A thought about @NakaFacts

It occurred to me that @NakaFacts could well be Magnus Carlsen. I'm so amused by the idea that I'm simply going to believe that it's true. Hey, there's no evidence that it isn't!

(Of course, it's more likely that it's Anish Giri. But Magnus would be much more fun.) 

Just another chess widow?

Amruta Mokal, among other things a chess photographer, is working at the Moscow Candidates tournament. On Monday Anish Giri battled Fabiano Caruana for over seven hours. So what did Giri's wife, Sopiko Guramishvili aka Chess24.com's Ms. Tactics, do?

@Sopiko20 What to do when your husband plays for seven hours! :) #dedicatedwife #MoscowCandidates pic.twitter.com/EOjww7Yt7h

— Amruta Mokal (@amrutamokal) March 22, 2016

Annotations for Giri-Caruana

Not by me! No sir, that game gives me a headache.

The Frenchman with two names, who is also known by three letters, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, has been annotating a Game of the Day for Chess.com's coverage of the Moscow Candidates Tournament. Yesterday he rightly chose to annotate Giri-Caruana. Apparently it took him several hours, and he admits parts that it still isn't all clear. Anyway, those notes can be found in this article, about halfway down the page. (I recommend downloading the .pgn file and looking at it in the program of your choice.) If you're a Grunfeld player, or expect to play against the Grunfeld, you might want to take a look at this in the currently trendy 3. f3 line.

Bric-a-brac, 2016 March 21 edition

Nothing Ventured: Justin Horton, inspired by the recent Nakamura touch move controversy, discusses one of the problems with chess journalism.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis looks to be starting a new feature, Today in Chess. It appears it will be a daily broadcast on YouTube. The first one is two hours of commentary on Round 8 of the Candidates tournament. I haven't watched it yet, so I can't vouch for it. But if you've got a couple of hours to kill....

Meanwhile, Chess24.com has posted an interview with Anish Giri. I haven't read it yet as I'm saving it for later. But these pieces are usually pretty good, and Giri is very entertaining.

Finally, Lars Bo Hansen tweets the following:

Giri-Caruana at #MoscowCandidates is why I advice to study classical games if you want to improve. Modern games are often hard to learn from

— Lars Bo Hansen (@GMLars) March 21, 2016

When the game is finished I'll post it in a replayable window, so you'll understand what he means. Update: Here it is.

That said, the endgame of Anand-Aronian will probably be worth some time if you're into rook & pawn endgames. Both sides have two rooks currently, but somehow I'm reminded of Capablanca-Tartakower, New York, 1924. I'll see if it the comparison holds up, but what I'm thinking is that Anand will sacrifice pawns to aggressively post his king, as Capa did long ago. Update: Here's the Anand-Aronian game. It didn't go as I thought it might, but I particularly like Anand's last move. It's dead won after 66 Kxg7, but the text is just cleaner, and aesthetically better.

How NOT to play the London System as White

From the Tata Steel Masters Tournament , today in Utrecht instead of the Wijk!

Game of the Day: Navara - Giri, Tata Steel Chess Tournament, Wijk aan Zee 2016

Navara played a brilliant attacking game against Giri today, and the Czech GM should have won the game. But on move 40 he seems to have made a wrong turn, and Giri escaped with the draw. Afterwards Giri said, "Generally it's good to be a queen down when you're lost. It's harder usually to convert. With two rooks there are always some chances." The quote, and the game notes below, are from the ChessVibes.com report. Annotations by Peter Doggers. One quick note from me: If Black goes pawn & rook hunting with 20...Bxg2 he gets slaughtered after 21 fxg6 when White is threatening all kinds of nastiness on the f7 square, among other things.

A minor dispute.

A few days back Paul Leggett wrote the following, concerning the participation of several top GMs in the Qatar Masters Tournament:

I am firmly in the camp that believes the top player's ratings are inflated because they tend to avoid playing in Opens (Kramnik played in his first open in something like 20 years just within the last year [I believe it was at last year's edition of the Qatar Masters. - ed.]), and this is an example of what can happen when the top dogs move to the shallow end of the pool.

These results are rare, but when the opportunity is present, the top guys will get nicked enough (a draw is a rating loss) to keep rating at a more accurate level.

