October 2009 Archives

Azerbaijan was crowned the European Team champion today after squeaking out a win over the outperforming Dutch squad in the final round. At the same time they got some help from the Spanish team, who held Russia to a draw. Had the Russians won (or Azerbaijan drawn), Russia would have taken the title on the first tiebreak, the board points that should be used to decide victory in the first place. Grumble. Several unlikely things happened in the final round to send the second-seeded Boys from Baku home with the trophy. First, Russian 4th board Alekseev had to get blown off the board by Spain's Ivan Salgado, a 170-point underdog. That evened the match after Morozevich beat Vallejo with black on board two.

Hard to say what inspired the theoretically-obsessed Alekseev to play a very risky French that left him struggling to survive from the start. White has a fantastic score in this h7 sac line. Alekseev defended it successfully against Mamedyarov earlier this year, however, so maybe just bad luck for him and a very powerful game from Salgado to play the spoiler. And/or Alekseev just wasn't ready for the immediate 13.h4 the Spaniard played -- followed by 14.h5 and 15.h6 and 16.h7! Excelsior! Something to be said for single-mindedness.

Then it was up to Vugar Gashimov, who had an extra pawn in a rook endgame against Stellwagen with the other three games already drawn. With six moves to draw on move 70, either retreating the rook along the file to check from behind or moving it along the rank to check from the side, the Dutchman put the tower behind the pawn where it was too close to the white king. (70..Kd4 loses for the same reason. b4, c4, h3, h3, or h1 are natural drawing squares. e4 also draws, cutting off the white king to keep it in front of the pawn, but that's unnecessarily exotic.) Tough to hold up under such pressure, no doubt, and let's think about the joy it must have been for Gashimov and the Azerbaijani team.

Other big favorites Ukraine and Armenian finished 3-4. Aronian failed to light much of a fire on board one this time around. Eljanov turned in an excellent performance on board one, which has been occupied by Ivanchuk pretty much forever, with a brief cameo by Ponomariov. (Chucky was playing in the turgid Unive tournament instead.) Bulgaria was the 4th seed, but that was entirely due to Topalov's massive 2813. And he didn't help much, falling ill and playing only four games, scoring +1 and shrinking the distance between him and Carlsen to just four points on the live list. Cheparinov failed to raise his game to fill in, making an even score well below his rating. Someone who did raise his game to fill in was Jon Ludvig Hammer, who made a 2800 performance for Norway while keeping Magnus Carlsen's first-board seat warm after the teen sensation dropped out at the last minute.

I've been buried with a book proposal and a few other projects, each more urgent than the last, so I haven't had much of a chance to look at the games. But once again the amateur Brit comes to the rescue. Luke McShane, fresh from bashing Cheparinov, played the Brave Sir Robin Variation against Shengelia in the sixth round with white. 1.e4 c6 2.Nf3 d4 3.Nc3 a6 4.h3 Nf6 5.e5 Ne4 6.Nb1!?! The knight bravely runs away, away! And it gets better. 6..Qb6 7.Qe2 h6 8.d3 Ng5 9.Nh2!? The black knight is a terror, causing the white knights to flee. Naturally McShane went on to win in just 32 moves, or this wouldn't really be very funny at all. And Aronian-Shirov was a wild battle that lived up to expectations.

Two interesting events underway on opposite points of the globe. The world junior championship is way down south in Argentina. Not Buenos Aires, or the original host site Mar del Plata, but the small coastal town of Puerto Madryn. (Not exactly a Spanish name; there are still Welsh speakers in the area.) The website has gone from feeble and ugly to actually being blacklisted by Google and Firefox as a potential attack site. Sigh. After five rounds have gone by, the games still aren't available. At least the standings and pairings are coming out. The top seed is France's Vachier-Lagrave at 2718 and he's on 4.5/5 along with Zhigalko of Belarus. The latter took out early leader Yu Yangyi, yet another strong untitled Chinese player I'd never heard of. [Curiously, he seems to have been awarded the GM title in the last few days. The Google cache of his FIDE page from Oct 22 says no title. Today it says GM.] The leaders meet today.

