December 2007 Archives

A few bits and bobs for those of you with no one to get drunk with and kiss. (Hint: it's easier to kiss them if you get them drunk first.)

It was more more Morozevich at the Russian Superfinal. He bounced back to win the event with style, beating Inarkiev in the final round to finish in clear first by a full point ahead of Grischuk despite two losses. His 8/11 is the sort of score we are used to seeing him put up against much lesser fields. Is this his strongest tournament win ever? Can't think of a stronger one off the top of my bald head. He was the top seed, we should remember, but he's so unstable the more solid 2700+ players in the field often top him. He's still young (30) and might yet add the stability required to finish ahead of Anand and Kramnik.

Speaking of the world champion and the man who doesn't feel like Anand is the world champion, they are serendipitously knotted atop the new FIDE rating list at 2799. Nothing too exciting. It's fun to watch age cohort partners Carlsen and Karjakin stay joined at the hip, now at numbers 13 and 14 in the world. Karjakin got all the attention at the start and lately it's been all Carlsen. But the World Cup semifinalist teens are just a single point apart. They still have a long way to go before C-K battles dominate the way K-K battles did.

Speaking of champagne, you might want to use yours to wash down some of these pills:

"There isn't any question about it -- they made me a much better player," said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player.

[He] started using Adderall after he was diagnosed with ADHD five years ago and later got a prescription for Provigil to further improve his focus. ADHD drugs work by increasing the level of the brain chemical dopamine, which is thought to improve attention. Provigil's mechanism of action is not well understood, but boosting the effect of dopamine is thought to be part of it.

The drugs improved his concentration during high-stakes tournaments, he said, allowing him to better track all the action at his table.

We've gone over this stuff here before, and in various articles we put up at ChessBase.com over the years. The old debates about drug testing in chess have often hinged on "until something is proven to improve performance, don't bother." On the other hand, if something improves mental performance without doing any harm, is that really a problem we should worry about? It was the abuse of doping and steroids that led to testing, not their mere existence. Things have since moved to another level, of course, especially in cycling. Anyone out there played competitive chess while on these concentration drugs?

Just tossing up a quick Russian Superfinal item before tomorrow's last round before you guys get as depressed as I am. Morozevich was cruising to a win after an incredible six straight wins, the last coming against Svidler with black. But Dreev took out the leader in the 9th round and today Amonatov held Moro to a draw despite having the disadvantage of the white pieces. The cliche about Morozevich is that he's better with black than with white. His opponents, obliged to press with the first move, get drawn into his chaotic world and lose. With white he can over-press against a solid position and lose. Cliche or not, so far he has four wins with black, two with white, plus two losses with white. Grischuk is a half-point behind and 20-year-old Tomashevsky is a point back. The youngster has been playing plenty of fun and inconsistent chess to earn a 5-win, 3-loss box score.

The trouble with time is that it only goes forward. The second you needed to read that first sentence is gone forever. You cannot have it back. There go a few more. Tragedy and joy pass with equal swiftness. No matter how wonderful or horrific a moment, it cannot be altered or replayed, except in your dreams and your nightmares.

Time is what gives life meaning in the most literal sense. This is another way of putting the well-known phrase that death is what defines life. Life does not always go on. Time always goes on. Time takes each life along with it as a courtesy that can be revoked at any moment. We have memories, photographs, and countless mythologies to perpetuate the spirit of the dead among the living. These are the feeble tools we have assembled to confront the magnitude of our inability to cope with death.

Find comfort where you may. Time has passed and it has taken life with it. Since you started reading this dozens, perhaps hundreds, of human lives have ended. We can only hope no one we know and love, no one sleeping in the next room, was included in their number. Because of course death is also a punishment for the living, those left behind to wail, to protest, to question. One life? No. Many lives, many families, entire communities suffer.

Time treats us all equally, not fairly. The flow of minutes from morning to afternoon on a single sunny Bahamian day can shatter. At six-thirty a.m. you say goodbye to a virile 30-year-old, an ideal husband and doting father of a small son, as he heads out on a routine spear-fishing trip. Four hundred and twenty minutes later you are identifying his lifeless body and holding your sister for what seem like hours. But they are only minutes and they are gone.

Next come days of fresh grief with each notification, cold logistics and planning, the love of family and friends united by tragedy, and the blessed incomprehension of children. Is it affliction or miracle that time and memory spare a child the understanding that he spent the first three years of his life with his father and will now spend the rest of his life without him? The books that only Papa could read will lie unread.

