28 Dec 2008

ELISTA final round

In the frozen North, Elista to be precise, they are hard at it: one of the Grand Prix tournaments is taking place with 14 players taking part.


Grischuk versus Radjabov is the decisive game today, especially now that the third shared leader, Jakovenko, has already drawn.

Position after the Queen exchange on =f8=



As usual, I forgot that the final day starts two hours earlier, so I missed the beginning.


I can see Grischuk crumble before my eyes, and giving the game to Radjabov. He played 29.Be2 instead of a more sensible option such as Bh3 of Bd1.
But the real crux was his initiating the Queen swap on =f8=. Why??
Having it take place on =f3= was much better for White.

Plus of course, the minor detail of time:
Grischuk has 2 minutes for nine moves, Radja has more than one hour left.

However, Grischuk plays like a trooper and is on move 38 with 1 minute left. So far no blunders, but then, Radja isn't pressuring him with challenging moves.

Grischuk had set up so much space, that he could play his King up and down and sideways, seeing that Radja hadn't approached enough to prevent that.



Well done! Safely through the time portal. Eval -1.40, but not hopeless.
Just one Pawn in it and opposite coloured Bishops. So every chance of a draw for Grischuk. I am not taking sides here, but I would have liked a clear winner.
Everything to play for, but it seems like gridlock.
What a wonderful display from Grischuk to get scotfree through the time portal.
I reckon Radja simply didn't challenge him at that vulnerable stage, unlike Carlsen who then comes up with weird and wonderful moves that throw his opponent off more times than not.
Magnus, I miss you. Hope Corus will take place in spite of the credit crunch.
Time Grischuk 1 hr, Radja 2 hrs.


No life left in this game.

They trundle on regardless. Will Radja make Grischuk miss his plane? I have seen him go to move 90 before. Maybe he wants another shot at the time pressure.Or maybe he hopes Grischuk will lose concentration and play g4 too early?

There is a lot more to winning a game than wood-pushing. Maybe Grischuk gets rattled or maybe he will simply throw in the towel out of boredom. I know I would. My boredom threshold is very low.

We shall see.

Time 30 mins vs 2 hours.
Maybe Radja is dreaming up a challenging move to be thrown at Grischuk in 29 minutes' time?

Well, I've just come back from a 3 mile run and they are still playing silly beggars. It actually IS Move 90 now and no chance of anything but a draw.

And they finally give in on move 93.
Pity that this had to end in a draw, but worthy opponents.
So it is a three-way split at the top, which gives Radjabov the overall lead in the Grand Prix so far.

Grand Prix Standings after three events



27 Dec 2008

KAZIMDZHANOV WINS IN ELISTA ROUND 12

In the frozen North, Elista to be precise, they are hard at it: one of the Grand Prix tournaments is taking place with 14 players taking part.

I went for a highly needed walk and found them ALL drawn when I got back, apart from the game between Kasimdzhanov and Cheparinov.



Kasim has 1/2 pawn advantage. So probably won't accept a draw just yet. If he wins this, he will move up to shared 5th place. See table below.

Move 22.g4 may not have been the best choice. 22.Qf2 first? 22....Bf4 23.g4
Cheparinov is playing very accurately at the minute and it could now be drawn any time soon. Time 16 mins for White, 26 mins for Black.

I believe now a draw offer from Black would not fall on deaf ears, as Kasim needs to make 15 moves in as many minutes.

Mysteriously Chepa decided to take with the Bishop rather than the Rook.



and gives Kasim renewed chances after 26.Rad1 Bxf5 27.Nb5! Qg7?? (Raf6 would have been nice).
Can Kasim find now the move 28.Qa3 and direct operations to the QS?
No he doesn't, but in the following moves Chepa crumbles under time pressure and loses the game. So KAZIMDZHANOV WINS IN ELISTA ROUND 12 . Good for him entertaining us a little longer than the others, who were all satisfied with a draw today.





Congratulations to Kazim who seems to be getting into his stride a little late in the tournament, with two solitary wins in a drawing field two days in a row.

