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.

Database reliability: A cautionary tale

Databases have revolutionized the game of chess. Thanks to these databases, people have access to millions of games, easily accessible and searchable. Contrast this to 1980, when I was but a lad of 12, living in the chess hinterlands of Orlando, Florida. I had exactly three books about the game: the then current edition of the USCF Rules of Chess, Harry Golombeck's Chess: A History, and Robert E. Burger's The Chess of Bobby Fischer.

The rule book was a rule book. Golombeck's book had all of 55 unannotated games. Burger's book, which was and is a gem, was something of a textbook, and had only a few complete games, though many positions from Fischer's games. (Now that my health has improved I plan on reviewing that book at some point, and I will explain then why I'm not linking to the book now.) But that was it. Probably fewer than 60 complete games, and I counted myself lucky! Books weren't as easy to come by, especially if you were a child and didn't have a USCF membership. These days anyone with an internet connection can access all manner of online databases for those millions of games mentioned earlier. And relatively cheap databases can be had for offline use. Astounding!

But these databases can have problems. Sometimes these collections haven't been checked well. In some sense, how could they be? Who could review millions of games for quality assurance? A few years back, I found the following game score in ChessBase's collection:

Starting with Black's 25th move, the game score becomes utter nonsense. For all I know this game score is still being used by ChessBase, though I sent them an email at the time. (Side note: An awful lot of the games between Petrosian and Tal were boring as dirt.)

The correct score can be found at ChessGames.com: LINK. That's where I found it then. You'll see that the last few moves of the game actually make sense! The prior score would only be believable if both players were so drunk they were wetting themselves at the board in their oblivion, and even that isn't believable. In that case neither would have resigned, and the most likely outcome would have been someone flagging after passing out.

So, the cautionary note is that you need to review the actual game scores in your database before taking them at face value. Trust no one! If you're a 1700 and find a bunch of stuff that you can determine is nonsense without even turning on a program, then you need to check the game score with another source!

Position of the Day: Christmas edition!

Another one for the "books beat databases" files! The book this time is John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book, which includes the following position which I cannot find in my database or in ChessGames.com online database: Kudriashov vs. I Ivanov, USSR 1979.

Kudriashov vs. I Ivanov, USSR 1979

Black to move

5rk1/PP4b1/3p2p1/3P4/1R2P2p/5pp1/4r3/R4NK1 b - - 0 1

Nunn calls the position "totally weird" and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree. I'll post the solution in a few days, but I've given the fen so you can plug it into a program if you like.

Game of the Day: 12/24/2015 edition

And now to look at some actual quality chess. Magnus Carlsen (FIDE 2834) faced Li Chao (2750) for the first time today. It was the first board of the fifth round of the Qatar Masters Open. Not many opens have an average FIDE rating of 2792 on the first board! (And we'll go higher in coming rounds, no doubt.) It was a "let's hand each other lit sticks of dynamite and see who goes BOOM first" kind of game. Carlsen played the currently popular 3 f3 line against Li's Grunfeld, and it went from there. I've only added a note about an amusing possibility on white's 28th move. If you want real annotations, look elsewhere! To that end, I recommend FM Mike Klein's article at ChessVibes both for annotations and post-game comments from Carlsen, as well as recaps of other action from the day. Here's the Carlsen-Li game.

Dumpster Diving: 12/24/2015 edition

Playing a three minute game online on Christmas Eve, waiting for my turn to wrap presents, I came up with the following. I missed a few things here and there, but it has a pleasant finish.

Position of the Day: 12/23/2015 edition

And I'll conclude with something a bit more upbeat. Down the boards today Norwegian IM Johan-Seabstian Christiansen (FIDE 2385) played against German GM Stefan Bromberger (2521). I'll confess that I don't believe I've heard of either of these players before. A rather crazy game ensued (which I'll embed below), but the most amazing thing is this position from near the end of the game:

Christiansen - Bromberger, Qatar Masters Open

Position after 29...Q8d3+

White resigned in light of 30 Bf3 Q3xf3+ 31 gxf3 Qxf3# and 30 Bxd3 Qxd3+ 31Kf4 Qe3#.

Gruesome, isn't it?

Goat of the Day

More games from the Qatar Masters Open, with an eye towards finding the goat of the day.

In the runner-up position, we have the young Chinese star Wei Yi (FIDE 2730). After a fairly blunder filled game (at least according to Stockfish), Wei reached the following position as White against the Indian IM Vignesh (2422):

White to move

White is a pawn to the good, and Black has weaknesses, but White's king isn't too secure either, the presence of queens means that White MUST keep up the home guard, and the rook ending would probably be difficult to win if the queens come off (at least according to Svidler and Ramirez).