We survive, as life mandates even where the will fails. We survive on shared memories, shared blood, and neighbors' casseroles tasting of tears and love. We have lost a husband, a friend, a brother, a son, a father, a Frenchman, a fisherman, a scientist. He was so much more than all of those things and he will be missed beyond the ability to describe. Rest in peace, JB.

I'll be in the Bahamas for the next few weeks and posting will be sporadic.

And even the mice are stirring. We got great games from Ivanchuk and Morozevich, better than any sugarplum vision I've ever had. How about your chess wishlist for Santa? How about a real new book from Fischer, updated to 150 games? He wouldn't even have to computer-check many of them himself since that's all been done deeply in the Kasparov Predecessor IV book on Fischer. Speaking of, the first book on all the Kasparov-Karpov games will be coming out early next year. It starts with their simul game from 1975 and ends with Garry taking the title in 1985.

Garry is doing a sort of 2007 in review + 2008 preview column for New In Chess and he'll talk about his book projects more there. What would you consider to be the highlights and lowlights of 2007? What will be the big stories in 2008? Carlsen in the top 10? Kamsky completing his climb back to a WCh match?

Next on my fantasy Christmas list would be a Spassky collection. He's never gotten off his tanned butt to put one together. His old joke, "I'm still working on game two from the Reykjavik match" is past its expiration date. So many great games. The problem is that what makes a player's own annotations so valuable is the insight and sense of place only he can provide. And, good memory or no, those things become clouded as the years pass. I would love to see more contemporary game collections with notes. New In Chess comes close to achieving this on the fly, but that's still only a dozen games with the sort of chatty notes I'm thinking about.

By the way, I won't have time for all the web work until I get back, but there will at last be some product posts and a new review element for y'all. Books, software, even sets and clocks if you like. Old or new, although being in print is a bonus. Start stocking up on ideas now. The only book I've really read lately is the Bareev & Levitov book on Kramnik's three WCh matches. Rambling in parts but full of choice tidbits, provocative discussion, real wit, and insight both on and off the board. But I'll leave the reading and the reviews up to you guys.

Hello from the sunny Bahamas. Fried grouper, a Goombay Smash, and pink sands sure help melt away thoughts of NY snow, website bugs, and loco Time editors.

Not too far away from my sister's house here in Spanish Wells (a tiny island even other Bahamians often have never heard of), Vassily Ivanchuk continued his habit of winning second-tier events off the beaten track. He again took the top spot at the Carlos Torre Memorial tournament in Merida, Mexico. The Ukrainian beat India's Pentala Harikrishna in a final match that required rapid tiebreaks.

There were some remarkable games and many upsets in the event. Cuban favorites Bruzon and Dominguez both went out in the first round of the KO portion. Bruzon lost to Ivanchuk in an awkward pairing to start off, but in what style! Chukky won with black in 20 moves in a Petroff that started off 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.d4 Nxe4 4.dxe5 Bc5!?! 5.Qd5 Bxf2+ and continued on in equally spectacular fashion. ¡Viva Ivanchuk! The otherwise fine official website doesn't seem to have the games for download anywhere. Mark will probably come to our rescue tomorrow.

Vishy Anand is touring India right now and is all over the chess-avid Indian press. This bit caught my eye.

It would be great to play Kasparov again: Anand

Wednesday, 19 December , 2007, 14:47

Kolkata: World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand would love to have another match with former champion Garry Kasparov if the Russian legend decides to come out of retirement.

Arriving at the city late Tuesday night, Anand interacted with the media after felicitating the NIIT MCA East Zone title winners. "I would welcome it, if Kasparov changes his mind about retirement. We can have a great match then. We did not have an opportunity to play after 1995 and that is a real pity," Anand said when asked if he was keen on playing Kasparov.

The last time they met was in the World Championship clash in the World Trade Centre where Garry crushed Anand. On his goals next year, Anand said: "Anything I attain in chess is a great motivation for me. I will be playing in Corus next month. I am a five-time winner there, but there is no lack of motivation."

"Crushed" is a little unfair for -3, if only because it leaves us begging for adjectives for what Garry did to Nigel Short in 1993. (Although Short had more winning chances in his match.) I've always been more interested in Kasparov's post-match dominance over Anand. Vishy had his share of wins against him before 1995 but after that he couldn't beat Garry for love or money. Considering how strong and successful Anand has continued to be otherwise it's hard not to delve into the hackneyed realms of nemesis and psychology when looking for a reason.

12 games in Germany, as tipped. Here's yer thread.