American hopes Ray Robson and Alex Lenderman, both GM-elects, are muddling along on plus scores with 3 and 3.5, respectively. David Howell, there with coach Nigel Short instead of both playing at the ETC, is also on 3.5. I keep wondering at the relevance of this event, but plenty of strong players keep showing up. With such a high age limit and so many top players in the world under it these days who don't bother to play, it seems an anachronism. But I suppose as long as they keep finding organizers to profiteer host the event and players keep showing up, it does no harm. It's a nice plum for the world's many national junior events.

Meanwhile, the grownups are battling in the European team championship in Novi Sad, Serbia. The heavyweight team of Azerbaijan is tied for first with 4/4 matches won with Georgia. Top seeded Russia has already given up two drawn matches while #3 seed Armenia lost a shocker to the host team. Sill plenty of action to come in the nine-round event that has many of the world's top players in action. And at least the games are mostly available.

Of the few highlights I've had a chance to catch, Morozevich-Smeets is a wild one. The Dutchman held in complications to win and allow the Netherlands to nick the Russian machine for a match draw. 25.Nd5 looks good enough to hold for White, but Morozevich was probably still looking for the win, as usual. Though it turns out it was unnecessary, Djukic's 57.Rh3+ was a cute way to eliminate any perp swindles in time trouble. Caruana has turned Italy into a force to be reckoned with, if an inconsistent force. They started out with a big upset over 4th seed Bulgaria, drew with Netherlands, and then lost to Russia and Austria. Navara-Shirov has a cute stalemate finish.

For some reason Topalov has played just one game so far, but it was a good win against Adams. The ebb and flow on the queenside is impressive to watch. White invades, is beaten back, then White takes over. Mebbe Topalov doesn't want to risk rating points and his tenuous hold on the #1 spot by facing guys well under 2700? Doesn't sound like him. Adams also lost to Radjabov. Back in Bulgaria-England, Delchev forfeited against Conquest when his cell phone went off at the board. I blame the coach. With hundreds of players you're going to have a few distracted ones. Much easier for the coach to have this on his checklist of responsibilities. Cheparinov hasn't been impressive subbing for his boss Topalov on board one, losing to Caruana and then to McShane in just 20 moves. Nothing like watching an Englishman trot out the Grand Prix and then a Blunt Force Trauma Attack straight out of the Julian Hodgson handbook. 13.Bd1 14.Rf3 is very classy caveman chess. Black deserved the pain for that spectator queen on a6.

Almost, at least.

C Ilardo at CanchaLlena

That's the 100-year-old Aaron Schwartzman on the left and the 99-year-old Francisco Benkö on the right at the famous Club Argentino de Ajedrez. I played Benko at least once and talked problems with him a few times. He's an authentic legend of Argentine chess and played in the national championship as recently as 2004. (First in 1943.) He and Schwartzman first faced each other when Benko arrived in Argentina in 1936, 73 years ago. Dr. Schwartzman gave up chess for medical practice as a young man. This game finished in a fairly brief draw.

We've talked about age and chess a lot here recently thanks to the Kasparov-Karpov anniversary match in Valencia. Mostly about Karpov's dramatic decline, which he chalked up to his lack of work and practice, adding he could beat anyone in the top 100 if he dedicated himself to chess 100%. No doubt that's the bulk of it, but few believe he would still be top ten at 58 years of age even if he put in as many hours as he did at 30. It's hard to say, of course, because age saps the will and ability to work those long hours, something Kasparov talks about in his upcoming NIC column. We can take Korchnoi as the example of someone whose decline was very long and slow thanks to his amazing work ethic.

Today at a local toy store I chatted with the proprietress, a not-yet-elderly woman who was working on a word puzzle book. She said there was a history of dementia in her family and hoped doing puzzles regularly might help delay it. (She also enjoys them.) We talked about that here a while back as well, in response to Leon organizer Marcelino Sion's "you never see a chessplayer with Alzheimer's!" claim. We can add this list to the discussion.

