of Information Classified as a Commercial, Tax or Banking is the imprisonment for ten years” and demands action to be taken “within 3 hours upon receipt of this letter.” At the time of writing, the games are still available on Chessbomb.
Miroshnichenko: “If they are not on Chessbomb tomorrow I don't know where we will find the moves.”
I know the first round is way too early (and Anand should have lost that game if Topalov played 20...Bxf2 I believe) but I'm already scared of a third Anand-Carlsen match, please anything but that. I want Aronian or Caruana or if I wanted to see a slaughter, Nakamura.
All round 2 games are over - the only decisive game was Karjakin beating Nakamura. The Chessbomb boradcasting was erratic - often being several moves behind - with "chatters" filling in the missing moves.
A more complete report is forthcoming. They allow comments as well. ATM, there are plenty of negative comments. I think it's wise of Agon to allow chess fans to vent their spleens a little.
Was there a DoS attack today as well? I don't know.
Sergey Karjakin was the only winner in round 2 of the FIDE Candidates in Moscow. He joins Viswanathan Anand in an early lead with 1.5/2.
Nakamura was a bit worse out of the opening from a Queen's Indian as black against Karjakin. He tried to solve all his problems with a combination starting with 29...Nxg3 sacrificing a piece and recovering it by taking a loose knight on d3. However at the end Nakamura must have overlooked 34.Rc7 hitting f7 and a bishop on b7 with a winning position for Karjakin.
Perhaps the most interesting game of the day was between Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri. This was a complex Ruy Lopez where white innovated first with 14.Qd1. 14...f6 was an interesting response and an unbalanced middle-game ensued. 28.Qb5 exchanging queens off and strengthening black's passed d-pawn was probably not the most accurate (28.Nf5) then 30.Nf5 (30.f4 instead) left the position balanced. 31.Ra7 g6! may have left black better instead 31...Nxf5 led to an equal position and the game was drawn on move 42.
_______
Svidler, Peter – Topalov, Veselin
C67 Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence, Open Variation
- Not worried at all about Hikaru. He'll turn it around.
- What is up with Giri?
I watched the press conference with him and Caruana.
Giri just kept babbling variations extremely rapidly, impossible to follow, not instructive (even in slow motion), and he hardly let the interviewer or Caruana talk ... and then the arrogant comment concerning Kramnik.
Unsympathetic and annoying character ...
- Naka is only one point behind the leaders....it's a long tournament folks. Stop freakin' out about one loss.
- Carlsen said before the tournament: "Nakamura to win candidates? He's not good enough."
- Naka’s 12…Nf8 took him exactly 89 minutes to consider. Yes, that’s an hour and a half spent on the twelfth move!
- I guess it's still anybody's game, but now Fabiano is my only hope!
- The live games indicated that the tension for the players seems to be really high, if a tactician of Nakamura's quality is blundering a piece, instead of defending a passive position patiently (which is no fun for someone like him, but was required). Caruana just used up too much time to get his advantage against Giri, and then couldn't convert.
Quiz Questions
1) Which country made chess obligatory in schools and in what year?
2) Who became the youngest grandmaster in the history of chess and how old was he?
Answers
1) Armenia in 2011
2) Sergey Karjakin at the age of 12 years and 7 months.
(Parimarjan Negi and Magnus Carlsen were the second and third youngest)
Last edited by Wayne Komer; Sunday, 13th March, 2016, 01:56 AM.
3 straight decisive games on board 4. Today Aronian beat Topalov with Black to join the lead. Nakamura mishandled the White pieces today but held the draw against Svidler. They were the last to finish. Anand looked good against Caruana and Giri bombed into Karjakin - but both games were drawn.
Evgeny gives quiz questions each round and a winner has the possibility of getting the autographs of all the contestants.
The three questions today to mull over. Answers at the end:
1) Which supermodel was once president of a national chess federation? Which federation? Which years?
2) Name the Russian player who won his national titles 7 times. Bonus: Who held this title 6 times?
3) When was the first Earth vs. Space chess match? What was the result?
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was a guest and we found that he is fond of playing blitz games at 5 and 3 minutes. Ian Nepomniachtchi analyzed for a while. He is a very solid looking individual, built like a brick wall. He fell asleep in his hotel room during an earlier round with the coverage on his computer and was awakened, startled to find Vladimir Kramnik’s voice in his room.
There was an interview with Evgenyi Najer who just won Aeroflot. To me he resembles the actor Peter MacNicol, who played a mathematician on the television series Numb3rs (2005) and had a role in Ghostbusters II (1989). He would like to play with Anand, if that were possible.
