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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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The game of this round is still only at 14 moves. It is between Magnus Carlsen and Nils Grandelius.
Nils’ play has been criticized and his immediate doom forecast.
It is being broadcast live in both Norway and in Sweden. It is also being watched by a higher power – the sesse computer, which prints out all the possible lines. See:
At the postmortem Magnus said that he was warned that Nils might play this opening, but he didn’t take it seriously and didn’t prepare for it.
As the game went toward its exciting finish, there was a commercial break. Dirk Jan Ten Geuzendam came on to interview one of the sponsors about Norwegian oil and gas. Dirk is a very cultured and knowledgeable interviewer but these comments came from the kibitzers:
- we want to see the epic final of magnus game instead of this, this is not the time
- watching paint dry is preferable to listening to Dirk
- Dirk Jan is on par with Yasser; he is good.
_______
Giri and Kramnik are both talking at the same time during their postmortem. It is actually very funny to have four of the best speakers and analyzers in the chess world at one table and Anish and big Vlad so focused on their game and talking to the exclusion of all else.
The principle in good postmortems is to let the two opponents do all the sparring – even if it is late and you really would like to go off to supper. Peter and Jan are like bookends with the other two between them.
Anish says to Vlad, “Since our first game together I have become a grown man and I can make a draw now as black!”
Vlad: One day the kid is going to beat me.
- Kramnik can't finish one single sentence because of Giri interrupting
- Unwise to try to out-talk or out-drink a Russian.
- It's like two chess engines talking
- Big Vlad and Anish should commentate on the World Championship in NYC, it would be awesome
- Both are winning the post mortem after drawing OTB
- Best post mortem ever
- That was fun
There is a lot of banter and Jan Gustafsson asks both players if they were on a desert island, what participant would they take to maximize their chances of survival? Giri said Li Chao because he has a supply of tiger balm. Jan says that previously Loek Van Wely replied that he would take Anish with him, only to leave him behind when he was rescued so that he would be Dutch No. 1.
Vlad thinks he would take Carlsen, so they could play lots of interesting games together. Giri says that in that case Magnus would finally learn how to play the Berlin Defence!
Really a very funny and interesting press conference.
_______
As in introduction to the following Jan says: Peter you are one of the only top players in the world who does not play the Berlin.
Peter: I’ll wear that as a badge of honour. Are you sure that is correct?
Jan: I’ve checked.
Peter: People have started checking out the Guioco Piano, which shows you how well the Berlin has been doing lately (in Wijk and Moscow). The two prime advocates as White in the Berlin are MVL and Alexander Grischuk. These are the two who consistently get somewhere against the Berlin endgame.
Round 3, April 21, 2016
Vachier Lagrave, Maxime – Eljanov, Pavel
C67 Ruy Lopez, Berlin Defence, Open Variation
On the free day, the players were taken through a series of sporting activities. There was mind bog, where you empty your mind and use its waves to project a small ball towards your opponent. There were also bubble football, archery and fencing.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, defending with the black pieces against Levon Aronian, had to prove he could remember the lessons and keep his guard up.
Aronian tried to catch MVL off guard with an exchange-Slav, as he isn’t known as a Slav-player. But MVL called the bluff, proving that he knew the opening after looking at the white side of it previously. The players exchanged queens & knights and after the rooks came off, the game soon ended in a draw.
Reaching the halfway point of Altibox Norway Chess, Pentala Harikrishna took on Li Chao, aiming to get away from the lower half of the field. Li Chao early on locked down the center, getting a very solid position opening up for a prolonged positional battle.
Clearly remembering his archery lessons from the rest day, Hari proved the better marksman and seized his opportunity when Li Chao slow-played the position a bit too much. Hari came out a piece up and shortly after the time control, Li Chao resigned.
Have famously never beaten Anish Giri in classical chess, Magnus Carlsen had it all to do on his Norwegian home court with the white pieces.
Magnus Carlsen tried with the Ruy Lopez, the players avoiding the Berlin, but neither really got an advantage. Anish Giri stated in the post-game analysis, “I think, it was a miserable game from both of us”. Just before time control Carlsen played 40.Nb5 when he should have played 40.Nc2. It is said that wins a pawn but the final result should still be a draw.