Fun and interesting interview with Carlsen on Norwegian TV's Golden Goal show, conveniently translated and transcribed at ChessBase, bless them. Being under the microscope so young can be very rough but it's really a pleasure watching Carlsen come into his own off the board as well as on. The shyness is easing and of course being at home in his native language helps as well. He's frank and funny and comes off as a total charmer. This is the post-adorable-kid phase that hints at his potential for real charisma when he loosens up and avoids what we might call a Scandinavian penchant for correctness and, at its extreme, blandness when exported. (Domestically they can be nearly as goofy and surreal as Monty Python.) No pressure!

And how badly do you want to see those Carlsen-Kasparov blitz training games?! More than you wanted to see the Kasparov-Karpov blitz games, I bet.

In the latest "only in FIDE" twist, reports say Azerbaijan is ready to host part of the candidates matches. Only part, because Armenia's Aronian is already a candidate and the two countries are hostile. Therefore, another site will be required to host his match or matches. But, and here comes the real zinger, Azerbaijan insists that this other site can't be Armenia! How and why they get to insist on this is beyond the scope of the limited news available, which seems to all be based on one report from an Azerbaijani news site, mentioned on ChessBase here. The Azerbaijani news outlets aren't exactly paragons of accuracy, so let's see what comes. The article also says the matches will be at the end of 2010 or early 2011.

Radjabov is a hot favorite to join Aronian as the second qualifier out of the Grand Prix. But even if he's not, he'd now become the likely recipient of the organizer wildcard spot FIDE inserted in a classic piece of political gamesmanship to make the event easier to sell. This, in turn, puts Kramnik at greater risk of missing out, since he was the favorite to get the wildcard spot if he failed to get in by rating. I don't mean that entirely critically. A former world champion, and one from a powerful federation shared with the FIDE president, would always be a top contender. In yet another parenthetical, Gashimov is set to take the #1 spot for Azerbaijan, so it might be a tough call. He's also a contender for the last Grand Prix spot.

We just talked about the cons of Anand playing on Topalov's home turf in Sofia. But facing Radjabov or another local in Baku in such a high-profile event could potentially be a more serious matter. The dictatorial regime there doesn't mess around, and as much as I'd love to believe in gens una sumus and the purity of sport, the fact they've already made such a power play regarding Aronian doesn't provide much room for optimism. It's a top-down country and while that's occasionally handy for Ilyumzhinov-style crony sponsorship (Tripoli 04, anyone?), it can also be trouble. To be fair, Azerbaijan gets the same 6/5 "Not Free" ranking from Freedom House as Russia and they haven't had much in the way of chess shenanigans, the lunacy at Elista 2006 notwithstanding. (For those who don't like to mix their chess with politics, or who like to pretend that chess and politics don't mix, my apologies.)

That according to the Bulgarian news agency and a few folks in FIDE. The news release gives April 5-24 as the dates for the 12-game world championship match, but FIDE says that's not official yet. No bank guarantee, but the Bulgarian government apparently gave its word instead. Not sure what the players and the other bids from Turkey and Singapore might say about that. Not that they have any say in Ilyumzhinov World, of course. Rules, schmules. In olden days a player could practically veto playing a match in his opponent's home country. That was stupid. Professionals need to play where the money is; beggars can't be choosers. As any boxing fan knows, the challenger's home town is usually eager to host a bout and see their man take the crown.

Corus just announced it's full A and B fields. The former includes Anand but not Topalov. Unlike the efficient Dutch, Linares is always seat of its pants with invites and announcements. It is supposed to split with a site in the Arab Emirates this year, likely Dubai or Abu Dhabi. It seems a little unlikely either Topalov or Anand would play there so close the start of their match. But Bilbao didn't hurt Anand against Kramnik last year, that's for sure.

Early betting line on the match? We haven't seen all that much of either player this year. Anand will play at the Tal Memorial in a few weeks, along with every other member of the top ten except for Topalov and Radjabov (and plus Svidler and Ponomariov). He hasn't played a classical tournament since Linares, where he finished fourth.

