The Chess Mind

More here. The big story in the 13th edition was Aleksander Stamnov, who entered the last round in contention for an IM norm. A win over Robert Akopian would have done the trick, but...it was not to be. (Ah, memories.) Still, it was an impressive performance, and a reminder that one event's punching bag can be the next event's 500 pound gorilla. (Amazing how fickle form can be!)

...and although he has clinched at least a tie for first going into tomorrow's last round, the chase pack is fortunate that there's still an outside chance of catching him. In today's big game against Carlsen and his Dragon, he seems to have let a winning position slip. A win would have put a tremendous exclamation point on the tournament, but his performance is already impressive enough.

Carlsen thus remains a point behind, and he's joined there, in equal second place, by Alekseev, who outplayed the sinking Onischuk on the black side of a Queen's Indian. As for the other game, it really wasn't one: Pelletier and Bacrot played the only obvious non-game of the tournament so far, drawing in 22 moves.

Standings after Round 9:

1. Dominguez 6.5
2-3. Alekseev, Carlsen 5.5
4. Bacrot 4.5
5. Onischuk 3.5
6. Pelletier 1.5

Last round pairings:

Alekseev - Pelletier
Carlsen - Onischuk
Bacrot - Dominguez

This could be very interesting: the leader has Black in the last round, while his closest competitors both have White against the tournament tailenders. Bacrot has been in very good form, too, since the early rounds, but after his hat trick has seemed to lose any further ambition. So my guess is that at least one of the second-place guys will win, but Dominguez will finish with an easy draw and secure clear first. Whatever happens, it has been a great tournament and a huge success for Dominguez.

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2788.5 (9.5 points behind Anand, 3 points behind Ivanchuk, .5 points ahead of Morozevich)

Dominguez Watch: Current live rating: 2724.8 (up 16.8 points for the event)

Tournament site here, games with my comments here.

An exaggeration? Maybe, but if it is, it's not much of one. But first, a little background.

The year is 1929, the place is Karlsbad, and our protagonists are José Raúl Capablanca, the third and then-recently deposed world chess champion;



and Karel Treybal (1885-1941), a strong Czech master whose resume includes a tournament win over Alexander Alekhine.

Treybal had an affection for Dutch Stonewall type positions (it was with such an opening that he defeated Alekhine), and that's what he used against Capablanca. Although it left him with less space and one of the worst light-squared bishops in recorded human history, the seriously locked pawn structure probably left Treybal relatively optimistic about holding the position. One would expect Capa to look for some way of blasting the position open: in the center, the kingside, the queenside - somewhere.

Instead, the great Cuban kept locking up the board. Early on, he eliminated the realistic possibility of breaking in the center, and then he locked up the whole kingside and almost everything on the queenside. (Almost.) Only the a-file was open, and although White was able to achieve absolute ownership over it, it was far from obvious that he could achieve anything with it. That Capablanca knew that he could break through in due course, despite Black's ability to shift his cramped pieces to the danger zone, shows his legendary ability to think schematically.

It's an impressive game, and one that's extremely picturesque. I first saw the game as a young child, and the strong impression it made on me then has stuck with me to the present day. I think you'll enjoy it too, so please join me tonight - Wednesday night - at 9 p.m. ET (that's Thursday at 3 a.m. CET) on the Playchess.com server. The show is free, and you can find full directions here.

Hope to see you then!

This was the score in an odds match played this past Monday. GM and anti-computer expert Roman Dzindzichashvili started every game with the white pieces and Black's f-pawn, but even so he was unable to defeat Rybka 3.0 in the match or even a single game. Rybka won game 2 and drew the rest, though "Dzindzi" had an overwhelming advantage in game 3. These computer are awfully tough!

There's another article about Rybka on the ChessBase site promoing its features, and it looks really good, too. Shritzarcs is going to have its work cut out for it if it hopes to compete with Rybka.

The Rybka-Dzindzi match games can be replayed here.

Five players had something to be happy about today; not bad, considering that there are only six participants. Pelletier and Onischuk can be happy: Onischuk had lost his last two games, while Pelletier had baked five bagels in a row. With the draw, both stanched the bleeding (at least for the moment). Bacrot and Carlsen could both be happy: Bacrot, for drawing with Carlsen; Carlsen, for drawing with Black without any special difficulty. Last but not least, Dominguez could be very happy: he won his third consecutive game, defeating one of his two main rivals - Alekseev - with Black. This extended his first-place lead to a full point over Carlsen. They'll play tomorrow (or today, depending on your location on the globe), and with Dominguez wielding the white pieces his chances of clinching at least a tie for first are excellent.

Standings after Round 8:

1. Dominguez 6
2. Carlsen 5
3. Alekseev 4.5
4. Bacrot 4
5. Onischuk 3.5
6. Pelletier 1

Round 9 Pairings:

Onischuk - Alekseev
Dominguez - Carlsen
Pelletier - Bacrot

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2789.4 (8.6 points behind Anand, 2.1 points behind Ivanchuk)

Dominguez Watch: Current live rating: 2723.9 (a gain of 15.9 points from this tournament so far)

Tournament site here; games with my comments here.

The youngest GM in both U.S. and Italian history, Fabiano Caruana (current FIDE rating: 2630), turns 16 today (Wednesday). We wish him continued success at the game, and to Italy we repeat our plea: send him back!

There isn't always a fifth Wednesday in a month, and so the Chess Cafe's pickings are ofttimes slim when they have that fifth week. This time is an exception, and the three articles there are worth a look.

First, there's a review of Karsten Müller's The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book II. You'll all be shocked to learn that the Chess Cafe review of a book published by the Chess Cafe, written by one of its columnists, is altogether positive. (What were the odds??) That said, every Müller product I've seen has been excellent, and that includes most of his books and his Chess Cafe columns, so have a look at the review. If the book's content seems interesting to you, then I'd trust the author on the question of quality. (One suggestion: unless you're dying to get the book right away, pre-order it from Amazon. You'll save $4 on the cost of the book, and a further, non-trivial amount on the shipping.)

Second, there's a short story by Soltis in the Skittles Room. Whether "Convergence: A Cautionary Tale" is utopian or dystopian I'll leave you to judge.

Finally, the From the Archives feature reprints Bobby Fischer's famous 1961 article, "A Bust to the King's Gambit". Though contemporary analysts disagree with his claim that the variation he advocates, 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 d6, is a refutation of the King's Gambit, it remains a viable line to this day.

The tournament took a remarkable twist in round 7, as Carlsen's coronation ceremony came to a screeching halt. Not a game was drawn, though at least one really should have been - but we'll come to that later.

All three games made it to the second time control, and the first one to finish was Dominguez-Pelletier. Pelletier has been having a terrible tournament and has turned into a sort of full-point bye for the players. No matter how well he plays at first, something bad happens at some point and a loss ensues. Against Dominguez, he was fine after 38 moves, but three inaccurate moves later his position was probably lost. That put Dominguez in clear first at that moment, but with Carlsen's game still underway and the youngster in good shape, that seemed likely to change.

However, before Carlsen-Alekseev concluded, Onischuk-Bacrot came to an end and saw the players continue where they left off before the break. In round 6, Alekseev lost the infamous R+N vs. R ending, while Bacrot had won his second straight game. In their game, it seemed evident that Onischuk didn't want to play, as his opening play showed an overt willingness to draw by repetition. Despite having Black, Bacrot would have none of it, and his fighting spirit was rewarded almost immediately. Onischuk's combination starting with move 23 was too optimistic, and Bacrot soon won a pawn. In desperation, Onischuk tried to create a fortress draw, but it was in vain. Onischuk lost his second straight game, while Bacrot has now won three in a row.

And now, Carlsen-Alekseev. Carlsen has done very well in the tournament, but not due to his opening prep. He has come out of the opening in each game with a playable position, and when he has won, it has been because of what happened later on. So it was here, too. He achieved little if anything with his extremely unusual anti-Berlin line, but enjoyed the more comfortable side of the late middlegame. The material was balanced, but the pawn structure was such that as long as queens were on the board, Alekseev needed to be careful, but if the queens were exchanged, then Carlsen would have to hold the balance.

For 30 moves, Carlsen tacked around trying to make progress and set traps, but nothing came of it. Both players were starting to get low on the clock, but Carlsen enjoyed an extra five minutes (15 minutes to 10). So having watched Carlsen spend an hour or more doing nothing as constructively as possible, I assumed he'd keep it up until Alekseev ran out of time. Instead, he spent about nine minutes on his 66th move and then traded queens! Very strange. The result was that the burden was immediately on him to prove the draw, and thanks in part to his deficit on the clock, he was unable to put up his best defense.

So with this, his first loss, Carlsen fell to second place, half a point behind Dominguez, and he's joined there by Alekseev. Add the red-hot Bacrot to the mix, and we're in for a great last three rounds!

Standings after Round 7:

1. Dominguez 5
2-3. Alekseev, Carlsen 4.5
4. Bacrot 3.5
5. Onischuk 3
6. Pelletier .5

Round 8 Pairings:

Alekseev - Dominguez
Bacrot - Carlsen
Pelletier - Onischuk

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2790.6 (7.4 points behind Anand, .9 behind Ivanchuk)

Tournament site here, games with my comments here.

The second Grand Prix event starts this Thursday, July 30, in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi. The list of participants is extremely impressive:

Vassily Ivanchuk 2781
Teimour Radjabov 2744
Peter Svidler 2738
Levon Aronian 2737
Alexander Grischuk 2728
Sergey Karjakin 2727
Gata Kamsky 2723
Boris Gelfand 2720
Vugar Gashimov 2717
Dmitry Jakovenko 2709
Wang Yue 2704
Ivan Cheparinov 2687
David Navara 2646
Mohamad Al Modiahki 2556

There are now too many strong tournaments!