Grandmaster Instruction

Mark Crowther, of The Week In Chess fame, has been stating on Twitter that the last couple of years he felt like his understanding of the game has improved simply by watching top grandmasters go over their games in press conferences after rounds. I sympathize with this point of view, although it is hard to know exactly how much understanding translates into improved play, much less improved results. (If everyone you play is getting better at the same rate you are, you might not see any improvement at all!)

For example, I found it helpful to watch Vladimir Kramnik (yes, my favorite player) go over his game today. Kramnik is very fast and spews lots of lines (you can see Svidler struggling to keep up at times), but it is interesting to see what he's looking at, both positionally and tactically. Today he took on Naroditsky. The commentary is below, for those interested.

[I'm having trouble getting the video to embed. The link is below. The clip with Kramnik should be the second clip on the page.]

LINK

Coverage courtesy of Chess24.com & Livestream.com.

Note that Livestream classifies this as Sports/Extreme Sports! I had no idea an ironing board was involved....

Clermont Chess Club December Unrated G15 Tournament Results

We've taken to running unrated tournaments on the first Thursday of every month. For the month of December we ran a G15 tournament with the unusual pairing method of 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, etc in the first round, and similarly in subsequent rounds. This is Rule Variation 29L1 in the USCF Official Rules of Chess, as discussed here in this earlier post by Paul.

Anyhow, the results are below. As the winner I think I played one good game, one adequate game, and one poor game that I won by luck. Unfortunately, I didn't write down any of my moves. Also unfortunately, I was coming down with a nasty lung infection which left me completely zombified for several days thereafter, so now if I fail to win in the future I can't use the excuse that I was sick, because I was sicker than I realized this time. So much for that excuse in the future!

Still it was fun. I'm not sure we've got an adequate sample size yet to opine on Rule Variation 29L1, but the results seem promising. At the very least everyone know coming out of the gate they'll get at least one game against a similarly rated opponent, and after that it's up to the player.

Note that the tournament is unrated, so the rating changes at the end will not actually occur.

Escape of the Day: Vladimir Kramnik

Arab oil money can make strange things happen. A strange thing in the chess world is seeing several players in the Top Ten, including the top three on the live rating list, play in an open event.

In round one, no less a player than Magnus Carlsen got tagged for a half point against a woman International Master rated almost 350 points lower rated than Magnus. (This Swiss Gambit has worked out well for Magnus, as he still hasn't faced anyone within 300 Elo of his own illustrious rating. Kramnik & Giri, amongst others, haven't had such an easy time of it.) Yesterday, Kramnik got nicked for a half-point, albeit against a member of the 2600 club, one Kacper Piorun. But today Kramnik almost gave up a full point to the 2596 rated Daniele Vocaturo.

Up through the first 20 moves or so, Kramnik appeared to have everything under control. But on move 21 Big Bad Vlad started transforming the pawn formation and by the time the queens came off on move 28, his position was looking bad, with one weak pawn after another.

Kramnik shed his queenside pawns for activity, but by the time control at move 40 he was down three pawns, although White was destined to lose at least one of them.

But as I like to repeat, ad infinitum ad naseum, KEEP FIGHTING! And as the commentators Peter Svidler and Alejandro Ramirez pointed out, all three resulted were possible around move 43, as White's king was running out of space, and could find himself checkmated if White got careless. And within a few moves, Vocaturo had allowed Kramnik to repeat the position and Kramnik got his draw.

This game would probably also make for a decent exercise in looking for "Trends, Turning Points and Emotional Shifts" as Alex Yermolinsky wrote about in his book The Road to Chess Improvement - at least three inflection points occurred in this one! The full game is below.

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.

Hero of the Day: IM Nino Batsiashvili

Today, IM Nino Batsiashvili (FIDE ELO 2498) drew as black against World Champion Magnus Carlsen (FIDE ELO 2834) in the First Round of the Qatar Masters Open. As typical, Magnus played the game to the bitter end, finally conceding the draw in the position below:

Screencap from Chess24.com

Congratulations to Ms. Batsiashvili, who is having a great year, professionally. I'm sure Maxime Vachier-Lagrave will be sending you a very expensive present soonest!

I'm also sure that somehow Magnus will still manage to win the tournament on tie-breaks after finishing on 50%. That's just how the organizers roll these days.

A non-chess post.

So I see that the early reviews of the new movie are starting to come out. (I don't really need to say which movie, do I?) The consensus seems to be that it is the best installment in the franchise in 32 years.

That is damning with the faintest possible praise.

Recommended

Paul (I think) pointed out this nice article on the exotic topic of how to read a chess book. Oddly enough, it's entitled:

How to Read a Chess Book