World Chess Championship to be held in Germany: Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik battle for the highest chess title in October 2008

* When: From October 11 – 30, 2008
* Where: Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn
* Overall Prize fund: 1,5 Million Euro
* Patron: German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück
* Main sponsor: Evonik Industries AG

The match will consist of twelve games, played under classical time controls, in the period from October 11 to October 28, 2008. If there is a tie at the end of these games a tiebreak will be played on October 30, 2008. The prize fund, which will be split equally between the players, is 1,5 million Euro (approximately 2,1 million US dollars) including taxes and FIDE licensee fees.

I'm glad that there aren't any draw odds, though most would agree that Anand had a decent case for getting them considering Kramnik had them in his 14-game match against Leko in 2004. Weird about the even split of the prize fund. Next up, scheduling Kamsky-Topalov. Is there any reason that match needs to take place after the Anand-Kramnik match?

Don't be alarmed, comrade, it's only the Russian Championship Superfinal. It begins tomorrow at the Central Chess Club in Moscow and runs 11 rounds to the 30th. The field: Alekseev, Amonatov, Vitjugov, Grischuk, Dreev, Inarkiev, Morozevich, Rychagov, Svidler, Timofeev, Tomashevsky, Jakovenko. A very powerful field with all the top-rated Russians playing except for Kramnik. Alekseev is the defending champion. He tied with Jakovenko last year at +4 and won the rapid tiebreaks. A women's event runs alongside. This may be the live link but right now it's still showing the Kramnik-Anand advanced chess game from November. Games begin at 1500 local time, 1200 GMT, 7am EST. The time control is 1 hour 40 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 50 minutes for the next 20 moves and then 10 minutes to the end of the game, with a ten second increment from move one.

[Yes the homepage bug is still with us but it's apparently not a template bug because those are clean as a whistle now. Back to the bug-hunting drawing board.]

Gata Kamsky just forced a draw against Alexei Shirov in game four in the final match of the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. That sealed a 2.5-1.5 match win and the World Cup title for Kamsky, who won game two. He finished the event undefeated with match wins over Adly, Avrukh, K Georgiev, Svidler, Ponomariov, Carlsen, and Shirov. A tremendous performance. The win nets him $120,000 and a scheduled match against Veselin Topalov to determine the challenger for the 2009 world championship match. Congratulations to Gata, Brooklyn's finest! Also cheers to Alexei Shirov, who played a heck of a tournament.

The internet chess commentariat is always eager to talk about Bobby Fischer, with or without any recent pretext. And when they have an actual excuse, stand back. So please, leave the chess threads alone. Same goes with all the political rambling under chess threads. I'm loathe to delete things, but when people are trying to talk about an ongoing chess event and have to wade through so much off-topic crud I feel obliged to. Thanks much.

To help out, here's your Fischer thread. The Fischer-related news that is causing the kerfuffle is the appearance of an auction on Ebay Canada this week for a book called "My 61 Memorable Games" by Bobby Fischer. [Auction removed by Ebay, see below.] Actually it's for 50 copies of the book, which includes analysis of the first game of Fischer-Spassky, 1992 and "improved analysis and commentary" from Fischer. There is also a foreword from Fischer quoted by the auction seller:

"It is no secret that I have withdrawn from competitive chess. This book will not focus on that subject. Certain views that I have expressed publicly in the past, through radio and the inter- net and other forms of communication, are likewise not mentioned anywhere in this book. The only quarrels featured on these pages will be the silent battles of the two minds playing the game of chess. I know many of the readers seek answers to probing questions regarding the Bobby Fischer of 1972. That person no longer exists. The questions I will answer are: Why did I write this book? Why now, after all these years? I’ve wanted to release an official version of my book updated in algebraic notation, with a few minor corrections. (Editor’s note: Unauthorized versions of Mr. Fischer’s book from 1969, My 60 Memorable Games, do exist.) I also have a few things to say to others that have written about my games that I strongly disagree with, to put it mildly. It’s about time that I addressed these issues. And why now? The United Bank of Switzerland has taken almost all of the money from my 1992 rematch with Borris Spassky. For those who are unaware, this is over $3,000,000. My ongoing battle with them is getting nowhere despite International Law clearly being on my side. So I bring to you my previous 60 memorable games plus one from the event that has indirectly caused me so much trouble, in the hopes that the sales of this book will reverse that situation. It was tempting to add many important games from the path leading up to and including the 1972 World Championship, but that was simply too big of a project for now."

This entire things looks bizarre to me. The question is whether it's bizarre because Fischer is nuts or bizarre because it's a scam Fischer has nothing to do with. There is no mention of a publisher and if Fischer is actually hard up for money, which I doubt, he could simply sign a few books. The auction page includes two images from inside the book and reflect substantial changes and additions to the analysis and text based on comparing them to my copy of the 1969 original. But even from this limited sample, several of the changes look like the arbitrary ones that got UK publisher Batsford into such hot water for their 1995 version of "My 60 Memorable Games." That enraged Fischer; I was at the press conference in Buenos Aires in which he railed against Batsford while brandishing the offending edition. Esteemed chess historian Edward Winter went over it and found 570 changes from the original, shaming Batsford into pulling the book.