Candidate Matches

Address by Mr Henrik Carlsen on behalf of GM Magnus Carlsen

I’m representing my son Magnus Carlsen and would like to thank you for this opportunity to express our views on the world championship cycle.


As communicated earlier we would like to see transparent decision processes within FIDE, and predictability and fairness in the world championship cycles. Transparent decision processes require a democratic and open dialogue with the parties involved prior to making decisions. Important issues need to be raised well in advance of major decision points and the decision process needs to be well documented and communicated timely and widely. The process of proposing to change the current cycle as brought forward at the FIDE General Assembly in Dresden last month on short notice, does not meet these requirements.

Predictability is necessary to ensure the trust and commitment of chess players, chess federations, sponsors, organisers and top players in contention for the World Championship title.

We need to introduce mutually binding agreements in line with the practice in other top chess tournaments. The current practice of having one-sided escape clauses in the championship regulations and/or players undertaking, for instance stating that the FIDE Presidential Board or the FIDE President may change this or that, is simply unacceptable. The many examples from recent years of players that has qualified or is in the process of qualifying for a subsequent step in the championship cycle or for a match experiencing multiple delays or downright removal of rights must come to an end.

Regarding priorities, the focus on money and privileges must be replaced by fairness, reliability and predictability. As many businesses around the world has experienced, if you want economics results you have to excel in what you deliver to your customers and your audience. The results will follow suit.

Fairness; what does this imply? In addition to having predictability, there should not be arbitrary granting of privileges, well, as few privileges as possible really.

In a future Magnus would like to see a world championship cycle with a minimum of privileges, or no privileges at all. If any it should be early in the cycle and based on rating and not money. The transition to such a situation has been difficult in the past due to the legacy of our history.

We strongly disagree with the way FIDE has tried to remedy this by handing out further privileges. After the unification process from 2005 to 2008, we may be in a unique situation to transcend historical problems and privileges, and it was with disbelief and disappointment we received the news about the proposal to introduce new privileges by creating four new spots in the next step of the 2008-2011 championship cycle.

Next let me mention some features we would like to advocate related to a world championship cycle. Firstly let’s talk about privileges.

What about privileges related to rating? Well, maybe some places in a knock-out stage could be allocated to top rated players as done in the World Cup for many years.

What about the privileges of players backed by strong managers, sponsors or organisers? We don’t believe in these as it promotes cronyism and makes it possible to buy your way to important rights.

What about the privileges of the reigning World Champion? This is a difficult question but we see strong arguments for reducing the privileges drastically or even abolishing them outright. In the past, with the right to a re-match, a reigning world champion had about 75% chance of retaining the title against an evenly strong opponent, leaving only 25% chance for all the remaining chess players in the world. It was ridiculous. Even without rematches, the 50% chance of today strongly favours the reigning champion. This may have made sense in the past when there were few serious contenders for the title, but today, with about 30 top players within 100 rating points of the top, this is no longer fair.

Next, let’s discuss the cycle. The first step needs to be accessible to as many players as possible world wide. Both zonal tournaments and the regional qualifiers for the World Cup have worked well and one of these practices may be continued in the future.

Next Magnus favours a knock-out system with for instance 64 or 128 players mainly coming from the preceding step. When there are eight players left in the knock-out stage, various alternatives are possible and we would like to mention three viable options.

The first is to continue with the knock-out matches, and the final winner is the new World Champion.

Another alternative is to proceed with candidate matches between the eight remaining players at other venues and shifted in time. After two rounds of candidate matches, the two remaining players would fight for the world championship title.

A third good alternative is to stage a double round robin World Championship tournament between the eight remaining players from the knock-out cup.

The World Champion would retain his (or her) title for two years until the next champion is decided.

Now, you may object and ask us: what is new? This is what has been tried for more than ten years without much success, hasn’t it? Well, the main point is that it did not work as long as Kasparov and later Kramnik were outside the FIDE cycle. Currently this is no longer a problem.

