November 2009 Archives

Some favorites out, most still in the mix. Yet another KO in full flight in Khanty-Mansiysk. You have your young stars scoring big upsets, your lucky chancers having their paths smoothed by upsets, your blitz lunacy and, in the end, one winner with a golden ticket to the next stage of the candidates cycle. We even had the standard scandal when China's last two representatives, Li Chao and Wang Yue, were forfeited for not being at their boards at the start of the third rapid tiebreak game. They were out smoking together, discussed here. Both matches, against Gashimov and Bacrot, respectively, were tied at the time and both forfeit losses came with white. Unsurprisingly, both Chinese lost the 4th must-win game. That completed a fourth-round sweeping out of the four remaining players from China. I'm generally in favor of professionalization steps like, you know, having the players show up on time. But I'm not sure the third game of a tiebreak is really the place to be draconian. The real moral here? Don't smoke, kids!

Ivanchuk, Morozevich, and Radjabov all exited in the second round. That three of the top seeds went out so early shouldn't be much of a surprise. The remaining field was, and is, still quite top-heavy on the Elo scale. Gelfand, Gashimov, and Svidler are all still striding the snows of Siberia, as are Grischuk, Mamedyarov, and former KO winner Ponomariov. Of the lot, Mamedyarov is playing quite convincingly so far, with a 6.5/7 score including his win today over Laznicka. The young Czech was one the upsetters in the second round, with Morozevich as the upsettee. His win with black in the first game of that match is an interesting one, with an exchange sitting en prise first to a bishop, then bishop and knight, and then finally the rook is taken by the other bishop ten moves later.

Obviously winning the first game with black is as good as it gets. In general, having white in the first game is an advantage beyond the norm because of particular exigencies of the KO format. If the first game is drawn there is always a strong pull to just get the second classical game over with and get to rapids. This tension is mainly relevant to the player with white. Draws in the second game of matches in which the first game was drawn are, on average, much shorter than the first game draws. (Seven moves shorter on average, but with some extremes such as a 21-move difference in round three in this event.) Not a huge deal, but an interesting example of psychology in chess. This should mean you have more non-tiebreak matches that have the player winning the first game instead of the second, and that is indeed the case. In the third round Shirov was the only player to draw the first game and win the second vs five doing the reverse. In the second round there were six winning and then drawing vs three the other way.

There were only two decisive games today of the eight, wins with black by Svidler over Shirov and Mamedyarov over Laznicka. Svidler outdueling Shirov and fending off a brutal attack was definitely the highlight of the round. Just when you think Svidler is going to have to hang up his Grunfeld he comes back and flashes the magic. Mamedyarov wrapped up with a beautiful running deflection theme you don't often see in the wild. Great stuff. There was a lot of action on the other boards as well. Gashimov-Caruana was a feast of sharp calculation and a very fine defensive effort from the 17-year-old Brooklynite. Vachier-Lagrave-Gelfand was agreed drawn in an endgame just begging to be played out. White has passers and a bishop and black has a rook and a potential pawn breakthrough on the queenside. Gelfand must have better chances but decided it was too risky when he has white tomorrow. Shipov says he's sure it's a forced win for Black and he's not someone I usually disagree with. Still, it's a very difficult position to break down.

Just about every KO has a youngster making waves and this year that role has gone to Wesley So of the Philippines. He just turned 16 and in Khanty-Mansiysk he's taken out Guseinov, Ivanchuk, and defending Cup winner Kamsky, the latter two not requiring tiebreaks. He just drew his first game against Malakhov with white. Bacrot-Ponomariov and Grischuk-Jakovenko were drawn perfunctorily so we can expect more of the same in those matches tomorrow and then tiebreaks. By the way, a high FIDE official said off the record that there were never supposed to be four rapid games instead of the usual two. It crept into the rules by accident, perhaps leftover from the recent WCh and candidates matches, and nobody noticed until it was too late to change it without embarrassment. Certainly it's bizarre and exhausting for the players.

I'll get to my growing collection of game highlights in the next day or two.

It might have been envisioned as a triumphant homecoming event for newly crowned world blitz champion Magnus Carlsen. A blitz tournament, with qualifier events in a half-dozen cities on Carlsen's native Norwegian soil, called the BNbank Blitz 2009. The qualifiers met a set of invited stars in the Oslo final on Saturday, with Carlsen the hometown hero. With no disrespect intended toward the rest of the field, which included Peter Heine Nielsen and Jon Ludvig Hammer, the only potential threat to Carlsen was the man who came the greatest distance, US champion Hikaru Nakamura. The American online blitz legend hasn't had many opportunities to prove his mettle face-to-face against the elite at his favored speed, so getting a shot at the unofficial world #1 and newly minted world blitz champion was a special opportunity.

