August 2006 Archives

Leko won game three with white and drew the second game to take a 2.5-1.5 lead in the match at the halfway point. Leko varied from his eternal 1.e4 with d4, something he's tried on a few other occasions with mixed results. He may have been eager to test Karpov in the Queen's Indian and the long theoretical line they ended up in. 13..c5 has been a hard worker of late, although 13..b5 is still alive and kicking. They line leading to 20.Qg4 was played in Topalov-Anand in San Luis last year, but it goes back to 1997. Everyone has played 20..Bg5 but Karpov went for 20..Bf6, which seems reasonable since Topalov got a lot of pressure from 20..Bg5 21.Qxc4 Nd3 22.Ba3. (Kasparov's evaluation of this entire line with the protected pawn on c6 is "it's just a matter of time" before White wins.)

Karpov has been on both sides of this QID variation and it was deeply analyzed around his 1996 FIDE WCh match with Kamsky. His "new" continuation here was analyzed by Avrukh in the ChessBase MegaBase 2006 and given a predictable +/= after 22.Qxc4. White has a protected passer on c6 but no obvious way to make progress. The good news is he can torture Black all day, which is what Leko did. This is particularly effective in rapid and eventually Karpov blundered and lost. Not pretty, but a legal takedown and the sort of thing Karpov himself was always brilliant at. Small advantage, no counterplay for opponent, grind them on the board and the clock. Leko had made substantial progress before the blunder and 43.Qc2 would have ended things much earlier. (43..Nc5 44.Bd5)

Karpov tried to return the favor in game four in a Nimzo line with 5.a3 to vary from game two. It's another old and well-known line (the stem game I have is Euwe-Rossolimo, Hastings 1949!). White gets a small advantage in Q+R endgame (or Q+R+R as here) and tries to grind for a while. Even Karpov can't beat Leko from such dry toast (as opposed to stale nachos) and it ended on move 37.

I know, I know, you'd think "Leko-Karpov in a Caro-Kann" would have all the excitement of leftover microwave nachos, but at least today you'd be wrong. The Hungarian #1 and world #6 Leko and former world champ Karpov drew the first two games of their eight-game Miskolc Rapid match. Karpov is ranked #40 at 2668, which might be high for classical chess, which he rarely plays, but may be low for rapid, which has been his focus for several years and at which he can still shine despite the inconsistency that plagues the 50+ set.

The first game had Leko as white and the expected Caro-Kann. Karpov looks to have been doing some homework because they went through 17 moves of theory, following Karjakin-Riazantsev from earlier this year until Karpov went for 17..0-0, allowing the 18.Nf5 temporary sacrifice Black probably wanted to avoid in that first game. But it's hard to say for sure if it was all preparation because Karpov's subsequent play didn't look computer prepared. Karpov isn't a fan of the machines, but has resigned himself to using them on occasion. When I asked him in 2003 whether he now used them for preparation he gave a pained "sometimes." This game shows why, to a certain extent. If your opponent is preparing with an engine and you aren't you can get slaughtered in short order in a sharp line, even in the Caro-Kann. One of the reasons Karpov has increasingly relied on the Caro is because it is less susceptible to that sort of thing, but there really isn't anywhere to hide anymore.

Getting back to the game, it looks like Karpov could have grabbed the exchange and kept a plus with the natural 21..Nd5. 22.Nf5 looks like the only reply and White's attack isn't that fearsome. (His avoiding it is why I doubt he prepared to this point.) Karpov instead went for counterplay with a queen infiltration and this paid off when Leko, after an impressively aggressive opening, backed off from further sacrifices and accepted the repetition. The key test is 24.Bxh6!? with an incredibly complicated and forcing position. You'd think this would be just the sort of thing the younger player would like to push Black into here, but Leko wasn't convinced. After 24..c5 25.d5 (or 24..gxh6 25.Nxh6+ (or 25.Qd2)) White's chances look better. But 24..c5 25.d5 Nb6 looks a bit scary for any mortal. In the game, White can still play on with 25.Bg5 and it's quite sharp and unclear. A pity, and 24.Bxh6 is the sort of chance White has to take when he gets that sort of double-edged position.

The second game was the also-expected Nimzo. It's hard to see Karpov's 8.a3 as an improvement over the usual 8.dxc5. Queens came off and while the players deserve credit for playing it out, there was never much of an imbalance in the endgame and the game was drawn on move 30. White could try 25.Rxc4 Nb6 26.Nb7 but Black shouldn't have any trouble with his a-pawn and blockading knight. If Leko can continue to get sharp positions with white you have to like his chances, but he'll have to go for the gusto at some point. If he holds back and waits for Karpov to blunder we could have eight draws. ChessBase will be on the scene for the second half so we'll have pics and reports coming.

More than all right, actually. In the NH Tournament, the "Rising Stars" (something of a misnomer since a few of them are well risen already) defeated the veteran team by +6, reaching that margin thanks to Smeets' win over a fading Jussupow in today's final round. Most of today's games were short draws so I appreciate the Dutchman's effort. +6 was what I predicted before the event, and Big Al didn't let me down either. (My predictions are usually rubbish so pardon my enjoying this one. Migstradamus lives!)

There were many interesting games. Carlsen's win over Jussupow stands out. The Norwegian teen's +3 was the best of the junior team, meaning he gets an invitation to next year's Melody Amber tournament. Beliavsky also scored +3, for the veterans, the only oldster to make a plus score. Nice to see him showing kids who don't remember the USSR what a four-time Soviet champion can do. Jussupow lost his last three games after a typically solid start. Nunn also went -3 in the second half but deserved better. Someone who attended the event wrote in to say Dr. Nunn had a brief health worry during the event, but he played out the rest of the games and the word is he's dandy.

Karjakin continues with inconsistent play that is only to be expected from a player his age. When he's on song he can be devastating, but sometimes he seems to be overthinking and trying to play too precisely, which leads to too much caution. He went undefeated but drew several excellent positions – although he was lost against Nunn in the eighth round.

We've had this discussion before somewhere, but what do we do with our honored veterans? Few can keep up the elite pace after 40 and the B circuit doesn't pay too well, especially since by then they usually have families to support. And older bodies don't enjoy the rigors of constant travel and play. They are essentially lifelong freelancers and just like anyone without a pension they must save for retirement. Not everyone wants to write and/or teach chess, let alone go back to school or embark on a new career. There are a scary number of 50+ GMs out there living near the poverty level. (Not to mention those in their 20's and 30's, but they can take it and have more options.) One reason to push and promote chess on a global level is that more players means more students and clubs and more coaches and a softer landing for players leaving the circuit.