My initial suspicion was that this "61" is based on the Batsford text, but I don't have the Batsford book to check. Regardless, it certainly contains examples of what Winter called "pointless chopping and changing." E.g. in the first game in the book, against Sherwin, the comment in analysis after move 16..Ng6 reads "Had Sherwin seen what was coming, however, he might have chosen..." in the original. In the auction page it reads "Had Sherwin seen what was coming, however, he might have decided to defend with..."

It's very hard to imagine Fischer doing this since it was exactly this sort of thing he railed against. (As well as the faulty analysis Batsford inserted.) That doesn't rule out his giving permission to someone else to make a buck. Perhaps Fischer, after 40 years, now feels strongly about putting out an updated edition. Publishers have rights, but Fischer hasn't exactly been very respectful of such things (or publishers respectful of him). Still, with such a potentially lucrative franchise there is no way the publisher possessing the rights to the original material would let this slide. And if they are involved there would be a much bigger roll-out than a mysterious and anonymous appearance on Canadian Ebay. Again, it's not hard to imagine the paranoid Fischer eschewing dealing with the publisher and going this route, although this all seems extremely dubious. If he wanted to make money, why keep it quiet? No PR was done at all, almost as if they were hoping to keep this under the radar. My feeling is that Fischer has nothing to do with this and that both buyer and seller should beware.

I'd be happy to be wrong, so we await a comment from Fischer (in hospital last I heard) or something from Faber and Faber (or whoever has the rights today, perhaps Batsford?!). It's one of the tragedies of our literature that such an important book has remained out of print for so long. A simple conversion into algebraic would have been fabulous. Of course it's a shame we'll never have a complete collected games by Fischer; "My 60 Memorable Games" ends in 1967 and the one great game from 1992 is hardly compensation for 1968-1972. Marky Mark has some caustic comments about how it's almost worse if this is the real, Fischer-authored and approved, deal, since it would be such a blatant cash grab. I'm fine with authors making money from their work and there's nothing wrong with an updated edition of the original. Let's hope that's what this is.

UPDATE: This email from Ebay just in from someone who bid on one of the lots:

The following is a notice from eBay Trust & Safety regarding:

Item Number - 320196692877

Item Title - My 61 Memorable Games

Our records show that you were a bidder or buyer of one or more of this seller's items. We recently removed this seller's active listings and suspended the seller's trading privileges. Due to privacy concerns we cannot share further details about this seller.

So, scam or, less likely, a pirate book and the auction was shut down after contact with the rights owner.

Seconds ago Alexei Shirov resigned the second game of the final match of the 2007 World Cup. That makes the score 1.5-0.5 after Kamsky drew the first game on the black side of a Spanish. Today's game was a closed (anti-Sveshnikov) Sicilian that got sharp fast as Shirov attempted one of his patented ..g5-out-of-nowhere kingside attacks. Things got wild as Kamsky sold out his own king and even allowed doubled rooks on the seventh before he mounted a dangerous counterattack. It turned out Black had grabbed at least one pawn too many and couldn't defend. Probably the last best try to bail out was 31..Rhg2, although White's pawns still look like killers. (The computer tosses out 31..Nf7 or 31..Rh1.) Even the position where Shirov resigned takes some figuring out. Kamsky's precision in defense and then offense was astounding, even according to Fritz. Truly a wonderful game -- turn off your chess engine and savor the insane complications with that mass of evolved cells attached to your spinal cord (the top).

Kudos to both players for the show. Shirov will come back with the white pieces tomorrow and nobody doubts he's got the guts and the form to level the score. He's got to go for it in game three because there's no way he wants to be in a must-win with black against Kamsky.

Every chess fan's favorite ex-convict is doing a book signing at Borders Bookstore in the Financial District of NYC on Tuesday, December 18 at 10am. It's for How Life Imitates Chess, which I collaborated on. Come one, come all. I'll also be there in case you want to come harass me about how little I've been posting here lately. (Or thank me, depending.) I'll try to get Garry to wear a Santa hat.

Garry officially had to abandon his Russian presidential run this week, by the way. It's hard to hold the required meeting when no one will rent you the space to do so. We had no illusions about the Central Election Committee approving two million opposition signatures even if our tiny infrastructure could have put them together. But we were at least hoping to get to the next stage. But even that wasn't going to happen as three different venues canceled arrangements after finding out it was for a Kasparov campaign event. Business as usual. The real campaign -- for fair elections and free media -- goes on, of course.