Yes, there were preliminary rounds to get through, and those do have a way of crossing up our expectations. Just in Nakamura's case, for example, he was the big favorite to make it through to the Melody Amber rapid in 2010 from the NH tournament when he was felled by the flu and a solid Smeets. He did have a brief shot at Carlsen earlier this year, also in Norway, at the Aker Chess Club event that also included Svidler and Lie, but in a tiebreak he lost that game and another to his bete noir, Svidler. In Oslo Nakamura was all business, going 6-0 in the group phase, then taking out Lie and Nielsen 3-0 in the KO phase to enter the final. Carlsen was nearly as merciless, giving up draws to Cmilyte and Hammer before dispatching Berg to join Nakamura in the predestined final match. Unfortunately, the final was also only four games. Necessary for a one-day event, alas, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to see 10, 20, or 50 games between these two young fireballs, even if they are only blitz.

So after a long day, the finalists settled down to play some predictably spotty blitz. Carlsen dominated the first two games, winning the first with black and reaching an "easily" won position in the second. But for a bullet player like Nakamura, things only get interesting when he's down to a few seconds. The less time there was, the better he played relative to Carlsen. Even that shouldn't have been enough in game two, but Carlsen missed win after win and Nakamura kept banging out complicating moves. Finally White played the horrible 62.Kf6?? to turn an endgame win by several tempi into a loss by one. Of course you can hardly criticize the qualify of such games and moves, but you rarely see such a dominating position blown at this level. Well, Carlsen did it against Karpov in Moscow just a few weeks ago, so I guess "blitz is blitz" is a better way to put it. These games are for thrills and spills and that's what we got.

Amazingly, the third game was a high-class affair. Maybe both players settled down, or were just too tired to have nerves. It was a sharp, blunder-free battle out of a Grunfeld, Nakamura playing a sharp gambit line and then innovating with 13.e5. Nakamura won a pawn but it was going to be a difficult conversion until Carlsen slipped with the only obvious mistake of the game. Nakamura pounced instantly with 40.Rxf8! to go up 2-1. Carlsen got a plus in another steady effort from both players in game four. Nakamura held on and grabbed his chance to equalize with 28..Nd4. Things should have settled down to a draw but Carlsen was in a must-win situation and he was forced to decline several repetitions with losing moves. Nakamura had no choice but to execute his opponent, which he did with his customary elan to take the game, match, and tournament.

Only four games, but the US champ just beat the world blitz champion in a set match. Congrats to Hikaru, and let's hope his VIP pass to next year's world blitz championship is already in the mail. Exciting stuff, and thanks to Chessdom for the coverage and for having the games up.

All the favorites came through the first round of the World Cup with barely a scratch. I was all set to post a quickie item on the highlights to look for in the second round but the official site still hasn't posted the second-round pairings with just a few hours to go. (They are now up in several places, including on Wikipedia with the most legible brackets around.) It's not as if they have to wait for all the matches to finish before they start, like you do with most swiss-system events. So they aren't waiting around for the epic Akobian-Tregubov tiebreak marathon to finish. Instead of going quickly through rapids and blitz as in the past, the tiebreaks are now a four game rapid match followed by pairs of blitz games. The armageddon only comes if they are still equal after 10 blitz games. The American took the match by winning that 10th blitz game, averting the armageddon game.

Wild, especially when you consider that only the first two rapid games were drawn, meaning someone had to win to avoid elimination, and did so, no fewer than five times! Tregubov won back in the classical (or "classical" since they are using the newish FIDE 40 in 90'+30" + 30'+30", which is bad but better than the old control without the extra 30' at move 40. As the players joke, they added a bathroom break) and again in the rapid after losing game three. Then it was Akobian's turn up against the wall and he won back after losing in blitz FOUR TIMES IN A ROW. Twice winning on demand with white and twice with black. Insane. When he finally won the first game of a blitz set he finished it off in the 16th frame with a strike, 28.Qxb5! Incredibly they could still see the pieces after so many games under such tension. Congrats to Var for surviving. I hope he can get his nerves under control before meeting his next opponent, Ponomariov, 12 hours after his match with Tregubov ended.

Shabalov took out Baklan in the first blitz set of a typically sharp Shabba set. His countryman Yuri Shulman didn't do as well in the playoffs despite a surprisingly exciting set of rapid games against Savchenko. All four were decisive and all four were won by black! But after his must-win save in the final rapid Shulman ran out of gas. He lost the first blitz quickly and then failed to win a big advantage in the second. (All the three decisive tiebreak games in both Hou Yifan-Naiditsch and Timofeev-Leitao were also won by black. This concludes our report from the meaningless statistics department.) Navara went through against the upset-minded Laylo of Philippines with a nice bishop sac, foreseeing the unobvious 31.Rc4.