US citizenship, that is - see the previous post for details about being a "real American". This example is a few years old, but unfortunately for IM Gerhard Schroll, Chess Today published his loss to GM Tony Kosten from the 2004 Austrian Team Championships. As far as I can tell, it was a full time control game, but he managed to lose an endgame that IM Jeremy Silman thinks a 1400-1599 player ought to be able to draw. Accordingly, while I invite everyone to click here and have a look, I'd like players 1599 (or the BCF or other federation equivalent) and under to try to find the cleanest, clearest and easiest draw missed by Schroll. (Just don't use your chess engines, and try to do it without a book.)

Three games, three wins! There have only been eight draws in the eighteen games so far, and no games without a fight. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any paternalistic anti-draw measures in place, which just goes to show that what counts is inviting the right players. Why can't all the events be like this one?

On to the games. Pelletier-Carlsen saw the players continue down the same path they've been on, with Carlsen playing well and Pelletier finding some pitfall along the way. Carlsen enjoyed a slight edge from the opening (a Queen's Indian), but hadn't achieved anything with it after his 26th move. At that point, in an approximately equal position, Pelletier forced Carlsen to create to create a powerful pin. White was immediately in trouble, and after a further error on the next move Pelletier was lost.

That ensured at least a tie for first at the end of the round, but when Alekseev lost his first game of the tournament to a suddenly resurgent Bacrot, Carlsen was guaranteed a clear lead. Bacrot's win was very nice; definitely the game of the day, in my book. While he didn't achieve any advantage with his pawn sac in the opening (a Queen's Indian), the combination he initiated on move 33 was really impressive - 35.Qd3!! was an especially subtle point.

Finally, Onischuk's loss to Dominguez was simply astonishing. Onischuk may have achieved a very small advantage on the white side of a Gruenfeld, but they quickly reached a very drawish ending. Dominguez handled it more adeptly, but was only able to reach a rook and knight vs. rook ending. This is a known draw, and much easier for the weak side to hold than rook and bishop vs. rook. Yet despite starting with an almost ideal defensive position (his king was in the center, while Dominguez's king was cut off on the h-file), Onischuk put up practically no resistance. His own king was cut off along the a-file with alarming rapidity, and even then he put up little resistance and then lost without even falling for a subtle trap. A sad loss for Onischuk, who had been playing very well up to this point and had been in the battle for first place.

So what do I mean by the title of this post? Over the years, I've read (and heard) not just once, but many times, that Americans don't play endgames well. Russians (and those from the former USSR) do, but not Americans. Well, since Onischuk comes from Ukraine and received his chess education there, I guess this makes him a "real" American now - he has forgotten (at least this once) how to hold routine draws.

Jokes aside, some different morals should be drawn. First, as I've been mentioning more and more lately, there are far fewer "dead" draws than we might like to believe. Exhaustion, a dimmed sense of danger, and making a series of small concessions can all lead to even very strong players losing "obviously" drawn positions. (And Onischuk certainly qualifies as a very strong player - he's #50 in the world.)

Second, while "real" Americans may not, on average, play endgames as well as they ought to, it's probably true that almost no one else does anymore, either. Assuming the old stereotype was true, there were two reasons why Americans played endgames worse than their Soviet counterparts. First, formal instruction in the USSR gave talented players serious help in that area, while such instruction was almost completely absent here. Second, adjournments were commonplace there and almost non-existent here. There's nothing like the pressure of a tournament situation and the luxury of a day or two to analyze to improve one's understanding of the endgame - especially in the pre-computer era. Nowadays, the USSR has broken up and that sort of widespread instruction is gone. Further, with sped-up time controls, adjournments are a thing of the past. So we're all "real Americans" now!

What should we do about this? Here are some suggestions: correspondence chess, training games against computers and peers from both theoretical and practical endgame positions, and "adjournment" exercises - find some interesting ending, and you and your playing partner take an hour, a day, a week or however long to prepare before playing it out against each other. With the widespread availability of excellent endgame literature and strong playing programs, any dedicated player has what he needs to improve considerably in this aspect of the game. (And to those who say working on the endgame is boring, I say that gaining extra half-points on a regular basis is loads of fun.)

Back to the tournament. Here are the standings after round 6:

1. Carlsen 4.5
2. Dominguez 4
3. Alekseev 3.5
4. Onischuk 3
5. Bacrot 2.5
6. Pelletier .5

Pairings for Round 7: (On Monday; Sunday is a rest day.)

Carlsen - Alekseev
Dominguez - Pelletier (looks like a new tie for first is coming up)
Onischuk - Bacrot

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2796.5 (1.5 behind Anand)

Tournament site here, games with my comments here.

Here's the problem from a couple of days ago, from the game Ljubojevic-Durao, Orense 1974; it's White to move and win:



The solution is here.

Today's round was very short, but not because of any "grandmaster" draws. First to finish was Carlsen-Dominguez, a 6.h3 Najdorf with a Nd5 sacrifice. Anything could have happened, but Carlsen allowed, and Dominguez found, a way to return some of the material to force a draw by repetition. Alekseev-Onischuk lasted longer but was less dramatic. Alekseev enjoyed a slight and enduring advantage in a Giuoco Piano, but Onischuk defended calmly. After most of the pieces were exchanged, this game too concluded peacefully with a draw by repetition. Finally, in the game I thought most likely to end with a quick handshake, Bacrot decided instead to end his own misery and add to Pelletier's. Pelletier made the amusing decision to play the Philidor against Bacrot (one of the modern pioneers of this opening), and while he didn't come out of the opening in bad shape, a few bad decisions starting around move 25 allowed Bacrot to notch his first victory of the tournament.

Standings after Round 5:

1-2. Alekseev, Carlsen 3.5
3-4. Dominguez, Onischuk 3
5. Bacrot 1.5
6. Pelletier .5

Round 6 Pairings:

Onischuk - Dominguez
Pelletier - Carlsen
Bacrot - Alekseev

Carlsen Watch: Current live rating: 2794.1 (3.9 behind Anand)

Tournament site here; annotated games here.

Magnus Carlsen continued the win-with-White, draw-with-Black pattern, easily holding in an old-fashioned Slav against Alexander Onischuk. This draw allowed Evgeny Alekseev to reclaim a share of the lead, thanks to a surprisingly easy win over Yannick Pelletier on the black side of a Ragozin Defense. Black obtained a queenside majority from the opening, and White, tied down in the attempt to blockade it, allowed things to get out of hand elsewhere and lost without much of a fight. In a way, that's not too surprising, as Pelletier and Etienne Bacrot, his companion in last place, have been getting kicked around pretty badly in this tournament. Today Bacrot lost on the black side of a Ruy Lopez Anti-Marshall, when after fighting back to equality, a series of errors before and after the time control sent him to defeat against Lenier Dominguez.

Standings after Round 4:

1-2. Carlsen, Alekseev 3
3-4. Dominguez, Onischuk 2.5
5-6. Bacrot, Pelletier .5

The only difference so far between the three pointers and the two and a halfs is what they've done against the tail-enders. The leaders managed to beat both of them, while the chasers only managed a single win each. The tournament won't really get going, for me, until the leaders start abusing each other, too. (To be fair, they're trying!)

Pairings for Round 5:

Alekseev - Onischuk
Carlsen - Dominguez
Bacrot - Pelletier (if they draw quickly, they should be forgiven)

Tournament site here; round 4 games (with my comments) here.

Tom Chivers has a post on the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club blog that usefully restates advice given by such authors as Mark Dvoretsky and Jonathan Rowson (as well as, on a humbler level, yours truly): the best training is game simulation (e.g. training games and analysis exercises). It's not online blitz, or even, says Chivers, solving problems online or from a book. Rather, there's value in using genuine physical equipment in one's training, if only because that's how the real games are played. More info at the link above, along with some positions he recommends for training purposes.

HT: Brian Karen

For your clicking convenience (mine too), I've added links to the Live Top List (this gives to-the-day updates on all players rated over 2700) and the Indiana State Chess Association website (self-explanatory).

For a quick list, with links, of events (other than Biel) that are going on now, click here. And for a pretty full survey of what there is to look forward to starting July 28, here's a nice preview of the Mainz Chess Festival. Its main event starts August 1, and includes Viswanathan Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Alexander Morozevich (#s 1, 2 and 4 in the real world ratings) and Judit Polgar.

Last week's ChessVideos show (still available this week, and probably for as long as that enterprise remains in business) was part one of a two-part series exploring the interesting anti-French line 1.e4 e6 2.c4 d5 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Qb3. I tried in that presentation to make the line look as attractive as possible, and that wasn't hard to do. In practice, especially in quick games, Black often falls apart quickly, and not necessarily due to any overt blunder. Sometimes Black makes the most natural moves, only to discover it's time to throw in the towel by move 20.

Still, that's far from the end of the story. If it was, then everyone would play this against the French, all of you would have already known about it, and the French would be considered a dubious opening. So as a matter of principle, there simply must be a solution - and there is. Or rather, are: Black has many ways to achieve a good game, but they require some mental and psychological agility. It's not a bad exercise to try to come up with some replies on your own before watching this week's show or switching on your computer. Once you're ready to compare answers, you can have a look at my presentation for this week (free, available on-demand, and requiring no special software). And if you've found some promising ideas I haven't mentioned there, for either side, please comment it here and/or there.

White to move and win: can you solve it? (The answer will be given in a day or two; please don't post solutions to the comments.)