Another day, another micro-Grandmaster. This time make it a double. It's Friday, after all. America's Ray Robson just collected his third GM norm after a narrow miss at the SPICE Cup event in Texas. It's been clear for a while that Robson has raised his game to close to the 2600 level and his norms came fast and furious. That eases the pain of his final norm coming as an automatic one (I assume. [Okay, now I've actually looked it up. Yes, winning an U-20 Continental Ch is an automatic 9-game GM norm.]) by dominating the very weak Pan American U20 event in Uruguay. There was only one GM participating (Brazil's Diamant, who was surely winning against Robson but lost a sharp endgame) and Robson was the top seed at 2527. He started with 7/7 and drew his final two games for a performance close to 2700. At least it's not an automatic GM title for winning; they give out a lot of those as well. For all the ranting among the base about the cheapening of the GM title and how at the very least they should raise the rating required to 2600, things keep moving in the other direction. As Syndrome put it in The Incredibles (one of my favorite moves of all time), "When everyone is super, no one is."

Of course those concerns aren't really relevant to wunderkinder except for the timing. No doubt Robson, who turns 15 in a few days, has what it takes to be super. He'll also have a chance to show it, though it's hard to say how long he'll be in Khanty-Mansiysk at this year's World Cup, where he's an Ilyumzhinov wildcard. Knock-outs aren't kind. He's also guaranteed a spot at next year's US Championship since he easily won the US junior ch this year. More on him at Chess Life. Speaking of norms and the SPICE Cup, someone did get their GM title there after all. Ben Finegold, who has been a contender for strongest IM on the planet for what I'm sure he would say was far too long, got his final norm at last. A fellow 69'er, Ben turned 40 this year. Keep an eye on this kid, he's got potential!

I've been reading the local reports on the Duchamp Tournament in Buenos Aires and it, too, had an impressive roster of young hooligans. It was won by 15-year-old Federico Pérez Ponsa, a local who got his first GM norm in the process. With both on 6.5/9, he took the title on tiebreaks over Peru's Jorge Cori Tello, who is just 14 and earned his third and final GM norm. Not sure if his rating will make it past 2500 in time to be awarded the title at the next FIDE Congress. (And I suppose that may confound whether or not he's the world's youngest GM right now. I don't know his birthday but I assume he's younger than Robson, who turns 15 in a week.) He's quite a story, just the fourth GM in Peru's history. (Granda, Urday, and 18-year-old Emilio Cordova, who made headlines here last year by running away with a stripper in Brazil.) He's been in every Peruvian newspaper for the past few days. Jorge's sister Deysi is a women's international master at 16 and also participated in the Duchamp event. Jorge has been living and studying in Argentina for a while. He needed a draw with black in the final round for the norm and didn't go about it the easy way. He played an insane game refuting an unsound sac by the Argentine Liascovich that eventually ended in a repetition. In a post-event interview, Jorge says he hopes to be in the top 20 in the world in the next few years, but has to work on his openings.

The Peruvian chess federation is dysfunctional and broke even by regional standards, so who knows? I hope he can find the resources to play abroad. The list of strong young Latin American players who were relegated to local mediocrity or who gave up the game entirely is very long. Corus C on line one for Peru?

Who will make Novi happy again? Magnus Carlsen, fresh from his big win in Nanjing and with the even stronger Tal Memorial coming up in a few weeks, just canceled his participation in the European Team Championship in Serbia. ChessBase has a news roundup here. Obviously this sort of thing can't be condoned, even if it does make professional sense for Carlsen. Sort of like a short draw that makes perfect sense for the player with white. Carlsen isn't used to his new workload and as much as he wanted to hang out with his pals at what is always a fun event, he wanted to make sure he'd be in top shape for the Tal Memorial in Moscow on November 5.

Coach Garry is invoked several times as recommending this move. It was news to me, but I do recall hearing him sound unhappy that Carlsen had such a heavy schedule. But you sign your name, you play your games. Barring illness, you just have to take your lumps. Or even if you are sick, as in Nakamura's case of plague in Amsterdam. (Or how about this from the NY Times during the 1889 American Chess Congress: "Mr. Bird is still ill, but he bears his sufferings with great patience and fortitude.") Of course this attention is a standard only for the elite stars. If Norway's fourth board, a lovely fellow I'm sure, dropped out, we wouldn't be having this conversation. And it's up to our stars to live up to these raised expectations; it's part of the gig, like signing autographs while you're eating dinner. On the other other hand I have trouble getting too worked up about this since it's a gigantic team event and not a pro tournament where you'd feel more for the sponsors. It's bad news for Norway and for Carlsen fans, though both might appreciate the sacrifice if he puts on another big show in Moscow against Anand & Co.