Speaking of Karpov and rapid chess, another pic from the archives (click the 'pics' tag below for earlier versions). 12th world champion (1975-85) Anatoly Karpov in the second game of the first round of the 2001 FIDE KO WCh in Moscow. (28/11/01) His opponent, who you can see better in the larger version, was China's Zhang Pengxiang.

Larger version (193KB)

This turned into the instant karma match. Karpov, days after appearing at a press conference with Kasparov and Kramnik to tout the "3K" Botvinnik Memorial match tournament, suddenly dropped out of that and accepted Ilyumzhinov's baksheesh invitation to play in the KO. The first two games with Zhang were drawn and Karpov was eliminated in rapid tiebreaks. Zhang was eliminated 2-0 by Pigusov in the next round.

The second edition of this Peter Leko rapid showcase in Miskolc, Hungary ("Mishkolts"), has him taking on Anatoly Karpov in an eight-game match Aug. 30-Sep 3. In last year's first edition, Leko drew with Adams in an unexpectedly eventful event. Adams won the first three, Leko the next three, finishing with two draws. You might also remember the second game saw Leko experiment with 1.d4 with a disastrous 25 move loss. Or, you might not.

Karpov is an interesting target for Leko to choose. He brings the prestige of a former world champion but hasn't played at a 2700 level in years. (This year's Keres rapid a notable exception.) Karpov's rapid prowess outlasted his classical chess success by a significant margin, mostly because he wasn't interested in keeping up a heavy theoretical workload. Just last week we saw he can still shift wood with the best of them when he tied for first with Kasparov in the Zurich blitz. He has tailored his game to rapid, predictably with less success after turning 50. His last-place finish in Cap d'Agde in 2003 was a sign that the wheels had come off. Corsica 2003 and Reykjavik 2004 weren't much better.

But Karpov is Karpov and he shouldn't be an easy mark for anyone if he does some preparation. He still hates to lose and perhaps a match against the world #6 will get his juices flowing. Leko is a prohibitive favorite of course, but the Caro-Kann is a resilient beast. If it's not a wipeout and if we don't get too many short draws this could be fun. (The Mayor's welcome message calls it the "most prestigious rapid chess match in the world." Nobody tell him about Mainz.)

Dutchman Ivan Sokolov won the 4th Staunton Memorial in England. He finished with an impressive 9/11 to finished a half-point ahead of Jan Timman and top seed Mickey Adams. Those three turned it into a top-heavy event. All finished undefeated and drew their games with each other. The next highest finisher was Werle with 7 points. A nice event, although having it conflict with the British championship was bizarre.

Fressinet and Tkachiev tied for first in the French championship with 7.5/11 so there will be a playoff. The final rounds were marred with a plague of very short draws, as was the tournament in general. Nine draws of 15 moves or fewer, four of them by Lautier.

A Russian B team beat a Chinese team 26.5-23.5 in a Scheveningen "China-Russia Chess Summit" held in Ergun, Mongolia. Jakovenko was the top point-getter in the event with 6.5/10. The first of these events was held in Shanghai in 2001. Russia won that one 21.5-14.5, but they also sent a stronger team in that one so it's hard to make comparisons.

The NH Tournament started its second half in Amsterdam. Beliavsky is keeping the veterans in it and he scored his third win to move to +2. The youngsters still lead by +2 because Wang Hao beat Nunn in a wild game.

Some interesting items from Ilyumzhinov's latest interview with Sport Express. (Russian original.) There is a recap of some details of the Kramnik-Topalov world championship match: (all quotes sic)

It's so crushing that this match will only be 12 games that I try not to think about it. The Candidates matches – remember them? – were also mentioned. Anyone want to provide more information about the American interest Ilyumzhinov mentions?

This reference to chess appearing as an exhibition sport at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games was picked up by a few other sources, including ESPN's Spanish website.

(In Sydney 2000, Shirov and Anand played a few rapid games at the Olympic Village, but it wasn't an exhibition sport.) It's been increasingly clear that the Chinese government sees chess as an accessible sport showcase. I have trouble imagining this is part of a "chess boom" in the country on the whole, however. Every comment I've heard, including a few from Chinese players, says it's far less popular than Chinese chess and other endemic and regional games. But the successes of the Chinese women players has led to conjecture about the possibility of an appearance for chess in Beijing for quite a while, even before they were awarded the Games. A success for them at the Olympic Games might create a real boom there.

That would be fun, although the IOC has already made it very clear that chess and other mind games will never become Olympic sports, which makes sense to me. Choosing the players for the Beijing event will be tricky. Will the Chinese organizers foot the bill? Will the top players go if there aren't big cash prizes? Should it be limited to amateurs (juniors)? Wouldn't it be humiliating to have separate women's and men's events on an mainstream stage? (The sound you hear is a billion people asking, "why are there separate events?" at the same time.) But having a women's event would guarantee success for the hosts.

knight-tour, who lives in China, posts this below: "Yes the Chinese are getting very good at training their select people to play chess. But to say China is falling in love with chess is ludicrous. I have lived in Beijing for more than two years and I have yet to be able to play a game of chess here. There are no open tournaments and no clubs outside of universities or grade schools. No FIDE events except specialty events where they invite VIPs every once in awhile."

By the way, the video gamers have been campaigning mightily for a Beijing exhibition slot, but it doesn't look good. Cute article with a chess mention on the topic here.

The Credit Suisse Jubilee "Champions Day" Blitz tournament just finished in Zurich. Kasparov, Polgar, Karpov, and Korchnoi played a double round-robin of 5'+2" blitz. Nice streaming video on ChessBase TV at Playchess.com. Especially if you could understand the German GM commentary.

Kasparov and Karpov shared first by drawing their games against each other and stomping Polgar and Korchnoi. They both scored 4.5/6. If the scores I have are correct Polgar scored 2.5 and Korchnoi just 0.5. Mark has the games up at TWIC, although several are incomplete. I'll get the rest of Kasparov-Polgar from Garry this afternoon, but the others I dunno. Karpov-Polgar was truncated just when things were heating up.

One thing's for sure, Kasparov and Karpov can still play some blitz! Too bad they didn't have a chance to play off. I was on Skype with Garry a few minutes after the games ended and he said, "I kept reaching for the mouse!" He's too used to playing online blitz now and didn't have a chance to warm up with a non-virtual board before the games. Same thing happens to me on the rare occasions I see a position OTB. The visualization and coordination get out of whack.