Anish Giri – Sergey Karjakin 0.5-0.5
Sergey played the (Queen’s Indian) structure so well yesterday with white against Nakamura that I thought he won’t repeat the same with the black pieces today.” That is what Anish Giri said in the press conference after his game against Sergey Karjakin. But the Russian grandmaster has no such prejudices. He learnt from his opponent’s (Nakamura’s) mistakes and applied it in his own game today. Not going for c7-c5 and keeping the pawn on c6 was one such improvement. It seemed as if Black was comfortable, but suddenly Karjakin pushed his pawn to h5. As Alexandra Kosteniuk pointed out, “Yesterday the move h2-h4 proved highly successful against Nakamura, and maybe Sergey wanted to try something similar again!” However, the move 18…h5 was a bad one and Anish took advantage of it with the move 19.Bh3. The Dutch GM could have very well got a huge advantage with the move 20.f3 instead of 20.Nf4, which he played in the game. After the inaccuracy the game was still interesting, but the danger had passed for Sergey. He sacrificed a pawn for compensation. Giri retaliated with a piece sacrifice. But that was clearly not enough and he had to repeat the moves and split the point.
Viswanathan Anand – Fabiano Caruana 0.5-0.5
After the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 ask what the black pawn on a7 feels. No one cares about it anymore! Caruana too played 3…Nf6 and Anand took the game into the Anti-Berlin territory with 4.d3. Fabiano must have definitely studied the game Anand against Topalov from round one. Hence, Anand deviated on move seven with 7.h3 instead of 7.Nbd2. That put Fabiano into some thought. He came up with this interesting plan of ...exd4 followed by ...c5! In the ensuing middlegame Black was saddled with a small weakness on d6 that was compensated by active pieces. Anand held an advantage and with Caruana approaching time pressure, things looked good for Vishy. But the American kept his calm and combined with some indecisiveness from Vishy the game was abruptly drawn due to many exchanges.
Veselin Topalov – Levon Aronian 0-1
It was one of those games that Topalov would want to forget. First he was outprepared as Aronian essayed a new idea in the English Four Knights from the black side. Veselin was ambitious and didn’t want to settle for an equal position. He tried to be adventurous and it ended up badly. After just thirteen moves he was worse. A blunder on the seventeenth move cost the Bulgarian another pawn. And although Aronian was far from his best in converting the plus position, the situation was so much in his favour that these small inaccuracies didn’t matter. A relatively easy win for Levon who now joins the leaders Anand and Karjakin.
Hikaru Nakamura – Peter Svidler 0.5-0.5
Peter Svidler was on fire today. He had prepared his opening in such great depth that it was simply mind blowing! Nakamura started with 1.d4, maybe expecting that Peter would reply with the Grunfeld. However, Svidler stuck to the same line he played against Karjakin in the first round. While Karjakin had opted for the relatively safe 9.Nxd4, Nakamura chose the much more critical 9.cxd4 line. Until move 20 it seemed that both the players were relatively well prepared. But Peter went a step ahead and showed that he had seen the position in much great depth. When he made his 25th move he already had one hour forty five minutes – five minutes more than what he had at the start of the game! Nakamura was in great difficulties. With immense resourcefulness he steered the game towards a rook + knight endgame in which he was a pawn down. Svidler ran out of energy towards the end and Hikaru was able to hold the game. A great battle indeed and at some levels both players could claim a moral victory out of it.
The television shots of the players, officials and audience is really outstanding. Hal Bond was watching the Nakamura-Svidler game intently. i long to ask him how he is going to spend his free day there.
Candidates 2016, Moscow
Round 3, March 13, 2016
Nakamura, Hikaru – Svidler, Peter
D16 QGD Slav, Soultanbeieff Variation
Tomorrow is a free day. The pairings on Tuesday, March 15 are Svidler-Aronian, Caruana-Topalov, Karjakin-Anand and Nakamura-Giri.
Answers to Quiz Questions
1) Carmen Kass was the Estonian Chess Federation President from 2004 to 2011.
You can see her in various fashions in google images.
2) Peter Svidler won the Russian Championship 7 times. Mikahil Botvinnik and Mikhail Tal won 6 times each.
Rashid Nezhmetdinov won 5 times before the break-up of the USSR (RSFSR)
3) The Astronaut beat the ground crew in the first space-earth game, August 2008.
There were subsequent matches.
In June 2008, mission specialist astronaut Dr. Gregory Chamitoff brought a Velcro chessboard (a magnetic chess set would have interfered with some electronics on board) with him on the space shuttle. In August 2008, he played a chess match against Houston Mission Control and won two games against ground control while playing chess on the International Space Station (ISS). At one point, a rook did not stick to the Velcro board and floated away. It was later found in one of the airflow return filters in the US Laboratory on the ISS.
The pre-tournament betting favourite, Nakamura, is now only the 6th choice at 71/10. Karjakin is currently the ever so slight betting choice at 18/5, just ahead of Aronian at 73/20 and Caruana at 19/5.
On the surface, it would seem Caruana is primed to join the plus one group today given his empirical domination of Topalov, +5, -1, =5. However, said domination has come with the Black pieces, not White. With Caruana having White, as he does today, the score is dead even, +1, -1, =2.
I'm surprised that Karjakin is the betting favourite today against Anand, given he's never beaten Vishy. At classical time controls, Anand stands +2, -0, =11. At quicker time controls, it's total domination, +6, -0, =7, for a composite score of +8, -0, =18. And given 5 of those wins have come with Black, I'd certainly take Vishy at 89/10 before I'd touch Karjakin at 41/10. (:
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