The chess world has been united and the only privileges we need to care about are those of World Champion Anand, who had to win both the 2007 world championship tournament and the somewhat questionable 2008 match, and the other is the winner of the 2007 World Cup Kamsky who was promised a semi-final match for the world championship title based on the regulations prior to the World Cup.

A transition from the current situation to a future without significant privileges must of course be organised in a way that is fair and preferably also fully acceptable to these gentlemen. This obviously involves giving privileges to Anand in the next one or two cycles, and privileges to Kamsky in first of the ongoing cycles.

It is a bit difficult to comment categorically on the planned Kamsky-Topalov match as we don’t understand the reason for organising such a match, but neither do we really know what has been discussed or agreed between FIDE and the other involved parties over the last one and a half years. The process has certainly not met our requirement for transparency.

In summary, we want mutually binding agreements governing FIDE cycles, the eventual abolition of privileges in general, and we want FIDE to focus on fairness and predictability and not money and privileges.

Thank you for your attention.

ELISTA round 12




In the frozen North, Elista to be precise, they are hard at it: one of the Grand Prix tournaments is taking place with 14 players taking part.

Carlsen has opted out of the circuit, and I can't blame him. Fide is mucking top players about yet again.

Today I am following the game between Radjabov and Akopian, playing a C45 for a change.



and Radja has deviated from the only game left in my database: Ivanchuk vs Timoschenko 1987 0-1. There White played 9.Be3 and Radja opted for 9.h4, answered by Akopian, after a twenty-five minute think, with ....h5.
Now Radja might have attacked Black's DSB with 10.Na4, but he obviously didn't want to unbalance his position at this stage and attacked said Bishop with 10.Be3.

Is he planning to castle long? That will depend on whether or not Black swaps bishops. And Black does! So no castling yet for White.

By this exchange White has thrown down the gauntlet and leaves it up to Black to decide the direction of the middle game: always a grave responsibility, which will cost Akopian some time. Is Radja doing a 'Carlsen', by making his opponent use up so much time that a shortage by Move 40 may cause a less than perfect move and provide a toehold for White? We shall see.
Time: 1hr 53 mins vs 1hr 26 mins. Eval 0.30

White plays 12.Be2, but it is still 0-0-0 rather than 0-0, that is on the cards.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.
How do players stand it? I have always found it impossible to sit still and used to bring my knitting to games. With bamboo needles, that are noiseless, it was usually accepted.
That wasn't the case for BG tournaments, where it was frowned upon. I am so used to playing 24-point BG games against the computer inside ten minutes, that an 11-point game lasting 40 minutes ( my opponent's time, as I play instantly) used to drive me round the bend, unless my unwary opponent would let me defeat him (usually) by chatting. Ahh those were the days....

Akopian has used up 57 minutes, Radja only needed 8 minutes.

Bacrot and Grischuk have already drawn. They must have had plans to go skiing today.



After Move 13.f4 Bg4, when Radja has used a total of 20 mins and Akopian needed 1 hour.

I went for a highly needed walk and found them drawn when I got back.One game still going, between Kasim and Cheparinov



Kasim has 1/2 pawn advantage. So probably won't accept a draw just yet. If he wins this, he will move up to shared 5th place. See table below.

Move 22.g4 may not have been the best choice. 22.Qf2 first? 22....Bf4 23.g4
Cheparinov is playing very accurately at the minute and it could now be drawn any time soon. Time 16 mins for White, 26 mins for Black.

I believe now a draw offer from Black would not fall on deaf ears, as Kasim needs to make 15 moves in as many minutes.

Mysteriously Chepa decided to take with the Bishop rather than the Rook.



and gives Kasim renewed chances after 26.Rad1 Bxf5 27.Nb5! Qg7?? (Raf6 would have been nice).
Can Kasim find now the move 28.Qa3 and direct operations to the QS?
No he doesn't, but in the following moves Chepa crumbles under time pressure and loses the game. So KAZIMDZHANOV WINS ROUND 12 . Good for him entertaining us a little longer than the others, who were all satisfied with a draw today.

26 Dec 2008

ELISTA round 11




In the frozen North, Elista to be precise, they are hard at it: one of the Grand Prix tournaments is taking place with 14 players taking part.