As Garry was talking to me, someone came up and asked him to autograph the napkin he was using to mop his brow at the board. Ewww. Coming soon to an Ebay auction near you... Now there are simuls, and later Kasparov will speak to the Credit Suisse audience on "Tradition and Innovation," a 20-minute speech. There should be some cool video and photos at ChessBase of the blitz and other chess festivities.

Update: The "missing" Kasparov-Polgar game is now below in the comments. I sent it to Mark so it should be in the TWIC game file shortly.

After three rounds the veterans are dead even with the youngsters in the Amsterdam team tournament. It's 7.5-7.5 after three rounds. I tipped Big Al Beliavsky before the start of the event and so far he's living up to it with all three games decisive (two wins with black, one loss with white). Carlsen is leading the junior troupe with two draws and an impressive endgame grind over endgame guru John Nunn. Yussupow showed flashes of his redoubtable best counterattacking against Stellwagen in the first round. These old guys can play, but will they last? And which team is taking more naps?

The seniors have done either a good job of avoiding the latest theory or a bad job keeping up with it. A spot check shows that of the 15 games, only three had most-recent stem games from the past four years. One 2006 and two 2005! Fun games all the way around, despite the 60% draw rate.

Never let it be said that our nation's Midwestern youth is all about drugs and farm animals. If you think origami and chess aren't exciting enough for you, how about combining them?

I was prepared to be cynical, but the red, white, and blue touch put it over. Is there anything in the world that can't be made better by slathering it in e'er more patriotic goodness? No closeups of the pieces, unfortunately. I've never been into collecting sets and boards. I've accumulated a few bought out of necessity while traveling, but New York apartments aren't conducive to collecting anything other than matchboxes and dustbunnies. Origami would be ideal. You could just flatten them out and pop them back up to play. I can make an origami boulder; chess sets might take a while.

You might be able to dig up all the results elsewhere eventually, but I'll try to encapsulate them here with some thoughts. It's a great event but I felt a disconnect due to the haphazard website. The reports, when they appeared, were of tremendous quality. Insightful and informative, kudos to authors Johannes Fischer and Eric van Reem. The problem was not having a single place to find out the results and see the games at a glance. You had to go to the live games pages and figure things out yourself, although this was largely ameliorated by the inclusion of the players' point totals next to their names on the live pages. Still, there was a lot of hunting around.

In the GRENKELEASING Rapid World Championship, Vishy Anand beat Teimour Radjabov 5-3, winning both games on the final day to pull away after a tight and sloppy brace of games. It was a fun and fighting match, but the quality was poor for this level, even for rapid chess. Anand's new ideas and play on the black side of the Semi-Slav were notable, as was his futility against Radjabov's Sveshnikov. As Kasparov and others have pointed out, Vishy often has trouble against it and he went to 3.Bb5 in the final game, which he won when Radja went overboard in a must-win situation. Radjabov looked nervous but occasionally scrambled brilliantly when Anand let up. Not to criticize zeitnot endgame play, but in game 7 black could have saved a draw with an unusual perpetual with 38.Nxh6!, as pointed out by Kasparov on Playchess.com at the time.

Per the site report, Anand has now won seven of these matches in a row, incredibly, and nine overall. His rapid dominance has been shakier of late (Bruzon fought him to a standstill in Leon this year) but winning is winning and few would bet against the 36-year-old Indian in a rapid match against anyone. Next year he'll defend his title against Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who won the mighty Ordix Open with an undefeated 9.5/11. Mamedyarov, who had promised to win this event after he choked at the end of the Chess960 the day before, was foiled only by tiebreaks. He also scored 9.5 despite losing a spectacular game to Morozevich.

In the shuffle chess match, the Clerical Medical Chess960 World Championship, Levon Aronian deposed Peter Svidler in his second try. He used the same formula as Anand, winning both games on the final day to win 5-3. The last game showed one of the unfortunate hazards of Fischerandom, a position that can be lost for Black almost immediately without perfect defense. White had massive threats after move three or four and Svidler resigned on move 13. Pablo at ChessVille figured out my convoluted method and entered all the games through Fritz so you can download them here and replay them in ChessBase. HIARCS 10 and Shredder 10 can analyze them. (I'm not sure if ChessBase recognizes some UCI freeware engines as capable of Chess960 in order to put them on the engine menu.)

According to the site, sponsorship for the event has been guaranteed through 2013, which is always good to hear. Maybe they could branch out into classical chess... I very much hope more games will become available. There are currently only a handful from the Ordix Open at the official site.

- Anand scored +31=8-1 in a simul. Aronian scored +16=3-1 in a Chess960 simul.
- Shredder won the Livingston Chess960 computer tournament.
- In Chess960 the program Spike beat Svidler 1.5-0.5 and Shredder went 2-0 over Radjabov.
- Harikrishna beat Naiditsch in the U20 Chess960 match. He was down 0.5-3.5 but came back on the second day to win 4.5-3.5.
- Kosteniuk defeated Paetz in the women's Chess960, 5.5-2.5
- Hort and Portisch tied the veterans Chess960 and Hort won the blitz playoff 1.5-0.5
- Bacrot won the FiNet Chess960 Open with 9.5/11 undefeated and will face Levon Aronian in next years match.
- Kasimdzhanov won the Ordix Open on tiebreaks over Mamedyarov and will play Anand next year. (Not confirmed, going on the results charts.)
- Anand beat Radjabov 5-3 in the GRENKELEASING rapid match.

In Mainz, Anand leveled his rapid match with Radjabov with a convincing win in game three out of a prepared Semi-Slav line. In game four he got into a peck of trouble again against Radjabov's Sveshnikov but held the endgame. Nice long report up at ChessBase. Official site. Svidler outplayed Aronian from two tepid positions to equalize their match 2-2 at the half.

Shredder won the computer Chess960 tournament. German programmer Stefan Meyer-Kahlen mentions in the report that he's now focusing on a mobile version coming out soon. It looks like we'll have plenty of choices for mobile chess. I suppose it's too much to ask that we be able to play against each other with all the products. Universal mobile gaming? Never happen.

Bacrot won the FiNet Chess960 open to qualify to play the winner of Aronian-Svidler next year. Mamedyarov was running away with the event but blundered into a mate in two against Bacrot (and then had a seven-move touch-move loss to Grischuk). You can replay the games online from the link charts here. The 11-round Ordix Open, regular chess at last, is this weekend.