Who says Alexei Shirov is playing well? He missed a mate in 208 in his first semifinal rapid tiebreak game against Sergei Karjakin! How does a supposed endgame expert miss a forced win with rook and bishop versus two knights requiring just a few hundred perfect moves? Good grief. Yes, the computers are eager to throw away the extra black pawn to reach the 6-piece tablebase win, 50-move rule be damned. Shirov was more practical but still couldn't break through the miraculous defense by Karjakin's two knights. Incredible. According to the bases, Shirov came as close as mate in 28, but it was soon back over 100. This after a spectacular, double-fisted battle in the Sveshnikov, Shirov on the black side in a line he played against Jakovenko a few months ago.

Caissa is usually unforgiving regarding missed opportunities. I fully expected Shirov to somehow lose with white in the second game as punishment for failing to convert the first. But he who is in tremendous form can spit in the face of fate and Shirov dominated the second game as well, coming out with an extra pawn in the Marshall and winning an endgame with a couple of extra pawns and a marauding king. This is Shirov's second win in a row in Khanty-Mansiysk with this 17.Qxd5 Marshall line. He beat Jakovenko with it just three days ago. It was the first time he'd required tiebreaks to move on, an impressive stat even though he's been the rating favorite in all of his matches so far. The win put him into the four-game final match that begins on Thursday, December 13.

Shirov's opponent got an extra day off. Brooklyn's finest, Gata Kamsky, disposed of Magnus Carlsen with deceptive ease. After drawing quickly with black against the Norwegian teen's surprise Scotch, Kamsky demolished the Petroff in game two. Kamsky's well-known avoidance of main opening lines was on display in both games and this time it worked very well for him. In particular it's nice to see some more offbeat stuff against the Petroff, which has been rock solid in the main Nxe5 lines. Carlsen underestimated White's kingside attack and was forced to give up the exchange, after which Kamsky mopped up with his usual technical precision despite time trouble. It looked like Carlsen just ran out of gas in this match, but Kamsky, like Shirov, has been making it look easy against just about everyone so far.

It's great to have the two players showing the best chess arrive in the final match, not always the case in these KO events. Both players are in devastating form, undefeated and with 2800+ results so far. Shirov has won endgames as well as his traditional tactical brilliancies. Kamsky has looked like the streamroller of old on occasion, requiring little home-region Siberian luck. Kamsky's nerves are legendary and he'll need them against Shirov over the four games. I swapped a quick email with Gata, who has been working hard with his second, Israel's Emil Sutovsky. He said he knew the final would be tough and that Shirov has been playing the best chess of his life, considering his recent tournaments. I teased him about being a nightmare opponent for both Kramnik and Anand, having won matches against both of them in the past, but of course it's too early to talk about that, as Kamsky reminded me. Hey, a Brooklynite's gotta dream, right?

Both semifinal winners were twice the age of their opponents, so let's hear it for the old guys. Kamsky and Shirov came up as juniors in the USSR together despite Shirov being two years older. They were raised on the Karpov-Kasparov world championship matches that must have seemed like eternal re-runs from 84-90. Kamsky soon left for more opportunities to play in the USA and was quickly one of the game's great prodigies. Shirov also established himself as an elite player and both were in the top ten by 1993. They faced each other 17 times in elite events before Kamsky retired in 1996. Shirov was +3 in classical play, Kamsky +1 in rapid (and +2 in blindfold, which shouldn't be a factor in Khanty-Mansiysk, unless Kirsan gets another bright idea). They've only played once since Kamsky's return in 2005, a crushing win for Shirov at last month's Tal Memorial. They split two wins at the following blitz world championship. More in a bit...

... Both finalists have already covered the rent money for 2008 and then some. The loser of the final match gets $80,000, which is real money back in the US if not much against the Euro these days. The winner gets $120,000 and what one would expect to be a lucrative match against Veselin Topalov for the right to play a match for the world championship against the winner of next year's Anand-Kramnik championship match. On the other hand, you can bet Shirov is going to make sure the check clears before leaving Khanty-Mansiysk, just in case. He's been on the wrong side of match victory before, Kramnik in a 1998 match to qualify for a WCh match against Kasparov only to be stiffed on both the match and the money. This will make the Spaniard a sentimental favorite for many, especially if he ends up in a match against Kramnik -- the guy who, despite that loss to Shirov, ended up facing (and beating) Kasparov in 2000.