I meant to disagree (mildly) at the time, but forgot with all of the holiday hullabaloo. I do think the top players would probably get nicked sometimes, but I also think the top players are the top players because they really do perform that well. It hasn't been unknown for a player to soar to elite ratings status only to get knocked back down immediately upon getting into elite events.

Mostly, I think the top players would have to adjust to the style of an open Swiss tournament by learning to take more chances. This would increase their variance, but it would do so both ways, and ultimately I would expect them to end up in about the same positions on the ELO scale. As evidence, I give you the top five players, by rating, from Qatar, along with their results:

It turns out that the top three players in the world all gained ELO points, as did the twelfth ranked player. And the tenth ranked player, who had a disappointing tournament, only lost 1.8 ELO. Not bad! The eighth and tenth seeds did get hammered, ratings-wise, but they're both outside the top twenty in the world.

This is one tournament, and thus a painfully small sample size, but I think these results would hold up over time.

Thus endeth a minor disputation over a particular inconsequentiality.

The "Grand Chess Tour" is a joke.

I've tried to write this post a couple of times now. The topic just makes me too angry for coherence. The Grand Chess Tour, consists of the Stavangar Tournament in Norway, the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, and the London Chess Classic (not in Ohio). Players accumulate points in the overall standings based on their performances in the individual tournaments.

After the final tournament, concluded a week ago, Magnus Carlsen was declared the winner of both the London leg and the Tour as a whole. This last was due entirely to the most asinine tie-breaks ever used in the history of Chess. (Yes, I am including the time a Roulette wheel was used to settle the outcome of a Candidates Match between Huebner and Smyslov.) You can read about that The Chess Mind, in the perfectly named post Grand Chess Tour Tiebreaks: A System Than Which None Lesser Can Be Conceived.

The upshot is this: Despite only finishing on +1 for the tour, Carlsen finished first  in the overall standings, ahead of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (+2), Hikaru Nakamure (+3) and Anish Giri (+5). To add to the absurdity, Carlsen finished behind or tied with Giri and MVL in all three stages of the tour, yet still finished ahead of them in the standings! (Call Magnus the Tortoise of Chess.)

MVL really got hosed more than once, though. As recounted elsewhere, despite beating Giri in a tiebreak, he actually finished behind Giri in London. All these tiebreak shenanigans resulted in MVL missing out on qualifying for next year's Grand Chess Tour. So, not only does he get lesser prizes than deserved this year, he will miss out on next year's Tour as well, meaning he will miss three of the best (and most lucrative) tournaments of the year, plus whatever money he might have won for his placement in the tour next year. 

This is an egregious ... hmm, how to put this without using foul language? This is an egregious mistreatment of a player for playing well. But the Grand Chess Tour had already set a precedent for this when they didn't invite Karjakin this year, despite Karjakin having won the first two editions of the Stavangar Tournament ahead of Magnus Carlsen. So at least the GCT is consistent!

What a joke.

Anish Giri: Trash-talker extraordinaire!

 On Twitter a few days ago, Tarjei Svenson pointed out a probable typo in New In Chess:

Carlsen was 6 years old, I doubt it was in 1996, Loek! @NewInChess pic.twitter.com/tkHfWijCap

— Tarjei J. Svensen (@TarjeiJS) November 7, 2015

Giri replied with:

.@TarjeiJS @NewInChess I noticed it, but found nothing strange with @MagnusCarlsen 6, mating Loeky in a sicilian.

— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) November 7, 2015

In the words of the Powerpuff Girls, "HARD CORE!"

Test Time

From the Giri-So blitz tiebreaker at the Bilbao VIII Chess Masters Final. Assess the position.

Giri vs So

White to move after 38...Nxe1

Assessment will be added in a few days.

Your Moves for the Day: h7-is-a-great-square-to-sack-a-piece Edition

Two moves today, both of which offer a standard motif, but with a catch! From the insanely complicated game Alexander Morozevich vs. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Biel 2009.

Even Anish Giri ...

... the most boring player in the world, gets tired of Rook & pawn endgames.

Screen capture from Chess24.com

(That's from near the end of the round 5.2 game against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.)

Hero of Day One at the World Cup

This one is a bit late. But during the first day of the first round, Ugandan IM Arhur Ssegwanyi (ELO 2357) drew Dutch GM Anish Giri (ELO 2793) in 158 moves! Giri had an advantage of a pawn through a great deal of it, but Ssegwanyi played tough defense, and the game was drawn when they reached bare kings. PGN below the fold.