TWIC and the official site seem to be keeping mum about it, but it appears that top seed Jonathan Rowson just won his third consecutive UK championship. I'm basing this on the results of the final round live game page, which shows Rowson beating Parker with black to reach 8.5/11 and clear first. Parker resigned after reaching the time control. There's nothing he can do against Black putting his queen on a8. A nice maneuvering achievement by the three-time champ. After nearly 60 years without a Scotsman winning the championship Rowson has owned it. Maybe now the English – with the new English Chess Federation – will ban the Scots. Speaking of, Georgian-born femme Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant again came close to the overall title, beating Pert in the final round to finish on eight.

Though it's yet another official site not updated, Ivan Sokolov stretched his lead at the Staunton Memorial by beating Howell in the fifth round. Saturday is a rest day. The NH Old Dogs vs Young Pups Scheveningen tournament starts today at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam. I previewed it here a week or so ago. The pairings are up. They are saying there will be streaming video, let's see how that goes.

Glu Mobile, one of the two or three leading mobile gaming companies, has announced plans for a Kasparov Chess mobile game. Other reports here. It will be released in early 2007. The key feature is the ability to play against anyone else in the system, not just against the engine. I could never get the early versions of Fritz Mobile to work on my Motorola V300. Have you played on a server with a mobile device?

It would be cool to include a variable speed turn system like GameKnot as well as the usual real-time play. E.g. you could pop in and make a move whenever you have a minute and get a message when your opponent has moved. You could set the speed to a few moves per day or per week or whatever. That's a more realistic option for many people. Being able to easily watch live GM games would also be handy, although I doubt that fan base is big enough to push feature development.

I should be seeing early versions and perhaps I can hook up some beta testers. I hope a Treo 700 comes out in GSM form soon so I can see it on something decent.

Post'em as you get'em if you're watching live. From what I can tell Bacrot won the FiNet Chess960 event with 9.5/11, ahead of Grischuk and Mamedyarov. That should mean he plays the winner of Aronian-Svidler next year. The end of Grischuk-Bacrot in the final round is an amusing stalemate.

Anand-Radjabov and relSivd-naroinA play games 3 and 4 of their respective matches starting soon. The live broadcast looks hosed already. Try this one, too.

-- Anand and Svidler win game three. -- Svidler wins game four, Anand-Radja draw. Both matches tied at the half!

Levon Aronian won the first two Chess960 games of the eight-game Clerical Medical match at the Mainz Classic. He was worse in both games, probably lost in the first, but grit and his perpetually sharp tactical eye saw him through. The games were Chess960 positions 756 and 747, by the way. ChessBase has a report on the day up, but the ChessBase 9 javascript replay pages don't work with shuffle chess. Nor can Fritz or ChessBase import the Chess960 PGN the official Mainz site is putting out. Booo. A tip from camembert pointed out that the free program Arena has no trouble with replaying these files. You can replay all the games online if you scroll down here.

I just tested Arena 1.99beta2 with the Chess960 PGN from the Mainz site and it worked dandy. Just took a minute to download and unzip, no installation required. There are also freeware engines for Arena that play Chess960 (necessary because of the castling). Spike is quite strong, although it took me a while to install it in Arena as a new UCI engine and figure out how to get it to analyze along with the moves from an imported game. (There's a little "Analyze" button under the notation and make sure Ponder is off before you click it.)

I did go to the time and effort to manually enter the first two Aronian-Svidler games into Fritz 9. The only native ChessBase engine I have that can play/analyze Chess960 is HIARCS 10, apparently. Fritz and ChessBase 9 recognize this once the games are entered in CBH format. (I got an error when I tried to install Spike as a UCI engine into Fritz and ChessBase as a test.) I put the first two games into a CBV for your downloading convenience. You should be able to replay them fine in any Fritz 9 generation program or ChessBase 9 if you have it updated (see the Help menu). I wish the Mainz people would offer CBV downloads and/or ChessBase would get their programs to figure out Chess960 PGN. Let's rub that magic DD lamp, guys.

Speaking of rubbing lamps, Teimour Radjabov somehow beat Vishy Anand in the second game of their Grenke Leasing Mainz rapid match. He looked dead and gone after Anand nabbed a few pawns. But Anand uncharacteristically lost control as things headed into an endgame and White had enough tricks to complicate the matter when queens came off. Black was already struggling with a miserable bishop on a8 when he blundered with 28..Ng4 and was soon lost. Impressive stuff from Radjabov considering the opposition. The first game was a correct draw against Radja's Sveshnikov. 16..Ne7 was Radjabov's novelty after he played 16..Nb4 against Volokitin a few weeks ago in Biel.

It's blitz! Really. The August 22 Zurich exhibition with Kasparov, Polgar, Karpov, and Korchnoi, once announced as rapid, then shuffle, then rapid, is actually going to be 5'+2" blitz, double round-robin. That is, six rounds. Apparently the jubilee organizers wanted to hurry things along after finding out it could take over three hours to play three rapid games... Those old guys need breaks between games!

So far it seems like the Mainz Classic website is as shuffled as the pieces. Has anyone found any coherent results yet? There are myriad game viewers from which you can try to piece together the various events and their scores, but not much else. Terrible. It's only "Chess960" so far but I hope things improve once the Anand-Radjabov match (today) and the Ordix Open start (Saturday).

The German version of the site is doing a little better. In the U20 Chess960 match Naiditsch took a 3.5-0.5 lead over Harikrishna on the first day only to see the Indian whomp him 4-0 on day two to win. Hort beat Portisch in a blitz playoff after they tied their Chess960 match 4-4. I think Kosteniuk beat Paetz 5.5-2.5 in their shuffle match. Can we play chess now? I tried my best, but I really have a hard time generating any interest in these shuffle games. I find myself observing it like a science experiment and not a chess game. Is it me? I'll try harder to focus during the Aronian-Svidler Chess960 match that starts today.

All sorts of useful and timely information at the new USCF website. 2006 US championship runner-up Yury Shulman just won clear first in the US Open in Chicago. (If you didn't already know it was in Chicago you might have trouble finding out from the site. Gotta get those "who what where when" in there!)

The last round was a bit of a let-down because the young Peruvian talent - 15 year old Emilio Córdova - was more interested in getting a quick draw and his second GM norm than in beating leader Shulman. According to this page in Spanish, Córdova was very happy with his result. His story has been followed closely in the Peruvian press. He was supposed to come back for a tourney in Peru but after a coalition of Peruvian-Americans put together funds to support his expenses he stuck around for the Open.