It's final four time in Khanty-Mansiysk. Karjakin ousted Alekseev in the only quarterfinal to go to tiebreaks, blasting the Russian champ's Najdorf in pretty style in the second game. Kamsky had already much the same to Ponomariov in their second classical game to go through. It was a remarkably one-sided game for this level of competition. Shirov took out Jakovenko 2-0 after winning the first game on the white side of a Marshall Gambit. They followed a game Jakovenko played against Wang Hao a few months ago up till move 21. Oddly, with that in mind, it seemed like Black was in trouble quickly against Shirov's a6 pawn grab. 21..Bh3, played by Smeets recently, looks a lot better. Strange. Shirov moved into the semis by winning the second game as well. Spain's favorite Latvian is putting on quite a show so far and I can already hear chess fans licking their chops at the prospect of a Shirov-Topalov match, however undeserving the Bulgarian might be of such privilege.

Carlsen and Cheparinov played an absolutely wild first game. Cheparinov played a sharp piece sacrifice that eventually boiled down to a R vs B+N endgame. It looked like a relatively easy win for Carlsen but Cheparinov kept finding tricks and eventually managed to reach an endgame with pawns versus a bishop and pawn. White went wrong early with the backwards move 54.Kd3 when Ke5 or just about anything else would have won with much less work. Instead, it should have been a draw with that mythical beast, best play. Amazingly, the three black pawns can hold the draw. If the c-pawn goes forward the g-pawn gives its life for the black king to gain just enough time to get back and get the c-pawn. Cool. The game should also have ended in a draw even with just two black pawns. This is tablebase territory and they show the players swapping mistakes several times in a row before the Bulgarian made the last blunder and lost. The last mistake was also an instructive one. 59..Ke4 holds the draw by crossing in front of the e-pawn to shoulder off the white king. The c-pawn is slow and both sides queen with a tablebase draw. Cheparinov won a pawn in the second game but couldn't make any progress in the four-rook endgame. It's definitely drawish, but allowing the kingside clamp couldn't have helped White's chances.

The semifinals are Carlsen-Kamsky and Shirov-Karjakin. [Update: Kamsky just drew game one in just 21 moves against Carlsen's Scotch Game.] There's actually a lot of good content at the official site, by the way. I just haven't had time to look at much of it. My old colleague Sergey Shipov, the best annotator in the business, is on the job and the official bulletins have long interviews with many of the players. Most of those are on this page in html, too.

Live and replay here. I suppose this is really the quarterfinals +1 since the final is really a match to face Topalov for the right to play for the world championship. But we can get into that when we finally have a winner in Khanty-Mansiyisk. The pairings:

1) Ponomariov-Kamsky. Two games at the 2006 MTel event, Kamsky drew an anti-Marshall with black and won one with white. They both won with white at last week's blitz championship.
2) Carlsen-Cheparinov. Carlsen eliminated Cheparinov in rapids at the last World Cup. Carlsen beat him at Corus B in 2005. They drew at the Corus B 2006. Cheparinov is better known as Topalov's second.
3) Karjakin-Alekseev. Haven't played since Alekseev won at the "Young Stars" event in 2005.
4) Shirov-Jakovenko. Played each other three classical games this year already. Two draws and a win for Shirov. Shirov is the only player left who hasn't needed tiebreaks yet, if rest counts for anything.

Player listed first has white in today's first game. Winner of match one faces winner of match two and 3 vs 4 in the semifinals.

In round 4, Ponomariov won the first game against Sasikiran in a hot line of the QGA. Cute finish. Sasikiran kept up the pressure in the second game and would have had winning chances in the endgame had he found the clever 51.Rg8+ Kf6 52.Rxg5+! with a fork getting the rook back with a spare pawn profit. But it wasn't to be and so ended the longshot 2009 all-India world championship. Ponomariov and Kamsky are both best known for their fighting qualities, so this should be a tough match. I gotta go Brooklyn, baby.

All-Russia and all-Bulgaria are still possible, however. Cheparinov got nothing with white against Wang Yue but struck with an aggressive line of the King's Indian Saemisch in the second game. Black started out with a sharp 12..b5 pawn sac and never let up. The queenside attack was far ahead of White's activity and the young Bulgarian smashed through in spectacular fashion with 26..Bxa3! a bishop sac followed by a rook sac. Tremendous stuff and one of the games of the tournament so far. That was the end of the massive Chinese delegation. We'll hold off on the Topalov-Cheparinov match jokes until the finals since he'll be a big underdog against Carlsen, who is looking very strong.

