Tuesday, November 29, 2016

“Any [redacted]-head could do a better job.”

The title is a quote from 2010, uttered by Anatoly Karpov, twelfth world champion, regarding Kirsan Ilyumzhinov's reign as President of FIDE. Yes, it violates one of the blog's policies, but that can't be helped, as it (a) is an accurate quote and (b) sums up the situation regarding the World Chess Federation perfectly, even if it is six years old.

This is all brought up due to a somewhat interesting article on FIDE and the current World Championship Match published by Bloomberg. You can find that article here.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Crushing disappointment? No, a ray of sunshine!

Last Saturday, November 19, 2016, Paul Leggett and I trekked over to Daytona for the November Chess Challenge, put on by Stephen Lampkin. It was a good tournament for both Paul and me, as we both picked up about 70 rating points on our regular ratings. Additionally, I finished second, and beat my first master in a rated game. Woo hoo!

But I'm not here to write about any of the good stuff. I'm here to write about my sole loss from the tournament, against FM Jorge Leon Oquendo, USCF 2473, FIDE 2380. The game started kind of strangely, as you will see, and became very complicated. Mikhail Tal once wrote, "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one." This I did! And though the balance swung a little this way and that, it was my opponent who eventually stumbled and fell! But two moves later, in a fit a utter carelessness, I missed the winning move and lost in turn. Yes, I lost a game I should have won against a player rated almost 2500.

But rather than feeling crushing disappointment at this missed opportunity (this is only the second time I have even played a senior master in a rated game), I feel quite good. After all, I did play mostly well enough to win against such a good opponent, and it gives me hope that I am once again starting to get better at the game. It has been many years since that was true, but circumstances have given me the means and opportunity to improve my game even at the advanced age of 48.

I've placed the game, with my hand-written notes, below the fold. I have partly supplemented them with a few computer suggestions. I'm not going to put it in the ChessBase viewer this time, so this post will be long. I will include plenty of diagrams so that the game can be followed. (The time control was Game in 45 minutes, with a five second delay. Numbers in parentheses after the moves show time remaining in minutes, and later in minutes & seconds.)

Friday, November 25, 2016

Tournament Players PROTIP #8

[Redacted on advice of counsel. Counsel believed it was too likely to lead to fist fights and other types of grievous bodily harm. So don't do that - not that you know what that is. Seriously, just don't.]

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Brief Thoughts on the Carlsen vs Karjakin Match

So far the World Championship Match has had a few surprises. One is that after nine games Sergey Karjakin leads, with one win, no losses, and eight draws - Magnus's inability to win a game is striking, especially given that he had winning positions in both games three and four. Another is that the vaunted Russian preparation machine has failed to impress in the openings - Sergey hasn't really gotten much out of the opening phase, and game nine was the first one with really deep opening prep, and that was old prep that Magnus chose to walk into, apparently with no improvements in mind.

I believe this is all part of the same story. To me, Sergey's match strategy has now become apparent - had really become apparent after game five, and especially game eight. I believe that a great deal of the preparation of Karjakin's team has not really been opening prep, but has been psychological assessment of both players, tailoring a match strategy to combat Carlsen effectively, and working on increasing Karjakin's internal resources and preparing him to execute the match strategy they have prepared.

That strategy, I believe, has been designed solely with the intention of frustrating Magnus to the point where Magnus would start lashing out. This was a risky strategy, as if Karjakin had fallen behind, as he almost did, it would be hard for Sergey to switch gears. But it seems to be working. I believe that Karjakin's team had noticed some small psychological weaknesses that they believed they could exploit - a certain arrogance and impatience on Magnus's part. (My favorite bit of arrogance was at a tournament earlier this year which had both Carlsen and Karjakin as participants. At one press conference Magnus stated that only one person at the tournament had the talent to defeat him for the world championship - and that it wasn't Sergey.) Thus a plan to frustrate Carlsen at every turn by simply keeping everything balanced - and then let Magnus stew in it. Being pleasant and relaxed away from the board would probably add to Carlsen's frustration, as it wouldn't give him anything to latch onto psychologically - and indeed, Karjakin has been a model of conduct at and away from the board.

The biggest part of this strategy would consist of Karjakin not doing anything to unbalance a game unless he clearly saw an easy advantage in doing so. Thus he passed up some opportunities in earlier games that appeared promising, but had some risk. He even did this in game eight, passing up the opportunity to play ...Qg5 at one point when it looked very strong. And it was. But it also entailed risk, and would have given Magnus the chance to outplay him in dynamic position with unbalanced chances. That might have also had something to do with Karjakin playing Bxf7 at one point today instead of Qb3. He didn't quite see the final strokes to make Qb3 work, so he went with the piece sac, which was the much safer continuation. I suspect that in a normal tournament game Karjakin would have pulled the trigger on Qb3 and taken his chances. But the stakes for any one game in a match are much higher, so he stuck with his strategy, and almost won anyway.

This strategy would require enormous self-discipline, and a great deal of confidence in one's abilities. Everyone was remarking upon Karjakin's demeanor during and after the first game - not only did he not seem overwhelmed by the moment, he seemed completely comfortable during the most important contest of his life. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he had been doing extensive work with a sports psychologist , even a hypnotist, in his training camps. A sense of destiny might help in this regard, too, just so long as he can maintain discipline.