The USCF site also has some good reports on the US team at the Pan-Am Youth championship in Cuenca, Ecuador. Tatev Abrahayman scored 9-0 against admittedly less than challenging opposition, but it was the only clean score of the event. Elliott Liu, who played in the US Championship this year, also won gold in the U18. This despite a blatantly thrown game between two Venezuelans chasing him in the final round. All the results are presented rather confusingly at the official site.

Peru sent a big team and won an impressive raft of medals. I saw a lot of chess in Peru in my several visits there and they look to be systematizing this interest. The legacy of Julio Granda-Zuñiga might help, although he is famously shy and erratic and sponsorship for chess in Peru is always on the edge.

You are forgiven if you don't remember the first three editions of this tournament. I'd forgotten it myself, even though last year the winner was my old friend Jonathan Levitt, Mr. Clarendon Court himself. (Attack your opponent's center, even if he doesn't have one.) His chances don't look so good this year as the event has changed from a boutique English tournament to a powerful international. Sadly, it is overlapping the end of the British Championship. UK #1 Mickey Adams is playing in the Staunton and in the second round he beat English teen hope David Howell in an epic queen and pawn endgame.

It's also a curiously Dutch flavored event, with Ivan Sokolov and Jan Timman leading a pack of no fewer than five Hollanders in the 12-player all-play-all. Sokolov and Jan Werle lead with 2/2. The event is hosted by ye olde Simpson's-in-the-Strand in London. In the mid-19th century its Grand Cigar Divan was one of the major centers of European, and thus world, chess. Staunton himself played many games there, though it is probably only a rumor that his favorite table was near a trapdoor he could jump through should Morphy come by.

[Charles Milton Ling points out below that this is likely a commemoration of the first post-WWII supertournament, the Groningen 1946 event that was also in honor of Staunton. Botvinnik won ahead of Euwe. Curiously there were no UK players (Kottnauer was still playing as a Czech then). That explains the Dutchies, though I don't see any mention of this on the minimalist official site. (Tinni, stop with the gradient text! Bevel, outline, fini!)]

Speaking of the UK championship, Jonathan Parker now leads alone with 7/9 and two rounds to play. Defending champ Jonathan Rowson is back in the hunt a half-point back. Pert and Gormally are also on 6.5.

The annual Chess Classic, which used to take place in Frankfurt, begins in Mainz, Germany this week. (Joimans pronounce it MYnts and who am I to disagree?) An overview at ChessBase here. The centerpiece is an eight-game rapid match between multiple defending champ Vishy Anand and Teimour Radjabov. The Boy from Baku II has always been a tough rapid player and he's been working and improving his overall game in the past year. Oddly, these two haven't met over the board in nearly three years. Their last decisive game was Radjabov's spectacular win with black at Dortmund 2003.

The Ordix Open is usually one of the strongest open rapid events you'll ever see. Radjabov's win last year put him into this year's match with Anand. Aronian, Morozevich, Grischuk, Bacrot, and Shirov trailed him. That's strong, and it should be just as tough this year. On the circus side, there are also several shuffle chess events. In Mainz they call it "Chess960" for the number of possible positions using the Fischerandom version of the rules. (The king has to be between the rooks and there has to be a bishop of each color.) Aronian plays Svidler in what they are calling the Chess960 world championship. The FiNet Open is also shuffle chess. There are also several human-machine events. Radjabov plays Shredder and Svidler plays a Chess960 match against Spike.

The trouble of transmitting and storing shuffle games is still around. Importing PGN causes trouble with the "illegal" castling, so these games are often given in two or three pieces, depending on if one or both players castle. HIARCS 10 and a slipstream upgrade of ChessBase 9 (and all Fritz 9 generation programs, I believe) has solved this for the ChessBase data format. Importing PGN is still a problem as far as I can tell. I played a Chess960 game in Fritz (with the HIARCS 10 engine) and exported it and replayed with no trouble in ChessBase 9. But when I moved that game to a PGN database and then back into ChessBase it gave the castling move and subsequent moves as notes, not moves. I hope the Mainz folks distribute games in ChessBase format too. (And that ChessBase fixes this, since it's not the PGN format itself that has a problem. See below.) I know there are a few freeware programs that can replay 960 games, links anyone? How about freeware engines that can play it?

The Smith & Williamson 2006 British Championship is underway in Swansea. A few people wrote in to say there were problems with the live games site at the start but it's worked for me in the past few days. With six of eleven rounds in the books Mark Hebden and Nicholas Pert share the lead on five. Two-time defending champion Jonathan Rowson fell off the pace with a loss to Pert in round six. If he comes back to win his third straight he'd be the first to do so since the days of Penrose.

The biggest news out of the UK Ch in the past few years was uninviting the Commonwealth and the strong Indian contingent that had started winning the top prizes. But the continuing story is one that even many strong chess countries continue to suffer, the top players skipping the national championship. The first prize of 10,000 pounds, nearly $19,000, is a lot of fish and chips. But no Adams, no Short, and McShane is only playing a few league games these days. Hodgson and Sadler are inactive. Teen hope David Howell isn't playing.

From the Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory Department we bring you Cannon-Sowray (yo Pete!) from the first round. White was up a queen and had various mates at his disposal. He then fell into a mate in two. Somehow it always seems to happen to the lower rated player...

When I was in Montreal last month I saw a promo for these impressive events. Three of the top American players, a pair of Israelis, a few internationals, and Canadian champion Pascal Charbonneau meet in the powerful Montreal A Group [link fixed] round robin. It's a category 15 (2612 avg.) After three rounds Russia's Timofeev leads with 2.5. In the first round he beat Korneev, who must have really hot-footed it from Villarrobledo. Pascal, a Dirt favorite, has some coming back to do as he trails the field with a half point.

The B Group, a GM norm event, has a more Canuck feel, with five of the ten players representing the home team. But the leader is America's Irina Krush with 2.5/3. She just finished beating Elizabeth Paetz in a six-game match in Dortmund. Maybe if we ask really nicely (and pay her) she'll annotate some games for the Black Belt newsletter when she gets back. Nikolay Noritsyn is Canada's teen hope.

(That's my feeble and fittingly computer-assisted attempt at "Human versus Machine" in Chinese.) There was a big human-machine match this week, the top software programs taking on some of the world's best GMs. If you haven't heard about it and don't know the programs Cyclone and SevenSky or GMs Bu Fengbo and Wang Yang you probably don't play Xiangqi, or Chinese chess. A team of five GMs played five programs in the Copa Langchao at the Olympic Sports Center.

I learned to play Xiangqi (and Shogi) once but would need to brush up to play a game now. I remember there are obstacles on the board you have to move around and that the chariot was the strongest piece. Both games are much faster-paced than our European chess. Draws are rare and games are short. Imagine eliminating castling and most of the pawns. One thing is the same; the machines won the match 11-9.