With world champion Viswanathan Anand set to defend his title against Vladimir Kramnik, and Gata Kamsky to do battle with Veselin Topalov for the right to play for the title next year, it's conceivable that 2009 will see an Anand-Kamsky championship match. If so, it will be their third tilt, with their two previous contests taking place in candidates matches in the mid-1990s.

In the first, an eight-game match in Sanghi Nagar, Anand led by two games with three to go. All would seem to be well, but he lost games 6 and 7, and after a draw in round 8, continued his collapse in the rapid tiebreak, losing both games (the last in just 17 moves). That was the semi-final match in the FIDE cycle. Kamsky ultimately made it to the world championship match against Karpov in 1996, where he was defeated; he retired shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, they met again in a 12-game match, the final of the PCA Candidates, and here too they were tied after eight games. While Anand had generally enjoyed the better positions in their games, Kamsky had shown himself the better pressure player - up to this point. But now, in game 9, Anand rose to the occasion and played a beautiful game, winning convincingly and destroying Kamsky's main black opening for the match. Game 10 was drawn, and Kamsky's backup opening was beaten soundly in the finale. This gave Anand the right to face Kasparov the next year, and like Kamsky against Karpov, Anand too was ultimately unsuccessful in his first shot at the title.

Still, the match was a big success for Anand, as he overcame a difficult opponent and proved that he could handle a big pressure situation - and with style. In our show this week, we'll look at his majestic win in game 9 of the 1995 match. The game demonstrated practically everything: a nice, new opening idea, a sustained attack that involved play on all three parts of the board in beautiful harmony, nice variations, the interplay of strategic goals and tactical play, a few ingenious maneuvers - this game had it all, aside from an endgame.

Now that I've whetted your appetite, all you need to do is tune in to the playchess.com server tonight - Wednesday night - at 9 p.m. ET. Log on to the server, go into the broadcast room, and double-click on my nickname there (Initiative) and you're good to go. (Further directions here, especially for those who would like to watch archived shows.) Hope to see you there!

This is the way tournaments are supposed to be, with lots of wins and a fight in every game. Only one game of the three was drawn, and that happened only when it was obvious that a draw would result. That game was Dominguez-Alekseev, a Berlin Defense where Black successfully minimized White's initiative while solving the traditional problem of Black's uncoordinated rooks.

Onischuk-Pelletier should have been a draw as well, but Pelletier's decision on move 26 to take on a potentially weak, isolated d-pawn, and the paradoxical, panicky-looking decision on move 29 to try to liquidate it, resulted in the loss of the pawn and then the game.

Finally, Carlsen-Bacrot was lively but a little strange. Bacrot outplayed Carlsen, despite the Black pieces and the quiet opening (an Exchange Queen's Gambit Declined), but Carlsen complicated the game and Bacrot lost the thread quickly, going from clearly better on move 25 to clearly worse two moves later and dead lost just two moves after that. (Time pressure?) The bottom line is that Carlsen is in clear first, even though he isn't getting anything from his openings, and I'm guessing (but don't know for sure) that if the tournament were to stop right now and get rated, he'd have passed Anand for the #1 position in the world rankings. There are seven rounds to go, however, and here are the pairings for round 4:

Round 4 Pairings: (On Thursday; Wednesday is a rest day)

Pelletier - Alekseev
Onischuk - Carlsen
Dominguez - Bacrot

Standings after Round 3:

1. Carlsen 2.5
2-3. Alekseev, Onischuk 2
4. Dominguez 1.5
5-6. Bacrot, Pelletier

Tournament site here; games, with my comments, here.

Here are some articles on the Chess Cafe and the ChessBase sites that might be of interest:

"The Cream of the Crop" (permalink here). This reviews a new product, Best of the Best - 1000 by the Chess Informant people, a compilation of the 10 best games in the first 100 issues of that publication. The value of this link isn't the review itself, but in the links in and after said review.

This month's "Dutch Treat" (permalink here) revisits Anand's recent article in Time Magazine, in which he claims that chess was invented in India many centuries B.C. Relatively few people deny the first part of that claim, but the latter is another story. As Hans Ree notes, it's ironic that both Kasparov and Anand both dispute the traditional historical view that chess originated in India around 600 A.D.; Anand, because he seems to think it goes back at least another 1000 years or so, and Kasparov too, as his view is that historical writings only date from 1100 A.D. (No word on what Kramnik thinks.)

A few days ago the ChessBase server had some serious troubles, but now things are up and running. You might have noticed the entry about this on the front page but not clicked on the story (what's to click? It was down, now it's up again). If so, you should! After a few brief comments on the history of computer bugs, there's a little trip to the way back machine, a nostalgic look at the history of the ChessBase web site.

The ChessBase site is also offering coverage of the Biel event. While their analytical commentary of the rounds isn't as detailed as what you'll find here, there is one advantage there: videos. Europe Echecs is making videos, which can be accessed on ChessBase. Try here, for example - scroll almost all the way down the page.

Today's round at Biel was less dramatic than yesterday's opener, but it wasn't for want of effort. Bacrot had a slight pull against Onischuk in a Closed Ruy, but when they reached a position where neither player could make progress without serious risk, they agreed to a draw. Pelletier obtained a genuine advantage against Dominguez, but the path he chose was refuted (as a winning try) by the latter's outstanding 22nd move. Ten essentially forced moves later, the players reached an opposite colored bishop ending. Pelletier had two extra pawns, but despite losing such an ending yesterday with a one-pawn deficit, he was unable to win today with an even bigger material advantage. (This wasn't his fault; today's ending was a forced draw with accurate play.) Finally, Alekseev-Carlsen, the battle of the leaders, was also drawn. Carlsen tried really hard to create winning chances with his bishop pair, but Alekseev kept cool. Appropriately, the draw was offered when Carlsen forced...opposite-colored bishops.

Games here.

Standings after Round 2:

1-2. Alekseev, Carlsen 1.5
3-4. Dominguez, Onischuk 1
5-6. Bacrot, Pelletier .5

Round 3 Pairings:

Dominguez - Alekseev
Carlsen - Bacrot
Onischuk - Pelletier

Here's the problem, first mentioned on my blog a few days ago. I discovered it on Tim Krabbé's Open Chess Diary (entry 382), but I don't want to send you there for the solution just yet, as you might find it difficult to see the problem (if you're coming to this anew, or still hope to solve it) without seeing the solution in the P.S. So here's the position; it's White to move (and not necessarily win, but to at least find some way of coping with his many hanging pieces).



When you're ready for the solution, you can traipse over to Krabbé's site, and/or click here.

And they'rrrrre off! It was an excellent first round in the grandmaster group of the Biel Chess Festival, with two wins in the three interesting games.

Round 1 Results:

Lenier Dominguez Perez - Alexander Onischuk 1/2-1/2
Magnus Carlsen - Yannick Pelletier 1-0
Evgeny Alekseev - Etienne Bacrot 1-0

The Dominguez-Onischuk game was a lively battle in the American's pet line of the Ruy Lopez. Both sides played well, and a tactical battle concluded in perpetual check.

The next game to finish was Alekseev-Bacrot, a Chebanenko Slav with 5.c5. White wound up with an extra pawn on the queenside, Black with an extra on the kingside, but only White managed to make something of his majority. It was a convincing win by the young Russian.

Finally, Carlsen-Pelletier looked on the face of it the most likely win of the tournament, featuring the (by far) highest-rated player taking White against the (by far) lowest-rated player. Yet Pelletier was well-prepared and managed to reach a drawish ending. At one point in my life, in the not-too-distant past, I'd have considered the position after Black's 34th move



so hopelessly drawn that if I were to lose it against a peer, it would be time to joke grimly about slashing my wrists. That a strong grandmaster could lose it would have seemed inconceivable. (Excepting, in both cases, losing by means of a simple blunder.)

Over time, though, I've grown a little smarter and more aware of the possibilities of good (and bad!) technique. While I'm pretty sure that the position ought to have been drawn, it's also true that White could still pose genuine problems, and he did. And then Pelletier panicked, or missed something, or overestimated the drawing tendencies of opposite colored bishops. In this position



Pelletier played 42...Ng4?, after which he's losing by force, I believe. I spent a lot of time today analyzing this game (me, not Deep Frybkarcs), and I think you'll enjoy the results - the early middlegame was extremely complex and entertaining, while the endgame was (you guessed it) instructive. Have a look here (the other games are annotated too, but in less detail).

Round 2 Pairings:

Alekseev - Carlsen
Pelletier - Dominguez
Bacrot - Onischuk

Kramnik has been in the habit of devaluing the Mexico City tournament as a world championship event, more or less declaring that the only way to conduct a "real" world championship is in a match. At the very least, this is an ungracious thing for Kramnik to say, but at least he was saying it before the tournament actually started. At worst, it's rather condescending to Anand. Kramnik seems to be saying something like this: "Anand isn't really the champ yet, even though (friendly pet on the head), Anand did a nice job in Mexico and since everyone is calling it a world championship, well, shucks, I guess I'll call it one too. (Aren't I nice?)"

You can (re-)read Kramnik's comments here, and you can read Anand's slightly testy but mostly restrained comments in this interview (HT: Brian Karen). The interviewer tries really, really hard to get Anand to lash out (something I've noticed more than once when the Indian press interviews him), but he mostly declines the bait - to his credit.

Is there something poisonous about becoming the world chess champion? Topalov turned into a trash-talking jerk with respect to Kramnik after the former won the (FIDE) title in 2005, and now Kramnik seems to be following suit (though of course he's not the champion anymore). Since no one not in his cell phone's speed dial is likely to care about Kramnik's rationalizations (in fact, I've gone from rooting for Kramnik to rooting for Anand this fall), one might wonder why he's doing it.