Carlsen has opted out of the circuit, and I can't blame him. Fide is mucking top players about yet again.

Not too charmed to have to follow another player, but chess is chess and I am having a look at the famous Wang today and see how he copes as White against Radjabov, who is the highest rated player in this G.P.as well as joint leader with Grischuk and Jakovenko.

They started again with with E92, K.I. Petrosian, and at the minute, Move 18, it looks like White has the upper hand.

However, Radja is following a game he played as Black against Onischuk (1/2) in 2004, where he hasn't deviated yet.



But now Radja plays 18.Re1 Qe7 rather than Ng8 as in the 2004 game.
Now we are in uncharted territory.



after Move 21.a3 axb4 22.axb4 *

Eval.+0.64 and 1 hr 47 vs 1 hr 28 mins



I walked 2 miles, whipped some cream, made coffee and dished out apple pie, while they executed all of two moves each. Mind you, Grischuk is still on move 16.

Don't care much for the configuration, with White's back rank being so full.
Move 25.Bb1 seemed timid. Would have preferred to see the LSB go to Bf1. But maybe Wang was afraid that it would get hemmed in? By the Queen?

and yes, 26.Qe2

Now it is time for Black to continue his attack, so finely started with 22...Ra3. Here the Knight wants to get into the action and then the black Queen via =d5= to the QS.

26....Rfa8??? NO no no, that's not the way to go.
Once again Radja doesn't hear me.

There was a fine line with 26....Nf5 27.Qxg4 Qf7 28.Ng5 Qxd5 29.Rcd1 Qb3 most moves forced.

Ah well, 26... Rfa8 it is then, but I do not think that this is much good for Black. Wang needs to make a mistake, and I don't think he goes in for mistakes.

Having said that........
It turns out that this is the story about the chap who wouldn't exchange on =d6= until it was too late.....and then they drew.

25 Dec 2008

Merry Xmas


to anybody happening by.



In the frozen North, Elista to be precise, they are hard at it: one of the Grand Prix tournaments is taking place with 14 players taking part.

Carlsen has opted out of the circuit, and I can't blame him. Fide is mucking top players about yet again.

Not too charmed to have to follow another player, but chess is chess and I am having a look at the famous Wang today.

In Round 9 he is playing Black against Bacrot.

They have reached a crucial stage, and unless White plays 14.Na4 or in a pinch 14.Nb1, it is curtains for Bacrot.
At the time of posting this, 13.30 GMT, Bacrot is still thinking.

He jumped that hurdle well, and did play 14.Na4, but then slipped at move 16, by playing 16.Nd3 rather than the cautious move 16.Kb1.



After 20.Qxf2 Black's pawn formation is faultless and White's chances are evaporating fast.

However, on move 21 Black started the QS pawn tussle a touch too early with 21...b3, where it might have been wiser to prepare the ground with Bf6, which he played a move later.



after 24.h3 with 24....Raa8 to follow.

Attention now shifts to the KS and the Rooks are getting ready for action.
I would have preferred Black's Queen on =a6=. but what do I know...


Almost any other move would have been better for White than the one he actully pulled out of the hat: 28.Be1 ?? (What was wrong with 28.Kb1 or Bb4 or g4 or Rd1 or Re1 or...I could go on.)



A DSB each, but look at Black's Pawns: all of them on light squares, whereas White has a useless Bishop with almost every pawn on a dark square.
It seems gridlock however and a chance to draw will present itself soon I reckon.

Spoke too soon: Black obviously has other ideas and plays the reckless 32...Rg6, throwing caution to the wind.

Nothing much else to play but 33.g4 and then, when the smoke lifts, and the ground is cleared, Black will have such a slight edge, depending on which Rook move he plays on move 35, that a draw must be the result. No?

After the unavoidable 33.g4, Wang has been thinking for more than 20 minutes and still no move. 30 mins each and finally the expected exchanges on =g4=.

I know it is not OCB's (Opposite Coloured Bishops), but it certainly cannot be anything but a draw, surely.

Anyways, I'm out of here.