The press conference for the November 25 Kramnik-Fritz match in Bonn took place in Essen the other day. Six games and Kramnik gets $500,000 for showing up and double that if he wins. Said Kramnik, who drew with Fritz in Bahrain 4-4 in 2002:

Sure, lots of players would turn down half a million bucks even if they thought they'd be crushed. Sign me up. Heck, I'd even settle for half that. I think I know enough anti-computer silliness to grovel to a draw or two. Poor Mickey Adams only scraped a half point against Hydra, but he made the mistake of trying to play normal chess and trying to win, at least at first. I also think Hydra is significantly stronger than anything on commercial hardware.

Not that Kramnik will have an easy time of it. Fritz has four years of programming and chips that are four or five times faster than the ones it used in 2002 in Bahrain. I was at that match running the website and Kramnik made it look easy at the start. But one poor decision and one blunder were enough to level the match. In Bonn he'll have a rest day after each game, an important detail. Playing classical chess against a machine is exhausting.

Perhaps the biggest news is that there's a big new sponsor for the event, the German energy trading giant RAG.

A new event, the "NH Tournament" will begin on August 19 in Amsterdam. Named for the NH Hotel chain, this event is another Scheveningen team tournament, which have been increasingly popular lately. This time it's the "Rising Stars" team versus the "Experience" team in a double round-robin of classical chess (40/120' + g30'+30"). Each player on the winning team gets €2000, the losers get €1000 each. The top scorer among the youngsters gets an invitation to the next Melody Amber tournament, a tasty plum.

Rising Stars: Sergey Karjakin, Magnus Carlsen, Daniel Stellwagen, Jan Smeets, Wang Hao.
Experience: Alexander Beliavsky, Ulf Andersson, Artur Yussupow, Ljubomir Ljubojevic, John Nunn.

The Rising Stars team will be allowed to use earplugs to block out the sound of creaking bones. It's probably going to be a rough ride for the veterans. I'd say +6 for the kiddies. I'd have to peg Big Al as the most likely to make at least an even score, although his active style (also Nunn and Ljubo) may also work against him compared to the guys who were already famous for being ultra-solid 20 years ago (Andersson, Jussupow née Yusupov). There's only one rest day and these whippersnappers are tough. My pro chess consciousness started in the 80's with guys like Nunn and Ljubojevic playing in events like the GMA World Cup tournaments. We'll see if they still have some tricks up their dusty sleeves.

This is why Ljubojevic was warming up in Villarrobledo the other day. The games of the NH will be shown live and there will also be a streaming video transmission, although I'm not sure of the form and format of that yet. I hope it's in the commentary room and not of the players picking their noses. Chess webcams, ugh.

NY Times chess guy Dylan Loeb McClain, himself a strong chessplayer, has a long article covering the World Open cheating hubbub amply covered in these pages in the comments almost in real time. (Also at the International Herald Trib.) There's some follow-up regarding Steve Rosenberg, who was ejected from the event after refusing to be searched when found using an earpiece. Varshavsky continued in the tournament. I haven't heard anything about any disciplinary action or rules changes being made.

From an email from World Open arbiter Carol Jarecki right after the event concluded:

The San Jose Mercury News riffed on the Times article with "(Side note: If in life you find yourself standing outside a restroom stall monitoring a chess player's activity, please seek counseling.)"

Vishy Anand took first place at this powerful Spanish rapid event on tiebreaks ahead of I.Sokolov, Ponomariov, and Korneev. All scored 7.5/9. Names like van Wely, Dreev, and Vallejo didn't make the podium. Yugoslav legend Ljubo Ljubojevic – long since retired to Spain – participated. He's been lured out of retirement once or twice for Dutch team events in the past few years but it's a shame the Villarobledo game file includes only his loss to Vallejo. An old blitz acquaintance of mine from Buenos Aires, Javier Moreno, gave a strong showing but lost to Korneev in the final round. I see he got his GM title not too long ago. Many Argentine players move to Spain (or Italy) since the opportunities to face strong opposition and to get titles are thin at home. (Not to mention making a living at it.)

This was Anand's fourth victory at this tournament, which used to be a regular but has been on hiatus for three years. Anand won 3,000 euros and his weight in wine. This Spanish news page has a classic photograph of him being weighed against the cases of wine. Last I checked Anand didn't drink but I'm betting he won't have much trouble unloading that vino tinto with Ivan Sokolov around. Anand confessed that he was lost in round six against San Segundo, but he held on and then found a great shot (51..Nxf3!) to equalize when White went astray and then even went on to win.

They aren't too impressive yet, but they'll build up into a fun and useful way to perform quick searches. Each entry will have 1-5 tags listed underneath. You can click the tags to see a list of all the entries with that tag. It's less both more and less accurate than using the standard keyword search. For example, if you're looking for items about Dortmund and you use the regular search you'd also get items that just mentioned it in passing – e.g. "performed better here than in Dortmund." Of course it's somewhat subjective. I'm not going to add a tag for every player mentioned or every player in the event.

Having seen them used on various other sites I'm going to use loads of them and some will be goofy. Don't panic. The results page has a list of all the tags used on the site. (Obviously very sparse right now.) I'm not sure when I'll have the time and willpower to go back and tag 965 old entries. Maybe some snowy day. I've also cleaned up the search results page. Just a few more templates to go.

Not at chess, suckers. Hikaru Nakamura points out that former US junior star Noah Siegel just got knocked out of the 2006 World Series of Poker. He finished 64th (of course) and earned 90K. Of course the event requires a 10K entrance fee, although many players are there from online qualifiers. The field was over 8,500 players to start. Siegel won the US Cadet Championship in 1996 and is around 24 now. The database says he hasn't played much in the past few years. More details welcome. Next time you see him he's paying for lunch. Did he make ESPN's coverage? There's a long list of strong US chessplayers who have taken up poker close to full time, mostly online. Is this plague reaching Europe? Alexander Grischuk did okay in serious poker event last year. There's a rumor he went to Vegas for this year's WSOP but I haven't been able to verify that.

Oodles of poker-related threads hereabouts. Take your pick or use the search.

Alert reader and television watcher John Henderson alerts us to a movie currently showing on ITV3.

Sounds plausible. Reminds me of Mercury Rising. John says it's repeating regularly. The IMDB has some more info. Let us know what you think if you catch it. John is headed to Mainz for the Classic and Ordix Open next Monday.