Here's a hypothesis. As Kramnik rightly noted, Anand did terribly against Kasparov. Why? In part because Kasparov was the better player, no doubt, but he wasn't that much better. One possibility is that he was simply intimidated by Kasparov - not only (or not so much) by his chess but by his manner, by his intensity. Likewise, he has struggled with Kamsky over the years, even when he seemed the significantly stronger player over the board. Kamsky, or rather his father, tended to generate an edgy atmosphere wherever Gata played. Anand seems to play at his best when everything is calm and normal, and when he's confident he's able to build on his successes. When things are a bit tense off the board and he's not playing his best, he plays well below his best. My suspicion then is that this is more strategy on Kramnik's part than anything else. He wants to generate as much agitation and aggravation in Anand as he can, in the hopes of throwing the champion off his game.

Will it work? I hope it backfires, but based on Anand's track record it's probably a good strategy. Is it admirable? I say no, at least not if he's doing it deliberately.

Since voting has leveled off and the page takes so long to load up, it's time to eliminate the polls, at least for now. Here are the results.

Anand or Kramnik:

Who will win the world chess championship this fall?

300 votes came in, and the final tallies were:

Anand: 62% (186 votes)
Kramnik: 38% (114 votes)


Truth in ratings?

I (meaning you, the reader), based on my current FIDE or national rating (no online ratings, please), am:

Based on 200 votes, the results were

Underrated: 38.61% (77 votes)
Rated about where I should be: 47.52% (95 votes)
Overrated: 13.86% (28 votes)


I'll offer some thoughts about these results later (readers are welcome to do so now), but first things first: time to get the polls off the website before all my frustrated readers leave!

I've updated the latest ChessVideos post (to provide a link to a working version of my newest show) and the Rybka post. Since some readers won't notice the updates because they subscribe, I thought it would be useful to draw their attention to the revisions.

It's a line I've covered on the blog and its predecessor, but that was long, long ago. The variation, invented, as far as I know, by German FM Stefan Bücker, begins 1.e4 e6 2.c4 d5 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Qb3. That was all I knew about it when I learned of its existence, and over the years I worked out some interesting ideas that proved quite dangerous, at least in games with short time controls. Objectively, it's dubious in the extreme, but practically speaking, it can be a rather nasty weapon. To see how it works and what makes it as effective as it is, tune in here and see for yourself. (Next week will be part 2.) The show is free, available on-demand, and requires no special software; the main requirement is an alert mind. Enjoy the show and give the line a try!

Anand-Kramnik poll:

Anand: 61%
Kramnik: 39%

Truth in ratings poll:

Underrated: 39%
Rated about where I should be: 48%
Overrated: 13%

Frankly, this is a good thing, and it makes sense for both sides. Rybka has been dominating computer chess the past couple of years, while ChessBase has the biggest name and distribution network. I'd pass along a link, but something seems wrong with the ChessBase site for the moment. Anyway, Rybka 3.0 (a significantly new version) is scheduled to get mailed out August 1, and they're taking pre-orders for it now.

Update:

(1) The link is good now - here it is.

(2) The ad is worth checking out, as the new Rybka has some interesting bells and whistles that make it interesting for reasons other than its strength as a playing/analysis partner.

For those who have enjoyed this blog and my online shows on ChessVideos.tv and on ChessBase, you're invited to consider having your humble blogger as your coach. I have room for several new students in my schedule - weekdays during from late morning to early evening (ET) are preferred, but other days and times can be considered. Interested parties should contact me via this link; hurry before the slots are taken!

(Email lessons, game analysis and other arrangements are also possible. If you're interested, write and we'll try to work something out.)

In this post, celebrating Hungarian-American GM Pal Benko's 80th birthday, I presented two of his problems and one of his studies. Here once again are the positions and their associated tasks:


White to move and mate in three.


White to move and mate in three.


White to move and win.

Before offering the solution, let me express my slight regret at presenting this puzzle, as it's a modification of a 1981 study by D. Gurgenidze and L. Mitrofanov, both colossal figures in the world of chess studies. (I don't mean that Benko's modification is valueless; not at all. But it would be better to present the original first.)

All three solutions, together with the Gurgenidze & Mitrofanov original, can be replayed here.

Here are two positions I've presented in recent posts (here and here):


Position 1: White to move


Position 2: Black to move

Notice anything suspicious here? Since it's White to move in the first position and Black to move in the second, the two positions are essentially one. A player on the black side of position one and his counterpart on the white side of position two differ only by the paint on their pieces and left-right inversion. Objectively, there is no difference.

Subjectively, however, there is a difference. Most players think White is better in both positions, which is obviously impossible as an objective evaluation of the position. The reason for this is, I think, clear: we start with a default assumption that White is equal or better, and so it's very easy to go from there, see White's bishop pair and Black's isolani, and confirm our pre-White bias. (Even a solid master like Jon Jacobs, who did end up concluding that Black was better in position 1, admitted starting with the opposite evaluation as his default. I doubt, though of course I don't know, that he had any similar doubts about White's standing in position 2 - assuming he didn't immediately recognize it as position 1.) I even suspect that White would win a 10-board match not only from position 2 but position 1 as well - not at the GM level, but probably for the majority of club players. (And maybe even a bit higher?)

This perceptual puzzle, as I mentioned in the position 1 post, came from an issue of Chess Today, wherein GM Baburin revealed that his former trainer, GM (then IM) Oleg Chernikov, had sprung it on him and asked for his reaction. Baburin fell for it hook, line, and sinker (alas, he didn't say how strong he was at the time), but neither he nor Chernikov supply the cure for our color-bias. Is there a cure?

I doubt it, but there are some things we can do to mitigate the "disease". Here are some offhand suggestions: (1) Read Adorjan's "Black is OK" materials daily, until you believe it. (Mostly kidding.) (2) Replay games from Black's perspective on a regular basis. (3) Replay games with Black as White. (Thus a game that starts 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 will be replayed like this: 1...e5 2.e4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Bb4.) You'll probably find it jarring, but for that reason it might prove the most effective technique. (4) Experiment with reversed openings. (5) Not care at all - just play chess!

It's a neat story and a beautiful move indeed - have a look here and see for yourself (it's item 382). It took me a few minutes to find it even knowing that something had to be there; hopefully you'll do better. Whether you find it almost immediately or after a long think doesn't really matter. Either way, you'll get a jolt and a sense of satisfaction once you've worked it out.

The event was mostly hard fought, but not today. All five games were drawn, three of them quickly (replayable here), and so yesterday's relative standings carry over to today. Here are the final standings, with TPRs in parentheses:

1-4. Rublevsky (2770), Jakovenko (2769), Gashimov (2768), Shirov (2765) 5.5
5. Wang Hao (2734) 5
6. Bologan (2649) 4
7-10. Sutovsky (2615), Inarkiev (2613), Onischuk (2613), Volokitin (2613) 3.5

Next big event: Biel (starting the 20th). (Incidentally, Onischuk is playing there, too. Somehow he has managed to get invited to Foros, Poikovsky and Biel - other non-2700s should hire his manager or find out how he does it. Actually, his repeat appearance at Biel isn't so surprising, as he tied for first with Carlsen last year, only losing the tiebreak in an Armaggeddon game.)

As of this writing, here are the poll figures:

Truth in Ratings?

Underrated: 38%
Rated about where I should be: 45%
Overrated: 15%

Anand or Kramnik?

Anand: 63%
Kramnik: 37%

And now the plea. I know it's fun to keep running tabs, but multiple voting wrecks the poll, especially if a lot of people are doing it. Please have a little patience (we are chess players, after all; it's in the job description). The alternatives are for me to pay to block multiple votes from an IP address, which isn't financially worth it, or to put the results up all the time, which is also known to skew voting. There's no ideal solution that I'm aware of, so I ask all of you to be kind to each other and to me and to wait a little while for me to report on the data.

I'll leave the Anand-Kramnik poll for a little while longer, though the trend is pretty decidedly in Anand's favor, but meanwhile a new and entertaining question has taken top billing on the right sidebar. Do you think your slow chess rating (just FIDE and/or national ratings, please, not Playchess, ICC or some other server) accurately represents your real, true, honest to goodness strength? (Not your talent or "understanding" of the game, but your strength.) I know what answer I expect to see come out on top, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

As mentioned here, GM Alexander Baburin tied for first in the Irish championship with Israeli GM Alon Greenfeld, but since he's an Irish citizen, he won the title. One of his wins can be replayed here (with an abbreviated version of his notes [which I've supplemented with some additional game references] from Chess Today, issue 2804), but I'd like to draw your attention here to the opening of that game:

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Be7 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Bg5 O-O 6.e3 h6 7.Bxf6 Bxf6 8.Rc1 c6 9.Bd3 Nd7 10.O-O dxc4 11.Bxc4 e5 12.h3 exd4 13.exd4 Nb6 14.Bb3



This was the starting point for a variation that was hot in the mid-1980s. Kasparov himself won one of the most important games of his career with it, defeating Karpov in the crucial 22nd game of their 1986 match. I used it myself back then, but thought it was put out of business by the game Olafsson-van der Sterren. As far as I can tell, nothing has really changed except that people have had time to forget how to face it, but sometimes that's reason enough. (Connoisseurs of this variation are welcome to correct me.)

Enjoy the game, and who knows - maybe a careful look at the diagram will reveal something.

After leaping into clear first place with three consecutive wins, Shirov rejoined the pack after a loss to Gashimov. More often than not, the Marshall Gambit gives Black sufficient activity for a draw, but this time around Gashimov was able to neutralize the activity and win the pawn-up ending. With the win, Gashimov caught up to Shirov, and Rublevsky (who drew with Volokitin) and Jakovenko (who split the point with Inarkiev) are tied with them as well in first place. Wang Hao drew with Bologan, and lurks half a point back; only the Sutovsky-Onischuk draw had no relevance to the race for first. One round to go!