With three games left in regulation, two of them with White, Magnus needs to make up ground. He CAN do it, of course. He is the best player of his generation, and when all is said and done may well be the greatest player of all time. But Karjakin seems completely in the moment, while Carlsen is looking shakier from game to game. I can't wait to see how it ends!

Monday, November 21, 2016

How Karjakin can be World Champion without winning a single game!!

It is strange but true- GM Sergey Karjakin does not need to win a single game to become the next FIDE World Champion of Chess.

If the regular games in the match are all drawn, the process calls for successive games in the form of "mini-matches" based on progressively quicker time controls.

If the players are still even, the final will come down to one sudden-death game,  To avoid any hint of miscommunication, here is the exact citation from the Match Rules:
3.7.3 If the score is still level after five matches as described in Article 3.7.2, the players shall play a one sudden death game. The player who wins the drawing of lots may choose the color. The player with the white pieces shall receive 5 minutes, the player with the black pieces shall receive 4 minutes whereupon, after the 60th move, both players shall receive an increment of 3 seconds starting from move 61. In case of a draw the player with the black pieces is declared the winner.
The scenario I allude to in the title is this:  Karjakin draws every game, all the way to the sudden death final game.  If he draws black, he only needs to draw the game to become World Champion.

As the challenger, and without winning a single game.

Here is the link to the complete match regulations

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Insider Theory

Today on Twitter, not-quite-our-own Theo Slade had a very interesting exchange with Peter Svidler about opening theory. (@polborta is Svidler's personal twitter account.)
Apologies for formatting issues, but I think that's easy enough to follow.

One can come up for many reasons for Svidler to defer further comment, too. Ultimately, anything he says could be construed as giving away information to potential competitors about what he does and doesn't know, or may or may not know. Although choosing what to believe of anything he says after that last tweet would become a poker problem, and not a chess problem, if that makes any sense. (And it may not. I am sick at the moment, and I'm not sure that my brain cells have survived the illness, or if having survived they still function with a reasonable modicum of coherence.)

Meanwhile, at the REAL world championship...

Today Jonathan Tisdall tweeted:
The game, from the TCEC Superfinal, which is essentially the world championship of chess programs, can be found in the archives at the TCEC site. It's completely insane. And there was some controversy, apparently, with the ending. Q vs BB is a win, but not within the fifty move rule. Or at least, I read that somewhere today. Take THAT with a grain of salt. But the game is nearly incomprehensible for long stretches. Maybe if I say down and looked at it more closely with a computer running it would make sense. But I'm not going to do that. For all effective purposes, the top programs running of good hardware are playing a different game than we do. You can watch the games of the Superfinal at this link.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Carlsen-Karjakin, Game Three - a tremendous fight!

Game three went about six hours and 40 minutes. The game was fairly level until Sergey blundered with 31...c5? That wasn't an OBJECTIVE blunder, probably, but it was a SUBJECTIVE blunder as it made Sergey's life hard from that point. Magnus nursed the position and eventually forced an objective blunder much later. I imagine Paul will put the game up on Facebook. Here's a link to Mark Crowther's (of TWIC fame) quick take on the game.

Regardless, it was an epic struggle. According to what I'm reading about the press conference, Magnus is disappointed, and Sergey must be tremendously relieved. And tomorrow Karjakin starts a stretch in which he will have White in four of six games: games four, six, seven & nine. I think Karjakin's chances just improved significantly, so long as he doesn't blunder from fatigue tomorrow.

UPDATE: Here's Chess.com's report by Mike Klein, with analysis of the game by GM Robert Hess. I should also point out that this is another example of fighting to the bitter end.

Sesse

From somewhere in Norway, I believe, someone is running Stockfish on a supercomputer to get extremely deep analysis of the World Championship games. The link can be found here:

http://analysis.sesse.net/

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Quality Chess Publishing has another contest

This time it concerns the World Championship match. The questions aren't that hard, it's more a matter of being reasonable and getting lucky. You can find the quiz here, and as the prizes are awesome, I recommend everyone give it a try.

I wanna rock watch chess right now!

Don't want to wait until 2PM tomorrow to watch some top chess? The European Club Cup is happening as we speak, with Ivanchuk vs Kramnik just under way. Watch the rest at your viewing portal of choice. Remember, folks, it takes two!

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Back to Chess

First, a candidate for Move of the Year:
Black to move

Sam Copeland reporting for Chess.com has the rest of the story.

In other news, the USCF has a Couch Potato's Guide to the World Chess Championship, written by GM Ian Rogers. It's quite a good read, and I recommend it. I may even try the cheesecake recipe.

I also have a couple of comments on the Carlsen-Karjakin match that starts Friday in NYC. First, the games will be at 2 PM Eastern, which is perfect for those of us in the Club.

Second, the betting odds favor Magnus heavily. If you're a betting man (or woman), and have access to a (legal) book, I'd recommend betting on Sergey. Yes, Magnus should be the favorite, but I don't think he should be favored by more than three to one, tops, and possibly only two to one. If I had spare cash and access, I'd bet on Sergey just because I think the EV is good. That said, if I had to be the rent money, I'd bet on Magnus, because he's Magnus. But I've heard the odds are as much as 8 to 1, and that's just absurd.

Finally, one last note. I now have a TD license, and the Club is looking into running some rated events. Perhaps just quick quads or small quick swisses, perhaps ladders, and maybe eventually larger events. We still have a couple of minor administrative issues to work out. We'll let you know when we get going.