While his Swedish compatriots suffered defeat in the 2-day match against Norway, it was up to Nils Grandelius to defend the Swedish chess-honours against Veselin Topalov.
To do such a thing on command against defending champion Veselin Topalov is however a tall order and it proved difficult for Grandelius to deliver. Topalov got a better position and Grandelius conceded, that he didn’t really a plan going forward.
Eljanov took a solid 6 minutes to respond to 1. e4 coming up with e5 after which Vladimir Kramnik took us into a Giuoco Piano-opening.
Those minutes could have come in handy at the end, especially as 4 games finished at the same time and the pair ended up last in the line for the post-game press conference.
Kramnik had the initiative most of the game, without never really getting an advantage as Eljanov found the right defending moves. Kramnik ultimately came out a pawn up in a drawn rook endgame. The players had to get in line and were the last to analyze with Peter at the press conference.
Round 5, April 24, 2016
Kramnik, Vladimir – Eljanov, Pavel
C54 Giuoco Piano, d3 Variation
The big one is almost upon us! Will Carlsen v Giri live up to the hype? I am referring to the post-game press conference, of course.
Giri made it to the press conference but Carlsen did not. At the end Giri asked Jan and Peter, “Are press conferences obligatory here?” They both answered, rather sheepishly, that they did’t know. The implication is that if they are, then Carlsen should be there.
Jan and Peter provide a running commentary – sometimes checking with the computer. I can’t think of any better way to improve your play than to watch the evaluation of positions and lines throughout six grandmaster games.
The confessional booth is in use. So far we have heard MVL’s voice but it was hard to hear what he was saying. Levon Aronian spoke so softly we couldn’t hear him at all. Yesterday Magnus confessed that he spilled chocolate milk on his shirt. My suspicion is that the confessional is mainly for the benefit of Norwegian Television.
Analyzing Giri-Harikrishna, the guys are wondering where Giri could have picked up an extensive knowledge of the French. Since Giri is losing, the answer is that he hasn’t. Peter says in the old days, when you played White against Alexander Morozevich, you had to have good experience with the French. The so-called Golden Age of Morozevich.
We don’t see him much anymore. This from chess24 recently:
The mystery man of modern chess. Morozevich is an immense talent, but utterly unpredictable both on and off the board. Although he’s been ranked as high as world no. 2 (and even no. 1 on the “live” rating list) his form can suddenly plummet to see him drop 100 points and 50 places. At time he pulls out of tournaments with no notice, at the 2011 World Cup he offered a draw on move 12 in a must-win game (his opponent Alexander Grischuk said he’d never been more surprised by anything in his chess career) and he’s had periods when he’s almost retired from active play, most recently in 2010/11 when he went to work as a coach for Qatar’s female chess player Zhu Chen.
- I'm still trying to figure out why Giri preferred fxe6 rather than f6 back on move 15. That is where his problems started
- french defence is gonna come back with a bang
- For the French, study Korchnoi and Morozevich
- If you rearrange the 5 last names of harikrishna you get anish
- did Giri commit harakiri?
At the postmortem Anish says that he played quickly and badly. He is uncharacteristically quiet. It seems that Hari has an answer for everything. There is a gloomy air and then the guys find that they can get Carlsen’s game on the screen in front of them and their eyes light up and they start to calculate if MVL has winning chances.
_______
The next postmortem is Kramnik and Aronian that ended in a draw. Peter says that he can hand Vladimir the mouse and sit back for fifteen minutes. Vlad never had the advantage and he says that his Italian experience has not been good. They talk about the rest day tomorrow. Aronian says chess players are basically lazy and they would not mind a rest day after a rest day. Kramnik says that he would rather play tomorrow than rest. You can see that big Vlad is not happy with his play.
Round 6, April 25, 2016
Kramnik, Vladimir – Aronian, Levon
C53 Guioco Piano
The next two players in are Eljanov and Grandelius. Because we were watching the press conferences, we weren’t able to follow the game. One has the idea that Nils blundered.
Round 6, April 25, 2016
Eljanov, Pavel – Grandelius, Nils
D73 Neo-Grunfeld, 5.Nf3 dxc4
The last press conference was with MVL and Carlsen. Magnus says that he was seeing problems all over in the game. He felt he was in for a long day. MVL wished he had remembered part of his pre-game analysis better but in general both were happy with the outcome.