Standings after Round 8:

1-4. Rublevsky, Jakovenko, Gashimov, Shirov 5
5. Wang Hao 4.5
6. Bologan 3.5
7-10. Sutovsky, Inarkiev, Onischuk, Volokitin 3

(It's a pity Wang Hao isn't playing Bologan in the last round - it would then be possible to have a five way tie for first and a five way tie for last.)

Games here.

Speaking of Shirov, Karsten Müller's Endgame Corner column on the Chess Cafe website has featured Shirov the past two months. Last month, it was Shirov's excellence in rook endings that was highlighted; this time around, it's Shirov's achievements in endgames with queens (or rather, one particular endgame, against Gelfand from Pivdenny 2007) that come under the spotlight.

Recommended, as always with Müller's columns.

Another good round, even if only two games ended with a winner. One game, Inarkiev-Sutovsky (won by White), didn't affect the leaderboard, but the other, Volokitin-Shirov, did. With his win, Shirov took a half-point lead over Jakovenko and Rublevsky with two rounds to go, and seems poised to make a run at the upper 2700s. His rating coming into the event was 2741, and his TPR is now 2837. Very impressive, even if he was the favorite coming in to the event.

Standings after Round 7:

1. Shirov 5
2-3. Jakovenko, Rublevsky 4.5
4-5 Wang Hao, Gashimov 4
6. Bologan 3
7-10. Sutovsky, Onischuk, Inarkiev, Volokitin 2.5

The games can be replayed here.

With the Hungarian/American grandmaster Pal Benko turning 80 earlier this week, it seems like a good time to celebrate his chess with a look at his best-known contribution to the chess world, the eponymous Benko Gambit. Benko, a two-time world championship Candidate, did not invent the gambit (known as the "Volga Gambit" in some parts of the world), but he was the first strong grandmaster to use it on a regular basis. It's because of his efforts, starting in the late 60s, that the opening became a popular weapon among professionals and amateurs alike.

The Gambit is a remarkable weapon. Black gives up a pawn on move 3, and in return gains neither time, attacking chances against White's king or even any initiative to speak of. Stranger still, Black is often delighted to exchange piece after piece - just the opposite of what we'd expect from a gambit. What he does enjoy is very long term pressure against White's queenside along the a- and b-files (at least in classic lines where White accepts the gambit), the kind of pressure that can pay off 15, 20, even 30 or more moves down the road. It's an excellent fighting weapon, especially against those players who use 1.d4 in hopes of reaching a safe, quiet position where only two results (a White win or a draw) are possible, as there is no way for White to dry the game up, even if he's well-prepared.

Now that I've whetted your appetite, I hope you'll join me tonight - Wednesday night - at 9 p.m. ET, as we see how the master and founding father of this system handled it in his own games. We'll see some of his ideas about the opening per se, but more importantly, we'll see how the Benko Gambit plays itself out in the middlegame and ending. This will give us a template, enabling us to see some of the thematic ideas we can use to win our own games. Pure practicality!

(If your only reservation is cost, then fear not: it's free. Not sure how to watch? Again, it's no problem: click here to read full directions. See you then!)

American GM Pal Benko (we've borrowed him from Hungary) turned 80 years old two days ago (thus Wikipedia) or yesterday (so says Chess Today). While he hasn't been a terror on the world scene for a long time, he's still a player to be celebrated, especially in the United States. He was a two-time candidate, a former Hungarian champion, a star for the U.S. in several Olympics, a player without whom Bobby Fischer couldn't have played in the 1970-1972 world championship cycle, a main popularizer (though not the inventor) of the Benko Gambit, a fine endgame study composer and problemist, and the author of a very long-running endgame column in Chess Life.

He also seems a pretty decent guy. When I was living in New York in the 1990s, he was at the Marshall Chess Club from time to time, and on more than one occasion I had the chance to analyze with him. There was no need for me to show credentials or to receive an introduction from someone else (at least not that I recall!); the analysis started spontaneously and, as far as its conduct was concerned, it took place between peers. (I don't mean that I'm his equal, obviously. My point is that there was no pulling rank, either explicitly or implicitly.) All that mattered was what happened on the board.

So we celebrate his birthday, and to do so, here are a couple of his letter problems and a study (from his excellent autobiographical work My Life, Games and Compositions). We start with the letter problems, one for each of his initials.






In both cases, it's White to move and mate in three.

Next, one of his best-known studies:


Special Prize, Magyar Sakkelet 1990. White to move and win.

The solutions will be given in a day or two. (So please don't comment the answers.)

In a bit over a day, 162 votes have come in (hopefully from about 160 different people), and the results are surprisingly clear: Anand has won, and by a convincing 64%-36% margin (105 to 57 in votes). Yikes!

I'll put up a second poll a little later, and after that we'll reevaluate, as the current applet makes the page load more slowly than it ought.

The players came back from the rest day the right way: full of fight. No less (but no more) than four of the five games saw a winner, and even the draw was interesting.

Wang Hao essayed the McCutcheon French against Emil Sutovsky, and it worked perfectly. They reached an endgame with equal material and opposite colored bishops (but with other pieces, too), but with all of White's pawns isolated and weak, Black was able to win.

Alexei Shirov's win over Alexander Onischuk was a salutary reminder that the Marshall Gambit does not guarantee Black a draw; occasionally, an extra pawn really means something.

Perhaps the most exciting game of the day was Vugar Gashimov's win over Andrei Volokitin, a 6.Bg5 Najdorf which saw Gashimov start by sacrificing and conclude by collecting. An impressively savage performance by the Azeri GM.

The one draw was a Rossolimo Sicilian between Sergei Rublevsky and Ernesto Inarkiev. The play was "correct" throughout, and Black did a nice job of gradually neutralizing White's possibilities.

Finally, Dmitrij Jakovenko's played well against Viorel Bologan (26.f4 was ingenious), but Bologan's 29...Re8 (instead of 29...Rd7) and especially 31...h5 (instead of 31...Bc8 followed by 32...Bf5) cost him the game.

Standings after Round 6:

1-3. Rublevsky, Jakovenko, Shirov 4
4-5. Gashimov, Wang Hao 3.5
6-8. Sutovsky, Bologan, Volokitin 2.5
9. Onischuk 2
10. Inarkiev 1.5

Games can be replayed here.

Two postscripts: (1) Do check out the "best-of" post from the first five rounds of the Poikovsky event - the games are very entertaining. (2) Please vote in the poll!

Yesterday was the rest day at the Karpov Poikovsky tournament, so I spent some time then (and today) selecting and annotating a few of the best games from the first five rounds. There were quite a few excellent games, and I've picked out seven I think you'll enjoy. Have a look.

The experiment begins! We'll start with something simple: pick the winner of this fall's Anand-Kramnik world championship match - the poll is on the upper right sidebar of the blog. (Obvious now, but maybe less obvious once this post starts scrolling down the page.)

Confused? You won't be, after the next episode of...oh, never mind; that show hasn't been on the air for 27 years. So let's clear up the mystery now. The championship of Ireland allowed foreigners to compete (to create norm possibilities, I presume), so although Alon Greenfeld of Israel (but born in the U.S.A., which I didn't know until a moment ago) tied with Irishman (by way of Russia) Alex Baburin for first in the tournament with 8/9, he was not in the running for the championship title. The runner-up in that category was Stephen Jessel, who finished fourth overall with 6/9. (English GM Mark Hebden came in third with 6.5 points.)

While Baburin had already clinched the national championship with a round to spare, the last round pairings were intriguing. Greenfeld's task was to play with the white pieces against a 2188 player (John Redmond), while Baburin had Black against GM Stuart Conquest. Greenfeld fulfilled his task with too much ease, winning in just nine moves, but Baburin won too, despite the triple disadvantage of a strong opponent, the black pieces, and his persistent use of the Alekhine Defense. (Ok, Carlsen uses it too from time to time, so maybe it's not that bad.) You can replay both games here.

So congrats to GM Baburin, Chess Today's El Jefe! Interested readers can find much more information on the tournament here and here.

Here's an interesting position from Chess Today issue 2804. It's White to move; how would you evaluate the position? Feel free to comment, as long as you haven't seen that issue, looked up the position or run it by your engine, etc.; in short, as long as the evaluation is based on you alone, left to your own mental resources.

One of the fundamental skills a chess player needs to have is the ability to visualize the board. By this I don't mean that one has something like a picture of a board in their mind's eye - that may or may not be the case.* Rather, it's the ability to mentally maintain and manipulate the position in a way that allows the efficient and accurate calculation and evaluation of variations. How does one cultivate this skill? As kids say, or at least used to: Duh! The answer is to practice, obviously.

But how best to practice? If one's chess regimen looks like this, it's not likely that much progress will be made with respect to visualizing:

1. Occasional tournament chess
2. Lots of blitz chess
3. Opening study
4. Some practice with basic tactics
5. Replaying games on the computer

The problem is that except for item 1, the remaining items are at best neutral and more likely harmful for visualization. In blitz, there's very little opportunity to look ahead in a more than trivial fashion, and the more one plays the less likely one is to calculate in such games. Opening study, as generally conducted, involves replaying some variations and trying to memorize them - no looking ahead there. Basic tactics are essentially to work on, both for those who are learning them and those who want to maintain sharpness, but again, they're not about calculating but working on pattern recognition. And finally, replaying games on a computer is often done as a passive exercise (to write oxymoronically). One need calculate ahead or even visualize the annotator's lines (or at least to play through them and then try to reconstruct the position at the start of the sideline) - the arrow keys will do all the work for us.