The Norwegian teen took out the redoubtable Mickey Adams on the Englishman's home turf. No, not a pub in Cornwall, but maneuvering into superior endgames. After winning the first game with two bishops against Adams' two knights Carlsen held on in the second game despite a pawn disadvantage. Adams consolidated the opening gambit pawn against the topical "delayed Marshall" planted by Carlsen but missed a few winning endgame lines in time trouble.

These delayed ..d5 Spanish lines have been popular lately. (Grischuk-Aronian in Mexico City.) The next day Jakovenko also held on to the pawn against Aronian and rode it all the way to a win against Aronian in their first rapid game. That came after two brief classical draws. In the second rapid Aronian entertained the crowd by playing rook and pawn against rook for forty moves before accepting his elimination.

Jakovenko will go for his second upset in a row against Alexei Shirov, who is rolling along with flair and frenzy. He slowed things down to grind out a win with black against Akopian's horrific pawn structure in their first game. In the second Shirov didn't take the safe path and sacrificed a knight out of the opening. He kept enough initiative to swap everything off the board in a piquant finish.

Russian champion Alekseev finally did in veteran Bareev in tiebreaks. He threw the kitchen sink at the Caro-Kann in the first rapid game and Bareev couldn't find the right defense. Had Black countered with 28..e5! he would have had a fighting chance. Alekseev is really a lot of fun to watch. Bareev played a promising positional exchange sac in the second game against his countryman's Benoni but couldn't find the right follow-up. 29..Nc4 looks promising.

The second remaining Russian will face the second remaining Ukrainian, Sergey Karjakin, who beat Nisipeanu with black in their second game after Nisipeanu's Caro-Kann held up nicely in the first. The Romanian hasn't been playing his goofy 7.Nfe2 against the Najdorf in the World Cup despite having three chances. They played a popular line here and Karjakin surprised by castling early instead of leaving his king in the center. Nisipeanu responded by going for broke with pawn sacrifices but Karjakin defended well and never seemed in any trouble. This avenged Nisipeanu's elimination of Karjakin's countryman Ivanchuk (who played ..Qc7 in the same Najdorf and lost). This last quarterfinal match is a toss up and should be a good one. I'll stick with my last remaining pre-event pick Alekseev for the sake of mindless consistency.

Holy heck! Instead of sleeping or working I was glancing over at the round four rapid tiebreaks at the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. Only three matches went to tiebreaks from the sweet 16. Aronian-Jakovenko, Bareev-Alekseev, and Svidler Kamsky. Both Alekseev and Jakovenko won with white in the first rapid game while Svidler held Kamsky to a draw. In the second it looked like white was in good shape on all three boards, especially Svidler. A Spanish that turned into an ugly KID position could only be better for White at first glance, which is all you really have time for in live rapids. Then the broadcast hung for a few minutes. When it came back, Kamsky had found some amazing defensive moves with his knight, picked off a pawn, and was winning the endgame. He converted it to knock out Svidler and move into the quarterfinals that start tomorrow! I believe he'll be facing Ponomariov. Jakovenko held and Alekseev won with black to move on, so another top seed, Aronian, is out. Not bad for me prediction-wise, although I thought Bareev was in good enough form to make it one more round.

Round 5 pairings: Kamsky-Ponomariov, Karjakin-Alekseev, Jakovenko-Shirov, Carlsen-Cheparinov.

The top-rated player in each quarter of the field is gone. Shirov is the highest-rated player in the field, Cheparinov the lowest. Two of the youngest players at the start of the event are still there, Karjakin and Carlsen, born in 1990. I believe Vietnam's Le Quang Liem, knocked out in the first round, is even younger. Over 10% of the starting field was under 20.

More on the round 4 games later. But did Adams miss a win in the second game against Carlsen? It looks like he has a winning king walk with 65.Ka5! and Black is in zugzwang. True, he can threaten mate or give a few checks, but it looks like the white king can make it all the way up the board and Black is out of moves. Can't find a draw.

Round three of the 07 World Cup is over we're down from 128 to 16 players for the start of round four. We arrive after leaving behind several prominent names in the third round. Top seed Vassily Ivanchuk was bounced in rapids by Romania's Nisipeanu. It was something of a flashback for both players. Ivanchuk lost in the second round in the last World Cup. Nisipeanu first came to prominence by his surprising run to the semifinals of the 1999 KO in Las Vegas. He showed considerable pluck here after losing the first rapid game to Ivanchuk. It looked like the Ukrainian was doing fine with black in a Najdorf, following the old saw "the best way to play for a draw is to play for a win." Nisipeanu marshaled for a sacrificial attack and it paid off with 26.Nxf7! Ivanchuk miscalculated immediately with 28..d5, which cost the exchange. (Black could still have defended with 29..Ne8, obviously not the plan after ..d5.) 33.Qg1 would have ended the game immediately but it didn't last long. Ivanchuk, whose nerves should be insured like Betty Grable's legs, responded with a horrific loss in the first blitz game, trapping his own queen. Ivanchuk got a pawn in the second game but couldn't make it happen in the endgame.