A few other dropouts that come to mind, just to make conversation: Topalov exiting Bilbao after the organizers radically reduced the prize fund. Karpov leaving the 2001 Botvinnik Memorial to play in FIDE KO. Short exiting Corus 1999, making room for Kasparov's first appearance there. Many late drop-outs in the Olympiad over the years. Infighting, political battles, and money problems with national federations, etc. Carlsen and Adams both withdrew from the FIDE Grand Prix this year after yet another sponsorship snafu.

People keep sending me these links, so here.

WSJ on abolishing women's titles. That's something I've been ranting in favor of for so long I don't see the point of linking to someone else talking about it. But it's a tidy summary of the arguments and how the existence of women's titles can be perceived from outside the chess world. That is, as sexist and idiotic affirmative action that does little more than formalize low expectations. Same goes for women-only professional events, though at least that's a direct cash subsidy to promote women in the game, which isn't a bad idea in and of itself, just poor implementation. Every time Hou Yifan is the top seed an angel loses its wings.

On a somewhat related note, Anna Zatonskih just destroyed the rest of the field in the US women's championship with 8.5/9 to take her second consecutive and third title overall.

And this NY Times video with NY Yankees manager Joe Girardi talking, and playing, chess. Ooh, chess as a sports metaphor. So painful. Just give thanks they don't give the game score. It sounds atrocious. On baseball, it's always interested me that it doesn't have any sort of clock. Somehow I find that cool, though I don't really enjoy watching it much anymore. "Five minutes of action crammed into three hours" is how I remember hearing baseball described. It's all about tension.

Not much on embedding video here -- hell, I'm too lazy to put up photos and diagrams -- but we have to give props for using chess in advertising like this. The energy drink "Amp" has its can mascot playing basketball and now, chess in legendary Washington Square Park. It's done well and focuses on the players and the atmosphere for a fun little piece. Kudos to the producers. Here's the full bit on YouTube. Don't know if a shorter version is going to run on TV or not. Hmm, which East Coast GM would dress up as a can for money? Wait, which one wouldn't? I'll put up some links to other chess ads later. Got some yourself?

Perfection is seldom reached, but the Economist team representing Saratov, Russia, made a clean score at the Euro Club Cup in Ohrid, Macedonia. I don't know if any of the team's members live in or are from Saratov, but it's not as if we hold professional teams in other sports to that standard. I doubt many of the Phillies are from Philadelphia, for example. The Saratov squad was a deep one, playing eight players across the six boards. Only first board Alekseev and Ni Hua played all seven rounds. It was an unusual sight to see Alekseev score -1 and yet his team still won every match. Margin doesn't matter when they are using match points, a method that is dull without being terribly efficient. Three of Economist's players underperformed their ratings and they scored 27.5 board points. Six (!) other teams scored more.

Perennial terror of the German Bundesliga, Baden-Baden, rolled up 33 board points, including a rare 7-0, but lost two matches. This system, recently adopted at the Olympiad as well, rewards team play but makes playing for a win from top to bottom good only for tiebreak value. The match point system made a hero out of Bu Xiangzhi. After drawing his first four games he was the only winner for Economist in the crucial final two rounds, with all six other games finishing drawn. He beat Guseinov in round six and then in the final round battle royal he beat Avrukh of the Ashdod Illit team, which would have taken first with a win. Still, boring system or not, respect must be given to the Saratov squad for going undefeated and winning the clutch.

The most impressive performance of the event came from a local boy made good. Like most of his teammates, Peter Svidler actually hails from St. Petersburg and he was an impressive first board for them. He scored +4 with wins over Ivanchuk, Nakamura, Mamedyarov, and Motylev for the top rating performance in Ohrid. The ever-handy Chess Results site has all the details. Volokitin and Gashimov also had big scores. As did Mickey Adams, who may finally be coming out of his slump. (To be fair, he hasn't had many chances this year since his disastrous Corus. I don't think he's faced a higher rated opponent since then.) Nakamura recovered from the loss to his French League teammate (the third straight) to turn in a solid score for the Austrian team Husek Wien and even add a few rating points.