So not only do we not cultivate our ability to visualize, we create habits that make us less disposed to achieve excellence in that area. And yet we find ourselves frustrated by our inability to visualize during our tournament games! Ok, what should we do about this? There are a few common-sense steps we can take, and I'll briefly mention them. One is to work on tactical puzzles that aren't trivial - buy tactics books with non-trivial puzzles ("non-triivality" is a relative term, of course) or solve endgame studies. Another technique was implicitly suggested above: try to follow the variations of an annotator in your mind, without moving pieces on a board or a screen.

Those are pretty normal ideas; here's one that's a little less traditional: play blindfold chess. Normally that's not so easy to do - first, you have to find a willing partner; second, if you're doing this at the local club, you have to deal with the embarrassment of either seeming arrogant (especially if you win) or like a fool (if you lose). Happily, there's now a simple way to do it online with the latest batch of ChessBase engines (Fritz 11 and (Deep) Hiarcs 12, maybe some other one too) - you can read the how-to details here. You can play blindfold both against the engine itself (whether on full blast or on a lobotomized setting) or online against other players. (I'd recommend starting with unrated games against lower-rated players, but be as ambitious as you like.) Not only will this help your visualization skills, but unless you're an old pro at blindfold play, it'll work wonders for your ability to concentrate as well. Give it a try, and after you've been at it for a while, let me know if it helped.


* I've read somewhere that the stronger a player is, the less likely he or she is to have something like a pictorial representation of a chessboard when thinking about a position. (This would make for an interesting survey, I think...help?)

And it's not a bad way for those of us who are free to spend some of our time, either.

Link.

You can read parts of it here (on the ChessBase site) or the whole thing here (on Kramnik's own website). The length is moderate, but it's long enough to raise some hackles. (At least it's not dull!)

It was another good round with two spectacular games, two moderately interesting games and only one near-dud (and even that wasn't really that bad). Let's address them in reverse order, starting with the draws. First, there was Bologan-Sutovsky, which, though drawn quickly (after 23 moves), it left theory fairly early and required that the players solve some problems before calling it a day. Onischuk-Volokitin was more pedestrian in a way, in that all the pawn tension was resolved early on. Still, White had hopes for an advantage coming out of the opening thanks to his superior development, but Black used an important technique to achieve the draw. Volokitin sacrificed a pawn to reach a pure rook ending where his rook's activity sufficed for the draw: White could activate his king or keep his extra pawn, but not both. Finally, the third draw, Jakovenko-Gashimov, was a Hedgehog where both sides' pawn structures were transformed in all sorts of funky ways. While the other two draws were reasonable, this game still had some life in it when the players agreed to split the point.

Turning now to the wins, both games involved genuine sacrifices for attacking prospects. In one game (Inarkiev-Shirov) the sacs worked out, and in the other (Wang Hao-Rublevsky) they didn't. Starting with the latter, the young Chinese player sacrificed a pawn, then a piece, and later still the exchange! Throughout it all he maintained equal chances, but his 27th move was both strange and a blunder. After the obvious 27.e8Q+, he would regain his material, trade queens, and reach an easily drawn opposite-colored bishop ending. I guess 27.Qf8+ was a winning try, but as the calculation to a safe, exchange-up position for Black wasn't too difficult (unless Wang was in screaming time pressure), I'm surprised that he played it. It's a pity, given his earlier bold and creative play, but accidents happen.

The other attacking game saw Shirov in the role of sac-happy attacker. Over the course of the game Shirov offered up a piece, the exchange, and then another exchange - the last time to deliver mate. I don't know if it'll make it into Fire on Board III, but it's a game that merits replaying - and you can do that here.

Standings after Round 5:

1. Rublevsky 3.5
2-3. Jakovenko, Shirov 3
4-8. Sutovsky, Bologan, Gashimov, Wang Hao, Volokitin 2.5
9. Onischuk 2
10. Inarkiev 1

An impressive (Category 8) norm event, the New Jersey Futurity II, finished on Friday. The tournament was won by the young Israeli grandmaster Sergey Erenburg (currently a student at UMBC) with the impressive score of 7.5/9 and a 2711 TPR. Erenburg drew with the other 3 GMs and whitewashed the rest of the field, finishing a point ahead of GM Leonid Yudasin, a point and a half ahead of GM Jaan Ehlvest, and a full two and a half points ahead of the remaining GM, Sam Palatnik.

More info here, including a link to the event's games. (Mild warning: many of the game scores are corrupted.)

HT: Rob Bernard

The hard-fought games that have been typical of this tournament finally resulted in a couple more wins. Gashimov defeated Onischuk and Volokitin beat Inarkiev, in both cases in sharp games that finally resolved in the endgame. The other three games (Shirov-Wang Hao, Rublevsky-Bologan and Sutovsky-Jakovenko) were drawn, but in each game one side was pressing for a long time.

I'll try to present some of the more interesting games from this event soon; for now, you can replay them on the TWIC site (the tournament website may still be infected, so until I get consistent reports that it's safe I'm not going to give the link or recommend people check it out).

Standings after Round 4:

1-3. Jakovenko, Rublevsky, Wang Hao 2.5
4-8. Shirov, Sutovsky, Bologan, Volokitin, Gashimov 2
9. Onischuk 1.5
10. Inarkiev 1

I'd like to start creating polls and surveys on the blog, but don't know which (preferably free) software would be best for this. There was one I was going to use, but read that they are or are thinking about taking all their users' polls and putting them on their own social networking site. That's something I want to avoid: I want the material on my blog to be just that - mine. (Fair use for non-commercial ends is one thing, freedom to grab the whole thing for any purpose whatsoever is another.)

Ideas/suggestions?

Upon writing the title, I wonder: is there a rook ending I wouldn't describe as instructive? Probably, but it's not all that likely to occur in a real game. In any case, the ending I cover in this online lecture is instructive (trust me!), and it also shows how slippery they can be. Check it out - it's free and available on-demand - and let me know what you think.

Today we had our second straight round artists-in-training round (everyone drew) at the 9th Karpov Poikovsky tournament, leaving the relative standings unchanged from round 1. (Quick summary: Jakovenko, Rublevsky and Wang Hao won over Volokitin, Gashimov and Inarkiev, respectively; Sutovsky drew with Shirov, Bologan with Onischuk.) One of today's games (Sutovsky-Gashimov) was drawn quickly, but the other four games had some life to them. So despite the high drawing percentage so far (80%!), the games really haven't been so bad - see for yourself.

Here.

Round 2 just finished, and was everything round 1 wasn't - unfortunately. All five games were drawn, three of them quickly, and only one (Volokitin-Bologan) saw real pressure. Rublevsky, Wang Hao and Jakovenko lead with 1.5-.5 scores; more here on the TWIC site. (Reminder: the tournament site is still considered iffy in terms of computer safety.)

Round 1 took place yesterday (Tuesday), and saw the following results:

Wang Hao - Inarkiev 1-0
Jakovenko - Volokitin 1-0
Sutovsky - Shirov 1/2-1/2
Rublevsky - Gashimov 1-0
Bologan - Onischuk 1/2-1/2

This is a very strong tournament with a lot of exciting players, so we can expect some very good games here. In fact, two of the round 1 games are especially worth your time, Wang Hao-Inarkiev and Sutovsky-Shirov. As I've been warned that the tournament site is a dangerous one, and TWIC hasn't made the games available in PGN, I'll send you to the section of TWIC covering the event, and you can at least replay the games there.

Few players have been as implacably opposed to a major opening as Viktor Korchnoi has been to the King's Indian Defense, but at least he can be said to have earned the right to his principled antipathy. For at least five decades, he has been in the vanguard of those combating the KID, developing countless new ideas (not just new moves) in the struggle to prove an advantage for the white pieces.

Along these lines, one game that deservedly received a lot of buzz at the time was his victory over Croatian grandmaster Krunoslav Hulak, from the 1987 Interzonal in Zagreb. The position after 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 d6 6.d4 e5 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.Ne1 Nd7 10.Be3 f5 11.f3 f4 12.Bf2 g5



remains a crucial tabiya to this day, and it is here that Korchnoi sprang a brilliant new idea on his opponent. Standard operating procedure involves finding a way to favorably execute the c5 advance while slowing Black's attempts to execute White's king. Moves like 13.b4 and 13.Rc1 were commonplace, while White would often make moves like Kh1, so as to meet ...g3 with Bg1, and to then answer ...gxh2 with Bf2. White generally can't dream of a move like h3, on account of various ...Bxh3 possibilities. Korchnoi's ingenious idea aided the prosecution of his queenside play while safeguarding his king, but in a new way.

How did he do it? Tune in tomorrow, Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, and find out! The game doesn't just feature a significant theoretical idea, but is a very well-played effort from start to finish. Finally, and most importantly for the King's Indian aficionados in the audience, we'll see the cure for his idea. You won't want to miss it!

(Note for first-timers: the shows are free to watch, and you can find directions explaining how to tune in, here.)

We have a lull of about two weeks before the chess world heats up again. The first big event on the horizon is the 41st Biel International Chess Festival, which runs from July 19 through August 1. The GM event is a six player double-round robin with the following players:

Magnus Carlsen 2775
Evgeny Alekseev 2708
Lenier Dominguez 2708
Etienne Bacrot 2691
Alexander Onischuk 2670
Yannick Pelletier 2569 (the Swiss participant)

Partially overlapping this event is the Chess Classic Mainz, which is a spectacular festival including very strong open (rapid) events in both standard chess and Chess960, along with closed events in those disciplines. This year, the fab four participating in the closed events are Viswanathan Anand, Alexander Morozevich, Judit Polgar and...Magnus Carlsen?! I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, given the overlap with Biel, but that's what it says on the web. (And the internet is never mistaken, right? Maybe every once in a while.)