Magnus said he was impressed with the way Hari played the French. That telegraphs to me that Giri really is going to have the French played against him in the future.
Tomorrow is a rest day and Wednesday Magnus plays big Vlad and MVL plays Harikrishna. Looks like a good day.
Jan Gustafsson and Peter Svidler in the commentators chairs. There is an easy flow of conversation. This while analyzing move White’s thirteenth move in Topalov – Giri.
White has to move his queen here. There is no other good move than Qb1.
Peter: When I was a reasonably young child, I went to a Kasparov School session. By that time, Kasparov wasn’t in attendance because he was defending the world title.
One of the guest lecturers was Mark Dvoretsky.
Jan – He taught you to move instantly?
Peter: One thing I carried away from his series of lectures was that if you have only one move to make – think of it and make it on your opponent’s time. The two minutes or five minutes you save might be needed later on in the game.
Mark Dvoretsky (b. 1947) had excellent results early in his career, however, for personal reasons he opted not to remain an active player and instead followed his urge to become a chess trainer.
Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Evgeny Bareev, Joël Lautier and Loek van Wely are among the players who benefited from his coaching.
Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Evgeny Bareev, Joël Lautier and Loek van Wely are among the players who benefited from his coaching.
He has published a whole raft of books, many of them with Artur Yusupov.
______
There is a possibility of b4 in the Topalov game.
Peter says that reminds him that Nigel Short is now in a band called The Knight Before (Nb4). When Nigel starts invading a territory, we shall all be trampled underfoot. I think he is probably watching because he has nothing better to do.
An online search says that The Night Before is a lively three-piece folk dance band out of Coventry, U.K. They enjoy playing tunes from an eclectic mix of backgrounds for ceilidh and contra dancing.
It seems that Nigel’s band is an imitation of that one because he tweets:
Not sure whether I am more nervous about this or about the concert with my hastily assembled band "The Knight b4".
He evidently is watching Carlsen-Kramnik because of these tweets:
- I fear that Kramnik's gonads may be slowly roasted over an open fire
- I have played Kramnik's line several times, with reasonable results but this has gone completely wrong
- There are such things as bad positions with counter-chances, but this is not one of them
______
The games:
Norway Chess 2016
Round 7, April 27, 2016
Grandelius, Nils - Li Chao2
B16 Caro-Kann, Bronstein-Larsen Variation
The first game to end is the Carlsen game and Vlad Kramnik comes in. Jan says, “A bad day at the office?” and Vlad says, “A bad half hour. I missed 15.Ngf5”. One bad decision in a quiet game and it was lost. “Magnus played and I didn’t.”
The idea came from Jon Ludvig Hammer. Carlsen said that after 16 moves, his position played itself.
Giri says during his interview, “How could Hammer come up with a move like Ne2, then Ngf5?” He runs away at the mouth again but still I find him amusing.
Magnus came in after Vlad left. When they stopped analyzing the game, Jan asked him all sorts of questions about the NBA finals and also that question about who you would want on a desert island if you were marooned there. The answer was ‘Vladimir Kramnik’ because you would always have interesting conversations.
Veselin says that the best person to have with you is a vegetarian (like Levon Aronian?):
- Pick an herbivore so you're in no danger of being cannibalized -- now that's grandmaster level strategy right there.
Veselin originally said that he would take Giri to the desert island with him because he would listen to him but after trying to get a word in edgewise during the postmortem, he dropped Anish and went for the vegetarian!
A funny tweet by a kibitzer: - I bet half the top ten want to send Giri to fight club but tell him it's a chess club.
26..Qxe5? better is Bg4. Magnus said he just misjudged some positions and near the end, he was not thinking of a win but of just making the time control. He appears to have great respect for Levon and the postmortem was very friendly. Kramnik says it was a strange game, Magnus got a bad position very quickly.
Round 8, April 28, 2016
Kramnik, Vladimir – Harikrishna, Pentala
A04 Reti (KIA, English, Dutch)
After Carlsen loses, a lot of the spectators leave and the noise in the background of Peter and Jan is immense. It gets even louder and Peter says that there is a popular phrase in present day Russia, “Just when you think you have reached rock bottom, someone knocks from below!”