Of course there were many fantastic games. A few pretty highlights: Sargissian-Caruana with 21.Re6!! is a jaw-dropper. Grischuk took on Aronian's expertise in the hot line of the Semi-Slav and paid the price. A thrilling dance took place starting with 21..Rxa1 with Grischuk giving up his queen for two pieces and an attack. But his erred immediately and the counter queen sac 26..Bd6! turned it into a rout. Ivanchuk had a nice endgame king walk to beat Huzman. Motylev had a classic Dragon slay against Feller. Aronian-Mamedyarov was a wild tactical battle, not something you can usually say out of a Catalan. Mamedyarov outplayed the world #3 with black, fending off every last Aronian trick. Svidler's final round win over Motylev was full of witty tactics. Don't miss Najer's 23rd move against Relange in the 7th round. Finding a brilliant move when there are good "normal" alternatives is always impressive. 23.Qh6 was good, but 23.Bc6 is gorgeous.

As long as we're full of team spirit, the Euro Team Championship -- this is the one with the national teams -- starts on the 22nd in Novi Sad, Serbia. Defending champ Russia is the top seed without Kramnik. Azerbaijan is second and Armenia third. Topalov is back leading the Bulgarians, lifting them to the 4th seed. For some reason the results site lists seven players on the Russian team instead of five; not sure who's actually there for them yet. Looks like Korchnoi is in action! Carlsen is there for Norway, though he might not see much 2700+ opposition.

It seems strange to wrap up a supertournament with a round still to play. But that's what I'm doing because that's what Magnus Carlsen has done in Nanjing. Actually it's not terribly unusual. Last year in the inaugural Pearl Spring event Topalov won with a round to spare, finishing with +4, a point and a half ahead of Aronian. Ivanchuk's incredible +6 at MTel 2008 gave him the same margin over Topalov (though had Ivanchuk lost in the final round and Topalov won, they would have tied for first). Carlsen, after nine rounds in Nanjing and only tomorrow's white against Jakovenko to go, has a lead of two full points over Topalov and a performance rating hovering just under 3000. He's on +5 with exactly one win over each participant. Topalov is the only other player on plus score, his +1 actually under his lofty rating expectation.

Round nine was a day of draws after round eight was the first day with three decisive encounters. Carlsen forgot some of his preparation against Wang Yue and soon he was a move away from near certain loss. 20.Nb3 is bad; 20.Nf3 was correct. But Wang Yue missed his chance. 23..Ne7! and White loses piece, keeping only desperate attacking chances against the black king. After 23..Rc8 24.Qd3! Carlsen escaped intact and went on to outplay his opponent for his fifth victory. Also in the 8th round, Jakovenko won nicely against Radjabov's Dragon and Topalov ripped the listless Leko apart with the black pieces.

Other than the Wang Yue blip Carlsen's preparation has been as awesome as the rest of his play. I had a long conversation with Garry Kasparov about seeing his work with Carlsen pay off so impressively in Nanjing. You'll be able to get all the details in his upcoming New In Chess article that also covers his match with Karpov and its implications, combined with the lack of money for Anand-Topalov, for the chess world. I even got a glance at the notebook Kasparov keeps on his work with Carlsen. (Ironically, it's a "World Cup 1990" notebook, given out at the GMA qualifier in Moscow the year Carlsen was born.) I even took a few pictures, though the censor got to them first. As Carlsen said on the official Nanjing website, he's been in touch with Kasparov via the internet after each round to discuss preparation for each opponent. Kasparov was quite happy with their work, but also emphasized how tough Carlsen has been at the board, well beyond their preparation. In cinematic terms, he said Carlsen was "killing the bear!", which this scene will help you understand. We'll see if he's going to go Full Garry Bear and try to beat Jakovenko in the largely meaningless final round.

More the of the event finishes -- officially. Round 10: Leko-Wang Yue, Topalov-Radjabov, Carlsen-Jakovenko. Five hours earlier, or 10pm NY time. Just about now!