...by defeating Parimarjan Negi (who won the Philadelphia Invitational the week before) in an Armageddon game. Najer, Negi, Ljubomir Ftacnik and Alexander Moiseenko tied for first with 7-2; Victor Mikhalevski and Ilya Smirin were half a point behind. More coverage here.

Sergey Karjakin already clinched match victory in game 7, but the last three games of his rapid match with Nigel Short were played out all the same. We already noted the result of game 8, and today Karjakin swept the games to finish with a whopping 7.5-2.5 triumph.

In game 9, Karjakin was White in a 5.Bf4 QGD. Short accepted an isolated d-pawn, and despite Karjakin's attempts for almost 30 moves to assail the nominal weakness, he achieved absolutely nothing. He therefore switched gears, aiming for kingside chances, and this quickly bore fruit. Short made a couple of tactical errors (probably in time trouble), and that was it.

Game ten was a sort of Roadrunner/Wil E. Coyote copy of game 9. Short had the nominal edge this time, but like Karjakin in the previous game, normal methods yielded nothing. So Short went bridge-burning in hopes of avoiding a routine draw, and he succeeded: his attempts to create kingside play ruined his position, and in what was probably his best game with the black pieces, Karjakin won several pawns and won.

So it was a very successful outing for Karjakin, who went 5-0 with White and 2.5-2.5 with Black against a very strong GM. On the other hand, most of the games were decided in time trouble, so it's unlikely that his 2821 TPR would be reproduced in a slow match with the same opponent. Still, it's a good reminder that he's a player to watch.

Games here, with my comments.

The Sergey Karjakin-Nigel Short rapid match is scheduled for ten games, but with a win in game 7 Karjakin took a 5.5-1.5 lead, good enough to clinch overall victory. The organizers paid for ten games, though, so although Karjakin no longer had anything to play for, game eight went on as scheduled (a very messy game won by Short, who was fortunate that his opponent missed an outright win), and they'll finish things up in the morning.

Games, with my comments, are here.

Peter Leko came into the final round of Dortmund with a half-point lead, and that's how he left it, drawing Arkadij Naiditsch on the white side of a Marshall Gambit. Two players could have caught him with a win, but two of them, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Jan Gustafsson, drew quickly against each other to tie for second. They were joined by two others, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Vassily Ivanchuk, who defeated Loek van Wely and Vladimir Kramnik, respectively. Van Wely-Mamedyarov was complex, a race of passed pawns and attacks on opposite sides, and was objectively equal until just before the end. The tournament has been a disaster for the Dutchman, however, and his run of poor form continued. Ivanchuk-Kramnik revisited the Petroff line from round 3's Naiditsch-Kramnik game, and once again Kramnik lost. This time it wasn't due to the opening, however. Ivanchuk had a very slight edge, but Kramnik kept everything under control until after the time control, when an inaccuracy and then a blunder did him in.

The final standings are amusing, and it's a shame that Naiditsch didn't somehow beat Leko - then there would have been a six way tie for first! Here are the Garrison Keillor-approved standings:

1. Leko 4.5 (of 7)
2-5. Ivanchuk, Nepomniachtchi, Mamedyarov, Gustafsson 4
6. Naiditsch 3.5
7. Kramnik 3
8. van Wely 1 (and a dismal 2388 TPR)

The last round games (with my comments) are here.

That's a slightly funny title for a slightly funny book, yet this effort by GM Jesus de la Villa may be worth your while. Allow me to briefly explain the humor, after which I'll summarize and evaluate the book. What's funny about the title is its vagueness. Maybe he's right that we must know these 100 endgames, but are they the 100 endings we must know, or are there more? (Can you say "sequel"?) Also funny, in the sense of being peculiar, is the ordering of the book's material. After a chapter on basic endings and a sort of pre-test, his first "real" chapter covers knight vs. pawn, while king and pawn endings (aside from the most trivial cases) are addressed only in chapter 12!

Despite the slightly strange - or perhaps only unusual - arrangement of material, there is much to commend in this book. First, the material selected does belong, and includes fare sometimes skipped in introductory texts. (His coverage of various rook and two pawns vs. rook endings is a useful example.) Second, he presents the information by multiple means: specific variations, verbal explanations, rules (he calls them "conclusions") and diagrams with various markings (numbered squares, stars of various shapes, etc.). This is an excellent way to help the reader really get the information and remember it - or at least increases the likelihood that learning will take place. Occasionally he offers tangential exercises for the reader (without solutions, which in the context of the challenges is actually a good thing), and the pre- and post-tests are also pedagogically useful.

So I think he has done a good job in presenting the material. But what is the material? Here are the chapter headings:

1. Basic endings (covers some elementary k+p vs. k endings, as well as some very simple, pawnless, rook vs. bishop and rook vs. knight endings)
2. Basic Test (this is essentially a pre-test for the whole book, not a review of chapter 1)
3. Knight vs. Pawn
4. Queen vs. Pawn
5. Rook vs. Pawn
6. Rook vs. 2 Pawns
7. Same-coloured bishops: Bishop + Pawn vs. Bishop
8. Bishop vs. Knight: one pawn on the board
9. Opposite-coloured bishops: Bishop + 2 pawns vs. Bishop
10. Rook + Pawn vs. Rook
11. Rook + two Pawns vs. Rook
12. Pawn endings
13. Other material relations (this one's a real grab bag, including but not exhausted by KBNk, KRBkr, and KQkrp)
14. Final Test

The ordering is non-traditional, and it's interesting that there's no section on N + P vs. N or on Q+P vs. Q. True, such endings arise rarely, but when was the last time you had queen vs. rook and pawn? I've never had it in a serious game, and I doubt I've had it occur more than five or six times in the tens of thousands of blitz games I've played in my life. Overall though, it's a very good presentation of many, maybe most of the fundamental, building-block endings that all tournament players ought to know.

The book isn't a substitute for works like Müller & Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings or Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, but it's worthwhile for what it does do. Recommended, especially to players in the 1400-2000 range.

A portion of de la Villa's Introduction can be read here (in pdf), and the book is available for purchase here.

It appears that the Short comeback was a short comeback, as Karjakin won with White, again, in round 5, and with Black drew without any difficulty; in fact, he had serious winning chances for a while. Thus with four rounds to go in their rapid match, Karjakin leads 4.5-1.5 and is one win away from clinching overall victory. (It's too bad for his ratings race with Carlsen that this match is unrated.)

Tournament website here, today games (with my comments) are here.

With one round to go, Peter Leko has leaped into the lead, defeating Jan Gustafsson with surprising ease with the black pieces. Gustafsson's novelty, 16.Qb3, left him doubled, backward pawns on the b-file after 16...Qxb3 17.axb3, and at the end of the day that weakness proved decisive. Leko's technique was good enough, though his error on move 35 gave his opponent a chance to put up more resistance. Leko thus leads with 4 points, half a point ahead of Gustafsson and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who managed to hold on with Black against Vladimir Kramnik.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov-Vassily Ivanchuk was also drawn, and quickly, but for those who take the time to closely examine the game, you'll discover genuine value therein. The pawn roller plan used by Mamedyarov can be devastating - witness the famous Botvinnik-Capablanca game from AVRO 1938 - so it's valuable to reflect on the way Ivanchuk coped with that plan.

Finally, the tournament victim (Loek van Wely) was sacrificed on the altar once more, this time to Arkadij Naiditsch, who plastered him in 26 moves. With one round to go, van Wely's TPR isn't even enough for an IM norm, making this almost surely the worst tournament of his adult life.

The games, with my comments, are here.

Standings after Round 6:

1. Leko 4
2-3. Nepomniachtchi, Gustafsson 3.5
4-7. Mamedyarov, Ivanchuk, Kramnik, Naiditsch 3
8. van Wely 1

Last Round Pairings:

Ivanchuk - Kramnik
van Wely - Mamedyarov
Leko - Naiditsch
Nepomniachtchi - Gustafsson

Here's the full list. A comment: 2002 really shouldn't be included, as it was a Candidates event to see who would face Kramnik for the world championship.

1928 Sämisch, Fritz
1951 O'Kelly de Galway, A.
1961 Taimanov, Mark
1973 Hecht, Hans-Joachim
1974 Ciocâltea, Victor
1975 Westerinen, Heikki
1976 Romanishin, Oleg
1977 Smejkal, Jan
1978 Andersson, Ulf
1979 Giorgadze, Tamaz
1980 Keene, Raymond
1981 Kuzmin, Gennady
1982 Hort, Vlastimil
1983 Suba, Mihai
1984 Gruenfeld, Yehuda
1985 Razuvayev, Yuri
1986 Ribli, Zoltán
1987 Balashov, Yuri
1988 Lputian, Smbat
1989 Geller, Efim
1990 Chernin, Alexander
1991 Stohl, Igor
1992 Kasparov, Garry
1993 Karpov, Anatoly
1994 Piket, Jeroen
1995 Kramnik, Vladimir
1996 Kramnik, Vladimir
1997 Kramnik, Vladimir
1998 Kramnik, Vladimir
1999 Leko, Peter
2000 Kramnik, Vladimir
2001 Kramnik, Vladimir
2002 Leko, Peter
2003 Bologan, Viktor
2004 Anand, Viswanathan
2005 Naiditsch, Arkadij
2006 Kramnik, Vladimir
2007 Kramnik, Vladimir

(HT: ChessBase)

Or so says Edward Winter in his latest Chess Explorations column. Be sure to follow his links for the full experience.