Okay, he tied for first with Svidler and took the Dortmund title on tiebreaks but I said at the start that +2 would guarantee a share of first in this short event. Kramnik beat Peter Leko in the final round to swap places with him in the standings and claim a share of first with 4.5/7. You'll remember Kramnik also won on demand against Leko in the final game of their 2004 world championship match. After lying quite low for the first five rounds and drawing all his games, Kramnik got a bizarre 15-move win over Jobava in round six and today took down Leko in a rather brief endgame. (Call this the Hungarian Masochist Variation. Almasi has defended this several times with mixed results. It's quite unpleasant.)

You can't call Kramnik's win unconvincing because until the great final round the entire tournament was unconvincing! Nobody really pushed until the end. As Kramnik has shown many times in the past, when the tone of a tournament is conservative he can out-conservative anybody. +2 is his number almost on demand and unless you're going to push hard to score +3 you're going to have to share the podium.

This is noteworthy, however, because it comes after Kramnik's recuperation from illness and a preceding stretch of poor results. He showed great form in Turin and typical Kramnik form in Dortmund. He was never ambitious but only a bit worse for a brief moment, against Naiditsch. That's pretty much vintage Vlady. Let's hope the final round doesn't turn out to be vintage Leko. He's making a habit of these late collapses but I have trouble generating any pity for him. He gets a few points early and then stops playing to win, trying just to hold on – and failing. (See Linares.) To win these super events you have to play every round to win, especially if you've got black against Kramnik in the final round.

Svidler's +2 also leaves a strange impression. His mastery of the Grunfeld and his redoubtable technique produced two wins when Jobava and Aronian overpressed with white. Again, no surprise that a short, conservative event had (tall) conservative winners. Aronian tried desperately to mix things up against Gelfand in the final round and found out the hard way that Gelfand, like his old teacher Tigran Petrosian, plays positionally because he prefers it and not because he isn't a tremendous tactician. This was practically the only tactical game of the event. The win moved Gelfand into =3-5 with Adams and Leko.

It seems like it only started yesterday but today is the final round of the Dortmund sprint. It's been something of a slow-motion sprint; think GM Steve Austin. Even beyond the 70% draw rate, the games have been tremendously conservative. I know not everyone can be Topalov or Morozevich or Shirov, but jeez, sometimes it has looked like they were afraid of their shadows. They have managed to build up some inertia toward the end. In rounds four and five Boris Gelfand played a total of 230 moves and came out with an even score. In round four Adams ground him down in a surprisingly difficult R+N endgame with two extra pawns.

Gelfand took revenge on Jobava the next day in a remarkable ending. Symmetrical four pawns versus four pawns and Gelfand used his better king to reach a winning queen and pawn endgame. Astounding! As for the Q+P vs Q, as well documented on ChessBase here, these positions are too arcane for the human mind, especially up against tablebase perfection. A similar thing happened in the Adams game. Adams actually allowed a theoretically drawn position near the end. To me these "errors" are useful reminders of how difficult this game can be. (Which is why I'm far more apt to criticize failures of courage than errors of calculation.)

I've come to the conclusion that Vladimir Kramnik wasn't in physical rehab during his six-month layoff. He was taking a hypnosis training course with bunch of out of work KGB guys. At the Olympiad in Turin Kramnik won some fine games while also receiving (inducing?!) several bizarre blunders. In round six in Dortmund, Jobava, perhaps in shock after losing that pawn endgame to Gelfand, tried to push some macho pawns against Kramnik and got a sound spanking, resigning in just 15 moves with white. Well, it was practically the only combination of the tournament so I guess we should try to enjoy it. Probably the shortest Dortmund loss ever. I remembered Anand hanging a piece against Kasparov in 92 for a 17 move loss. The database reminds that Huebner hung his queen (in a lost position) against Shirov in the same event and resigned on move 16.

The event has been a letdown for Levon Aronian, who has lost his last two games and will finish with a minus score. He was unable to impose his freewheeling game against the veteran grinders. Leko and Svidler lead with +2. Kramnik and Adams are a half point behind. Kramnik has white against Leko in today's final round while Svidler has white against Adams. On paper it should make for some fighting chess. We'll see.

Actually it wasn't too hot today, but this was taken the other day when it was 40+ and 100% humidity here in New York. Argh. The kitties get even lazier but they still like the sun.

Open thread, topic suggestions, happy thoughts.

If only so we have a shiny new Biel thread so we can keep on talking about one of the most enjoyable tournaments of the year, the Biel Grandmaster tournament. Morozevich won with a round to spare and saw no reason not to accept Radjabov's draw offer in the final round after ten moves of theory. Less explicable is Radjabov's decision to offer it. Karma took the express train, however, when Carlsen beat Bruzon to tie Radjabov for =2-3. (Carlsen took second on tiebreaks.) Ban the draw offer.

A typically stellar Morozevich explosion in a category 17 tournament, despite the two losses to Carlsen (one a brilliant win for the 15-year-old, the other a blunder by Moro). He failed the match the 8/10 he scored in Biel in 2003. In 2004 he also won with 7.5/10 in a slightly stronger event. It continues to astound that he can only occasionally manage a plus score in supertournaments. But he's always a one-man circus at the board and is devastating with both colors to just about anyone outside the top 10. (Inconsistently devastating to his fellows in it.)

Radjabov looked quite professional in both the good and bad meanings of that word in chess. He beat each member of the second half of the table 1.5-0.5 but took two miniature draws in the final two rounds. Unless he was ill this was ridiculous. Pelletier and Volokitin showed that chess is to be played even when there is little to play for. Local boy Pelletier got off the mat toward the end, scoring his only wins of the event in rounds eight and ten. Bruzon rarely showed signs of life in Biel and finished without a win 1.5 points behind Volo and Pelletier. In the past few years Bruzon has wins over Ivanchuk and Morozevich and he battled Anand to a standstill in rapids and blitz at Leon a few months ago. So chalk it up to someone having to have a bad tournament.

Sweden's Pia Cramling dominated the concurrent women's event in Biel, tha Accentus tournament. The veteran finished 1.5 points ahead of Poland's Monika Socko.

I'm finally reinstalling the blog software tonight to solve the errors, also upgrading to Movable Type 3.3. I'm suspending commenting for a while so things don't disappear when I input the backup. After that I'll still be tweaking things and probably adding a captcha or other form of spam control. Maybe a chess version of kittenauth?! I'm currently being bombarded with several hundred comment spams per day. The filter catches 99.5%, but the load is notable.