Sasikiran also needed blitz to eliminate Macieja in very one-sided fashion after two relatively uneventful rapid games. Karjakin eliminated Bacrot in an exciting set of rapid games. Bacrot had a good chance to play for a win with 26.Rb1 in the first after Karjakin had sacrificed a piece. Instead Karjakin finished off his open king. Bacrot had to win with black in the second game and as so often happens, that desperation led instead to a quick loss. The wily Aronian gave up his queen for two minor pieces in the ever-popular Anti-Moscow Semi-Slav against Inarkiev. Such positions are notoriously difficult to play with the queen in speed play. White is obliged to play for a win and to open lines while the queen gets pushed around. Aronian added some passed pawns on the queenside and Inarkiev blundered with 38..f5?? To win Aronian had to find the cute 44..Rh1+!, otherwise White scams a perpetual. The highest remaining seed didn't leave Inarkiev's King's Indian any chances in the second game.

Svidler outplayed Rublevsky in their decisive second rapid game to take the round's first of two all-Russia match-ups. It's interesting that after watching the world elite (minus Topalov) basically ditch the Sicilian for a year we're seeing it a lot here in KO games. After three completed rounds we have almost as many 1..c5 as 1..e5 against 1.e4. Making things easy for white to play comfortably for two results in tense situations can't make sense. The other election day home match-up was Grischuk-Bareev, the new versus the old Russian guard. Bareev occasionally reminds us that he was a top 10 fixture for a decade and he reminded Grischuk in rapids on Sunday. The only 40-year-old left in the field managed to hold an inferior B vs N endgame by a miracle in their first game. Amazingly, 38.Kh6 playing the king to g7 and then the knight to c5 doesn't win. I think. The second game was also an endgame, rooks this time, and Bareev won it convincingly. Grischuk should have tried 45..Rc3+ to gain a few tempi for his pawns to advance before having to give up the rook. In pawns versus rook a few squares up the board are usually worth more than having a third pawn.

The other matches didn't require tiebreaks. All five players who won on the first day made it through unscathed: Adams, Kamsky, Cheparinov, Jakovenko, and Wang Yue. Others picked up the crucial win on the second day, including Carlsen rolling over Dominguez and Shirov's spectacular knockout of Alexander Onischuk. The American held on in a very sharp position as Shirov lunged for his king. But after 23..Qg7 it's already very hard to find a defense for white. Shirov finished in Shirovian style with 28..Bxg2! Wonderful stuff. Alekseev stomped Fressinet. Ponomariov beat Tomashevsky with the pretty 32.Rc8! in their second game. Malakhov played a freakishly passive game out of the Accelerated Dragon and was easily beaten by Akopian. Don't feel too bad for the losers, who go home with $16,000 for their troubles.

Round 4 pairings:

Karjakin, UKR 2694 - Nisipeanu, ROM 2668
Bareev, RUS 2653 - Alekseev, RUS 2716
Jakovenko, RUS 2710 - Aronian, ARM 2741
Shirov, ESP 2739 - Akopian, ARM 2713
Ponomariov, UKR 2705 - Sasikiran, IND 2661
Kamsky, USA 2714 - Svidler, RUS 2732
Adams, ENG 2729 - Carlsen, NOR 2714
Wang Yue, CHN 2703 - Cheparinov, BUL 2670

Note that these are in order by pairing section, so the winners of the top two matches play each other, etc.

Lots of juicy matchups starting tomorrow and no clear favorites. Interestingly, none of these pairings has much history. Mind you, many of the players are so young they don't have much history with anyone. Jakovenko has been playing well and should give Aronian all he can handle. Carlsen beat Adams in their only classical encounter, at the 2006 Olympiad. He also beat him 1.5-0.5 last week at the world blitz championship. Beating Ivanchuk didn't give Cheparinov any momentum last time; he promptly lost to Carlsen in 2005. And he lost twice to Wang Yue last July in China. I'm picking him anyway. Just because I enjoy publicly humiliating myself, my other predictions: Karjakin, Bareev, Aronian (toss-up), Shirov, Ponomariov, Kamsky (with the heart and not the rent money), Adams. Don't scoff, I once got one out of eight correct in KO predictions in this round, no easy task. Sorry I didn't leave you much time to post your own. Games start in around three hours. Yaawwwn. live and/or replay here, depending on your sleep schedule.