Games 3 and 4 of their 10-game rapid match were played today, and it went a lot like yesterday's games. Once again, both players parlayed the first move into a significant edge. Karjakin won in game 3, mirroring his success in game 1, but this time Short capitalized on his advantage and drubbed Karjakin in game 4. (The games are here, with my comments.)

The overall score in the match is now 3-1 in Karjakin's favor, with games 5 and 6 tomorrow. Will Short's win propel him to a comeback, or is this just evidence of both players' comfort levels with White? We shall see.

Dortmund is a very funny tournament. Either Kramnik wins (this has happened eight times), or else it's a complete outsider who takes the title. This year, it looks like another instance of plan B, as German GM Jan Gustafsson, the lowest-rated player in the event (considered probable "chum" by at least one commentator), is in clear first with two rounds to go. This was the result of a very quick, strange win against tournament tail-ender Loek van Wely, whose move 14 novelty gave him an immediately lost position that he resigned four moves later. My best guess is that he was simply unprepared for Gustafsson's move order, threatening the Noteboom Variation, and hadn't reviewed his prep for the Marshall (Slav) Gambit in some time. A disaster for van Wely, but happy days for his opponent.

That game finished pretty quickly, as you might imagine. Next up was a short draw between Leko and Nepomniachtchi. Leko had a small advantage on the white side of a 3.Bb5+ Sicilian, but he was unable to achieve anything with it. When Black played 25...e5 and 26...f5 the game turned double-edged, and a few moves later, just as the game was getting lively, Leko offered a draw, which was accepted.

The next draw was Mamedyarov-Kramnik, a game which caught my eye thanks to Kramnik's surprising - and good - 27...f5. The move looks like positional suicide, but it highlights the need and value of activity in even the quietest positions.

Finally, Ivanchuk won a nice ending against Naiditsch, outplaying him from an almost dead equal position in the opening. A remarkable technical display by the Ukranian, bringing him back to 50% overall.

The games can be replayed here, with my comments.

Standings after Round 5:

1. Gustafsson 3.5
2-3. Leko, Nepomniachtchi 3
4-6. Mamedyarov, Kramnik, Ivanchuk 2.5
7. Naiditsch 2
8. van Wely 1

Pairings for Round 6:

Kramnik - Nepomniachtchi
Gustafsson - Leko
Naiditsch - van Wely
Mamedyarov - Ivanchuk

Thursday was the first day of the Karjakin-Short rapid match, and the youngster got off to a good start, winning both games. A Karjakin win was the logical result of the first game, as he enjoyed some advantage almost from start to finish. He did make one error shortly before the end, no doubt in time trouble, but Short almost immediately returned the favor and lost to a simple but attractive tactic.

Game two, however, was Short's game to win. Karjakin sacrificed one pawn for good play, but as the middlegame went on he hemorrhaged more and more pawns, reaching an ending four (!) pawns down. What mattered most, however, was the combination of his active pieces and the players' dwindling time, and in the face of a dangerous (but preventable) threat, Short panicked and lost.

Games three and four are tomorrow; meanwhile, you can see the first two games, with my brief comments, here.

Here's the position again; your task is to assess 31.Qxd3.



The beautiful solution is here.

Incrediboy* Sergey Karjakin and former world chess championship finalist Nigel Short will play a 10-game rapid match from July 3-7 in Kiev, Ukraine. There will be two games each day, at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. local time (I believe that's 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET) except on the last day, when the games start an hour earlier. The time control is 25 minutes per game, with 10 seconds added after each move.

Here's the website.


* Magnus Carlsen was dubbed "wonderboy" when he became a GM at just under 13 years and five months of age; doesn't Karjakin deserve a nickname for doing it 10 months faster? "Incrediboy" it is, unless the readers come up with a better moniker.

Round 4 of the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in Dortmund saw three more draws, but it had its moments.

The first game to finish was Kramnik-Leko (shock, horror), a 22 move draw by repetition. Despite the quick and uninspiring conclusion, there were places where the game could have livened up, and the game may have a little theoretical significance as well.

Another short draw, finishing just a few seconds later, was Gustafsson-Ivanchuk, but this game was almost everything Kramnik-Leko was not. The opening was very sharp and neither player backed down from the complications. Ivanchuk's opening choice was quite clever: he entered the Vienna Variation of the Queen's Gambit, but then went down a sideline resulting in what looks like a favorable version of the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav. I think he had a very nice edge, but on move 16, perhaps overly concerned with the possibility of 17.d5, he preferred solidity over aggression, and that allowed Gustafsson to level the game.

After another hour or so, the remaining games finished in a near dead-heat. First came the only non-draw of the round, Nepomniachtchi-van Wely. White sacrificed a pawn for control of d5 and kingside prospects. Black's position was okay, but he wasn't able to find a solution to those problems - even after sacrificing the exchange, the same difficulties remained. White won a further pawn, and despite a hiccup on move 27, Nepomniachtchi's technique was good enough to win with the extra exchange.

Finally, Naiditsch-Mamedyarov ended too, a Taimanov Sicilian where first White and then Black enjoyed a very small edge, but accurate play from both players kept the game balanced.

The games, with my comments, are here.

Standings after Round 4:

1-3. Gustafsson, Leko, Nepomniachtchi 2.5
4-6. Mamedyarov, Naiditsch, Kramnik 2
7. Ivanchuk 1.5
8. van Wely 1

Pairings for Round 5: (On Friday; Thursday is a rest day)

Mamedyarov - Kramnik
Ivanchuk - Naiditsch
van Wely - Gustafsson
Leko - Nepomniachtchi

We all associate the Najdorf Sicilian with rook endings, right? Okay, maybe not, but in the game covered here, play rapidly went from a very early middlegame almost directly into a pure rook ending. The opening was of interest, but the focus of the show - or rather, its follow-up - will be on the ending.

The show stops at the start of the ending, and the viewer is challenged to spend some time working on it for himself before part 2 is posted. So watch part 1 for the entertainment, put in some elbow grease, and then return to part 2 next week for the instruction. Rook endings may not be as much fun as a game full of sacrifices, but knowing how to play them is a must for every tournament player. Consider this an invitation to eat your veggies; I'll do what I can to make them palatable.

(Reminder: my ChessVideos shows are not only free, but available on demand.)

My copy of ChessBase Magazine (CBM) 124 arrived in the mail yesterday (if you're 2000 or higher, seriously consider subscribing, and it's worth considering for 18-1900s, too), and in the tactics section IM Oliver Reeh did a special video presentation on his favorite position of that issue. Here it is; your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to assess 31.Qxd3.



After you've had a couple of days to digest it, we'll take a closer look. It's a rich position, and your appreciation of it will only increase if you take some time trying to work through it - with the engines off, obviously!

The tournament was Linares 1999, one of the great successes of Garry Kasparov's greatest year. After 12 of 14 rounds, Kasparov led by 2.5 points, while Vassily Ivanchuk, the hero of this week's show, was languishing near the bottom with a minus score. It was too late for Ivanchuk to salvage a good result in the tournament, but it's never too late to play well. To make this happen, drastic measures were required. In "preparation" for his 13th round game, against Veselin Topalov, Ivanchuk almost took his life in his hands.

The players in Linares typically ate each day at the Restaurant Himilce, and Kasparov - as Kasparov - had an essentially permanent table for his entourage and a chair that was only his. So what did Ivanchuk do? Shortly before the Kasparov crew came in, he went to Kasparov's table and sat in his chair! As he explained to the imploring restaurant staff and then to Kasparov's mother (who then gave him her blessing), he wanted to sit there for five minutes "to absorb Kasparov's spirit."

It would be a great story no matter what happened, but what makes it perfect is that he went on to blast Topalov off the board with the black pieces in just 25 moves. It's a beautiful game, replete with sacrifices, and instructive too. (Ivanchuk himself said that "[s]tudents of the middle game should study it [the key piece sacrifice that kept White's king in the center] attentively." That's just what we'll do tomorrow, Wednesday night, at 9 p.m. ET on ChessBase's Playchess.com server. The show is free, the stories are entertaining, and the game is fantastic. Why would anyone miss it?? (If you need instructions for watching my ChessBase shows, whether live ones or those in the archives, this post will tell you what you need to know.)

Hope to see you there.

The games were decided early on today, though not all the games were drawn.

With White, Ivanchuk chose Fischer's 6.Bc4 against Nepomniachtchi's Najdorf, but got nothing. If anything, it was his opponent who had some chances, but apparently neither player felt very comfortable and a draw was agreed on move 19.

Mamedyarov-Gustafsson didn't last much longer, and like the Ivanchuk-Nepomniachtchi game, it ended too soon. With 26.Be2 (instead of repeating with 26.Qe2) Mamedyarov seemed to have a promising position, but he disagreed and called it a day.

The third game to finish was in a sense the first one to end. Naiditsch produced a very clever novelty against Kramnik's Petroff, 19.Qd2. The move offers a full rook, but its real value was psychological. It's often possible to decline a sacrifice and achieve reasonable play, but this was not one of those occasions. After 19...Ng6? 20.Ree1 f6 21.Rad1 Kf7 22.Qe3, White was clearly winning. Kramnik gave up his queen for a rook and knight, hoping to achieve a fortress. It seemed unlikely to succeed, but with a blunder on move 41 he didn't get the chance to find out.

Last but least, the supremely dull van Wely-Leko game yawned to a finish.

Games here, with my comments.

Standings after Round 3:

1-2. Gustafsson, Leko 2
3-6. Kramnik, Naiditsch, Nepomniachtchi, Mamedyarov 1.5
7-8. Ivanchuk, van Wely 1

Pairings for Round 4:

Kramnik - Leko
Nepomniachtchi - van Wely
Gustafsson - Ivanchuk
Naiditsch - Mamedyarov