Wow, Carlsen just beat Jakovenko before the end of the first time control. 5/5 with white! Holy hell. -- Topalov-Radjabov just finished, a final-round marathon with Topalov sacrificing a pawn for a long-term squeeze against the King's Indian. Finally a repetition with just minutes left for both players in the second control. Now that's getting your money's worth from a tournament! Many hard-fought and exciting games in this one, though it's hard to focus on anything other than Carlsen's insane +6 undefeated. He finished 2.5 points ahead of the world #1! He seemed tired in the second half, however, and now has the even stronger Tal Memorial in Moscow and then the London Classic with Kramnik and Nakamura. Not too long after that it's Corus time again...

Garry's going to be on CNN in a few hours as their "Connector of the Day" (?!) -- at 4:40pm NY time -- and will talk about the Karpov match, politics, maybe Carlsen. Not going to last long so you never know what they'll have time for. It should be live but not 100% sure. There are comments on their website they pull questions from sometimes so it's worth a shot.

With a lead of two full points heading into the second half of the Pearl Spring supertournament in Nanjing, China, there didn't seem much doubt about Magnus Carlsen's eventual victory. But he was starting the second lap with black against the top two rated players, Leko and Topalov. The Hungarian has an excellent record against Carlsen, despite losing the Miskolc rapid match against him earlier this year. As for Topalov, he's dangerous enough in general and has legendary comeback qualities. And it would have seemed somehow too easy for Carlsen to have a smooth sail to victory. The leader was tested in both games and came through the fires unscathed.

Leko played the Fianchetto against Carlsen's Grunfeld, a variation we are all familiar with after seeing it in so many of Karpov's whites against Kasparov in Valencia just days ago. Leko went with 10.Nbc3, playing his e-knight to f4 and heading for very sharp play. The first new move was Carlsen's 13..Qa5. Leko got the famous runaway Grunfeld d-pawn even earlier than usual with 17.d6!?, playing to win the exchange. As so often happens in the Grunfeld, Black's dynamic compensation for the exchange was good enough to force liquidation that didn't leave White with many winning chances. Even a technical virtuoso like Leko couldn't create much pressure, though it took some timely action from Black with 54..e4! to force the final liquidation. White surely could have continued to torture Black for a long time otherwise.

Today came Topalov's turn to try to take down the leader and the world #1 was coming off his first win of the event, though it wasn't pretty. In round six he played like a wild man with black against Jakovenko and turned a sure loss into a win in the space of a single blunder by the Russian. In some ways it was typical Topalov, risking heavily and outplaying his opponent in complications. But this was more risk and less quality than we're used to from him, and the win only brought him back to an even score, tied with Wang Yue. We didn't get to see a second Najdorf from Carlsen today; instead he showed Topalov the Sveshnikov he's more familiar with. Up to move 21 they followed the line in which Carlsen lost to Shirov in the final round of MTel this year, costing the Norwegian first place. Topalov diverged first with 21.Rc1, leading to a long sequence of razor-sharp tit-for-tat tactics. It quickly boiled down to an extra pawn for Topalov, but it was doubled up and Black's bishop and rooks were active enough to hold the balance in the endgame.

Two clutch draws from Carlsen to seal the deal. In the final three rounds he has two whites and a two-point lead and even Topalov at his best couldn't catch that. Round 8: Leko-Topalov, Carlsen-Wang Yue, Jakovenko-Radjabov. FYI there's another rest day on Wednesday before round nine.

After starting with two wins and coming close to another against Wang Yue, Magnus Carlsen picked right back up and won two more in Nanjing. In the fourth he ground down Jakovenko on the black side of a Najdorf and today he outplayed Radjabov in complications in just 25 moves. That makes an incredible 4.5/5 score and, even more incredibly, he's still the only player in the event to have won a game. The bizarre crosstable is starting to remind me of the legendary final Linares 2001 table, with Kasparov on +5 and each of the other five players on -1. Seirawan had the best line afterward, telling Garry it was a terrible result for him because he finished next to last.