The guys have been joking about Jon Ludvig Hammer through the week and he happens to walk by and waves and grins maniacally at their noise discomfort.
You’ll remember that Carlsen thanked Hammer for the knight moves that won the game.
Hearing that comment, Anish Giri said, “Come on. How can jlh come up with a move like Ne2?”
Last night Hammer tweeted: Hey Anish, I’m available at 1K euros/day, quantity discount available.
The last round of the tournament. Chances for Carlsen, Aronian, MVL and Topalov. And Topalov is against old rival Vladimir Kramnik – so, lots of interesting stuff.
We have all got quite used to the Gustafsson-Svidler team. Too bad this is the last day. I enjoyed one tweet on the official site:
- Nice tie Peter. Jan, you could do better.
As the day progresses, they have to battle against the noise of the diners in the same hall. Jan says, “We are unable to deal with any kind of adversity!”
______
Markus Ragger is the first guest of Fiona Steil-Antoni. You’ll recall Markus did quite well at the Gibraltar Tournament in February of this year. He is also the second of Pentala Harikrishna and when Hari played something questionable in the opening earlier, it was said that Markus scowled. He doesn’t look like a scowler, so that was probably misreporting.
Markus is Austrian (b. 1988) and recently passed the 2700 rating level. Markus says the first goal is to pass that level and the next is to keep it. He hopes to do well in the European Individual Championship in May, which will get him into the World Cup.
He and Hari played on the same team in the Bundesliga and Hari was looking for a second, and it was a good fit, so Markus joined him.
His daily routine begins in the evening, deciding what opening to play in the next day’s round. Then he works on it until 2 or 3 in the morning and goes through the work with Hari. It isn’t until the afternoon that he gets some sleep.
He enjoys the work because you are motivated when you are helping someone. He had to leave last weekend to play for his team, Solingen, in the Bundesliga. That team ended the ten-year ascendancy of Baden-Baden. But he had to miss the final, which both he and Hari followed from Norway.
For those who care – the first four places in the league were: 1. Solingen, 2. Baden-Baden, 3. Werder Bremen and 4. Schwabisch Hall.
______
The next guest with the guys is Silvio Danailov (b.1961), the current president of the Bulgarian Chess Federation and long-time manager of Veselin Topalov.
Jan asks him a lot of questions because Silvio has strong opinions and always seems to be at the centre of controversies. He is a good on-screen interviewee.
About the Kramnik-Topalov rivalry – he plays that down but says that when they get together, there is rarely a draw – the last in classical chess being in 2007. They don’t often appear in tournaments together but that is not because they won’t play with the other but perhaps because organizers prefer just one of the two at a time.
He wants to coexist with FIDE but they seem intent on pushing him. Jan says it is just like Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Silvio agrees. He says they have trumped up charges against Garry Kasparov and he cannot participate in FIDE official events for two years. How do you ban a chess legend?
If Kirsan is kept out of the FIDE presidency because of U.S. trade sanctions, it is possible that he might run in 2018. But the situation is difficult now and the General Assembly may take up the problem at Baku instead of waiting for the meeting at the Batumi, Georgia Olympiad.
He says that the executive of FIDE just want power and don’t want change. They don’t develop sponsors but just leave it to the Russians to supply the money for staging events.
He believes that Bulgaria has suffered by not winning the World Championship. The government has found other uses for the money and Bulgarian chess has suffered.
He thinks that Karjakin has a 50-50 chance of winning the WCC. He also does not think it will be held in New York City – it will probably be moved to Russia. After all, it doesn’t make sense, the Championship will be financed by Russian money – why would they stage it in New York City?
He said that he has put forth two proposals to FIDE which have been turned down. One was by a German firm which would put two million dollars into a betting system, in which players could bet on the game after every move. The company would be stationed in Gibraltar. FIDE turned it down and said it would be bad for the image of chess.
Peter Svidler breaks in to say that is his feeling too and cites cricket as a game that would suffer from betting.
Silvio also says that he has suggested a club competition not run on a Swiss system but on round robins. That was turned down too.
I know there are many who think Danailov is bat s**t crazy, but I find his views refreshing!
_______
Any way, Magnus wins the tournament clear, the way a World Champion should.
The games:
Norway Chess 2016
Round 9, April 29, 2016
Grandelius, Nils – Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
E60 King’s Indian
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