When I'm done with the major lifting I'll post an all-clear here and turn commenting back on. Then you can notify me of problems you find. I'll be updating the templates as well, but that's not critical and will take a few days. If the whole thing goes down and you get 404 errors, sorry. Thanks for your exasperation.

Update: As you can see, things didn't go too well on the data front. The data corruption that was causing the errors we were experiencing made it impossible to correctly export it all, starting on June 1. I'm apparently going to have to reenter every entry since them, but that doesn't include comments. I can manually insert links to my backup pages for each entry from June to now, which sounds rather hellish and won't be my top priority today. The good news is that the back-end is doing great, much faster and more stable now on MySQL.

Update 2: Found a fairly fast way to reenter two months worth of blog thanks to the mightiest utility in the land, Clipmate. Powerpaste rocks. I think I've also come up with a lesser evil way to get the comments back for June-July. No, not entering all 2000+ of them into the system one at a time. But pasting them into the "extended" entry field will at least make them available. Not sure what they'll look like just yet but at least they'll be readily available and new comments will appear below them in a fairly natural way.

Update 3: Okay, all the comments are back for June-July, slapped into the extended entry and without formatting. Commenting is also back on. Now to the templates so the item pages look right. I'll get to the search and monthly archive templates later. At least the admin is three times faster than it was before. I'll also be doing categories and tags in a few days. There are probably some broken links and such. Post issues and bugs here.

Update 4: Seems like all is well, although I need to import the notification list somehow. Any bloggers out there want to test out the trackback system with this item?

No, the tournament's not over, but the race for first is. By winning his seventh (!) game of the tournament the amazing Russian sealed his third Biel victory in three attempts. He lost twice to Carlsen but won every other game, including today's pretty demolition of Pelletier. Radjabov failed to keep pace, accepting a 16 move draw offer from Bruzon, who is already in the cellar and you'd think would play with nothing to lose. Maybe he's in mourning for Fidel? It's a turgid opening to be sure, but I'm a little surprised Radja didn't play to win with black. He'll have white against Morozevich tomorrow

Meanwhile, Volokitin completed a sweep of Magnus Carlsen, who is in third place with five points, a half-point behind Radjabov. I always thought 6..g6 was simply wrong here because of 7.Bxf6 and never knew it had actually been played by a few GMs before. This game isn't going to change my mind. Looks horrible. Carlsen scrambled about for compensation but never got it and lost rather humbly. He has white against Bruzon in tomorrow's final round.

Several people have sent in this link to a long Scientific American article about chess and cognition. It's by science writer Phil Ross, father of Laura Ross, one of the top female players in the US. There's not much new material for this crowd, but it's a well put together compendium of the psychological and scientific research that has gone into how the mind – the chess mind in particular – does what it does. The usual suspects and quotes are enlisted – de Groot, Capablanca, Mozart, Goethe – to good effect. There are a few updates and the sidebar graphics are nice. One of the researchers interviewed attributes the cumbersome phrase "effortful study" to what makes the difference between excellence and mediocrity, as opposed to innate talent.

This addresses one of our favorite topics: why we plateau where we plateau. That it's a matter of desire isn't exactly a revelation. There is also a time factor. Unless you are particularly dedicated you simply keep spending the same amount of time (or less) on the game. The law of diminishing returns sets in and you don't get any better. Most people stop improving when it become too much like work – unless they have a serious passion for it.

Of course the Polgars are invoked in addressing the prodigy discussion.

I agree that work and dedication is more important than magic beans in just about any cognitive exercise. But just because we can't (as yet) quantify it that doesn't mean an innate talent for chess aptitude doesn't exist. It's just that like with about everything it's a combination (ha ha) and not a single element that produces tremendous skill. Our instruments and studies are still incredibly primitive compared to the brain. Much of this dovetails with material in the book I spent the last year working on with Garry Kasparov. He argues that the capacity for work is an intrinsic part of talent and can't really be separated.

I'm increasingly more interested in the improving brain scan technologies than psych experiments. The sidebar image showing chess players use the frontal and parietal cortices more the stronger they get is a good start. I remember when that Nature article came out in 2001. Malcolm Gladwell's pop-science writings in the New Yorker and the books The Tipping Point and Blink provide edible overviews but can be blithe and frustrating if you are looking for answers. Related read on "genius" at his site.

It's getting hard tell the difference between the rest days and the game days in Dortmund. For the second straight round all four games were drawn, three of them in fewer than 30 moves. Leko and Svidler still lead with +1 after three rounds. Jobava and Aronian took just 21 moves, but at least it was a repetition after many exchanges. Black is down a pawn and White has to accept repetition or give it back with annoyingly weak light squares. Not guilty.

Adams played a Shabalov idea in a crazy opening line that has been known for years. Black gives up three minors for the queen with four rooks still on the board. (Shaba played this in a Playchess online blitz tournament in 2004!) Not finding any way to break through against Leko (surprise, not), Adams acquiesced to a repetition on move 23 instead of playing on with, say, 23..Rd6 when 24.Nc6 Rxc6 25.Bxc6 Qb6 is good for Black. Just 24.e3 looks unbreakable, however. Guilty with mitigating factors since it looks pretty clear there's no way to make progress for Black and if White tries to go forward he'll be eaten by rabid beavers.

Grunfeld maven Svidler took on Grunfeld basher Gelfand in an accurate draw that swapped down to bones. Not guilty. That leaves Kramnik-Naiditsch, which very early on looked like it would fulfill its billing as a one-sided way for Big Vlad to get on track. As in their Turin game, Naiditsch played over-friskily and got into serious trouble early on. They followed two recent Naiditsch games until 10.Qd3 instead of Qc2. Black threw caution and good sense to the wind with 10..c5, allowing a fork on g7 and it looked like Kramnik was going to get away with a clean pawn after some calculation.

Instead White swapped queens instead of taking the rook on move 14. The game eventually ended in a draw, although it wasn't without interest the rest of the way. According to Kasparov, Black could have played for a significant advantage with 20...Rc2. I'll let Kramnik off the hook on this one because it's simply not his style to get into such messes. The position after 14.Qxh8 Rxc1+ 15.Kd2 Rxh1 16.Bxh1 looks quite unpleasant, although the computer shows White can get out fine with his pawn with precision. Kramnik quite likely would have won had he gone for it, so he gets a slap on the wrist. They also played down to kings, which is always nice.

An honest but cautious day, excepting Naiditsch. So far there have been any number of Morozevich games from Biel with more excitement than the entire Dortmund tournament has produced unless they are playing in the nude and nobody told me.