After all my jokes about Carlsen joining the "K" club, the way he's going it might be time for everyone to worry about joining the "C" club. After dropping the Scotch on Leko in round one, Carlsen took another page out of Kasparov's "serious openings" book and played the Najdorf against Jakovenko. Kasparov has never been a believer in the Dragon that is Carlsen's standard Sicilian, along with the occasional Sveshnikov. Black got a dynamic balanced position out of the opening in a topical line recently used by Leko and Shirov. Jakovenko held the balance for a while, but eventually Black dominated the e-file and obtained the more active pieces. It was a difficult to find a way to make progress, however, and White had his chances when Carlsen walked into a pin with 33..Bxe3? Suddenly Jakovenko had a runaway d-pawn and it looked like Black was in trouble. The rest of the game is why it is perhaps the most notable of Carlsen's incredible four wins. He proceeded to play for a win against the solid Russian, despite the dangerous white pawn sitting on d7. In the sharp endgame Jakovenko made mistakes and Carlsen pounced on them, taking the point on move 63. Aside from the obvious skill, uncommon courage to bring it home instead of bailing out. Big chess, as the Russians say.

The Radjabov-Topalov game had even more action, though it eventually finished drawn. Radjabov went with the Scotch again as Topalov declined to play the Sicilian. (Lately he's met 1.e4 with ..e5, ..c6, and ..c5 with the same frequency.) White got a very strong position out of the opening. He could have given up two rooks for the black queen on move 22 and indeed it looks like a good type of position for the queen. 22.Re8+ Rxe8 23.Bf5+ Kb8 24.Rxd6+ Rhg8 25.Qf4 cxd6 26.Qxd6+ Ka8 27.Bh3 and the black pawns are very weak. White must be winning there, so Radjabov may just have missed that Topalov had ..Nc8 after White played the bishop check before Re8+. White had even more chances to win before the first time control, taking a tempo to get his king out of checking range with the absurd-looking 35.Ka3!? Black has to scramble to save the bishop and White picks off the h6 pawn without losing time. Topalov's incredibly sharp line saved the exchange, though he's still on the defensive with two pieces against the active white rook. White's last best chance to win was probably 49.Re8+, pushing the black king away before taking the a7 pawn. Also in the 4th round, with all this action around them Wang Yue and Leko both came to the party dressed as immovable object. It was like watching two guys playing Rock, Paper, Scissors both throw "rock" 29 times in a row.

Carlsen's round five win over Radjabov in a Bb5 anti-Sveshnikov was a strange one. Black defended aggressively, turning the tables a little with 8..d5, a move played by Kasparov against Grischuk in 2002 and varying from Carlsen-Radjabov at Linares this year, where Black played 8..Ng6. For a moment it looked like Carlsen had been bamboozled in the turgid position after Radjabov snuck in 15..Nf4. Black can complete his development with ..Be7 and ..0-0 with a long fight to come. Instead, Radjabov seemed to get over-ambitious and got into trouble on the clock trying to find more. 16..Nb4 messed up the white pawns, but Black's lack of development came back to haunt him very quickly. Radjabov was in time pressure by the time he missed his chance to try for a pawn-down endgame with 23..Bxf2+ 24.Qxf2 Qxb5 25.Qe2 0-0 26.Nd4 Qc5 27.Be3 Rfd8 28.Nf5 Qf8 29.Rxc4 exf5 30.exf5. Anything was better than his abrupt implosion with 23.0-0??, losing material to the Be7 fork. Radjabov has made his career with such sharp, tangled positions with black so this collapse leaves a strange impression. Has Carlsen also acquired The Aura?

Topalov came close to conjuring a win against Wang Yue in a long effort. It would have taken a long time for White to do anything had the Chinese not opened up his position with 20..f5. Wang Yue must have foreseen White wouldn't be able to make any progress despite his domination of the g-file. Leko-Jakovenko was the newest model Berlin Defense, something like getting a new can opener. They at least played it down to the bitter end.

At the halfway point, Carlsen has a lead of two full points. Wang Yue, as the only survivor of the Carlsen onslaught, is in second place with five draws. Everyone else is on -1. Saturday is a free day. Round 6 on Sunday: Leko-Carlsen, Jakovenko-Topalov, Radjabov-Wang Yue. There are really only two open issues. Who else will finally win a game and maybe make a move on second place. And whether or not Carlsen keeps his foot on the gas and takes a shot at a result for the history books. He could draw out and still win easily, but that would only equal Topalov's +4 in Nanjing last year.