Sorry, Egypt, but all six of your players are gone in the first round, a clean sweep. At least the sort of reaction they have to losing at football seems unlikely. Maybe in chess-mad Armenia, which lost both its representatives. Lots of good interviews at the official site, by the way.

[You may have noticed I've had little time lately here with visiting family and considerable work. Sorry for leaving the erroneous information about the two Cup finalists qualifying for the next stage of the candidates up for so long. Was going from old version of the frequently changed rules (for an event that doesn't even exist yet, of course). In the latest version, only the World Cup winner goes through, which is a relief.]

With barely a breath caught after the Tal Memorial and Carlsen's amazing win at the World Blitz, it's on to the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. 128 players battle for cash and two one spots in whatever FIDE can sell as its superfluous additional stage of the candidates cycle en route to challenging the winner of next year's Anand-Topalov match in 2011. As originally designed, the World Cup winner faced the Grand Prix winner in a match, the winner of which would be the challenger. Simple, clear, and everyone would have to, you know, PLAY, in order to qualify. Instead we've got rating qualifiers, a wildcard, and Ilyumzhinov's second cousin for all we know. But I digress. Certainly putting both finalists into the candidates makes the final match into a serious anticlimax. The real tension will be in the semifinal matches that decide who goes on to the next stage. [I was going on an outdated version of the rules. Only the Cup winner goes to the next stage. Apologies.]

It might not make for a rigorous world championship system or quality chess, but these giant knockouts, Ilyumzhinov's legacy, are popcorn-munching fun. Upsets are the rule, providing fans with all the oohs and ahhs of a Bruckheimer film every few days on schedule. The stress is enormous. The list of players is impressive, with Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Svidler, Gashimov, Radjabov, Morozevich, and Grischuk at the top. I think Leko is the highest-rated player not to appear who hasn't already qualified for the candidates. (Topalov/Anand, Aronian, Kramnik, and Carlsen. Kamsky is also in, but is playing here anyway.)

Some items of interest in the pairings for round one, which begins Saturday. The only two Romanian players, former semi-finalist Nisipeanu and Lupulescu, are paired. Judit Polgar appears to be through to the second round already, as her opponent, Pavasovic of Slovenia, is apparently a no-show or a very late dropout. 28 players represent Russia. There are nine Chinese, nine Ukrainians (Karjakin still listed as Ukraine, wassup?), and, bizarrely, ten Americans. (Average rating of the Ukrainians, 2682. Americans, 2606. Just sayin'.) Six Egyptians!? The USAers are led by Gata Kamsky, the winner of the last big KO here in 2007. It shows what a rough year or so Kamsky has had that he's only the 27th seed this time. US champ Nakamura is playing in the London Chess Classic and ceded his slot.

The oldest player in the field is IM Obodchuk, 54, an organizer wildcard from Khanty-Mansiysk and who plays for the IPCA. (International Physically Disabled Chess Association. Don't ask.) After him comes Alexander Ivanov, a year younger. Yangyi Yu, Hou Yifan, and Ray Robson are the youngest, all born in 1994. So, Negi, and Russia's Sjugirov are all 1993. We have the pairings but not the the bracket breakdown, so it's hard to play favorites and dark horses. I guess we could figure it out, but it's late... Games begin at 3pm local, 7am NY time. Where is Khanty-Mansiysk? Josh Friedel can tell you how to get there.

Here's your Tal World Blitz item, sorry about the delay. The good news is that Garry's Kuala Lumpur speech was a big success, whew. His being 13 hours ahead did nothing good for my already-haphazard sleep schedule. Of course he was following the blitz every chance he got. He was amazed at Anand's 12/14 performance on the first day and couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry when Carlsen lost to Karpov after missing around a dozen wins. Karpov was in clear third (!!) after day one, but it will be hard for the veteran to hold up in this incredible 42-round marathon. Still, it does seem to show that his work for Valencia did something and that maybe Kasparov and Anand's big scores against him weren't just about his coming apart at the seams.

Carlsen finished second on day one and took over the lead today, thanks in part to beating Anand with white. That these two and Kramnik are at the top, along with Karjakin, is no surprise. That last year's winner and perennial blitz powerhouse Ivanchuk is so far down the chart is a shock. Dominguez, erstwhile world blitz champion, is confirming his fluke status, unless you want to consider this the fluke. On the first day Carlsen boggled his coach by beating several top seeds while losing to cellar-dwellars Kosteniuk and Gashimov, as well as that loss to Karpov. (Kosteniuk also tagged Anand.) French champion Tkachiev is again at risk of having his legend as a blitz maestro revoked and he sits at the bottom of the table, which is also where he finished here last year. (Speaking of blitz maestros, to answer a few questions with uncertain information, it is my understanding from some of Hikaru Nakamura's comments on the ICC that he did receive an invitation to the event but it came on very late notice, too late to drop everything and attend. A real shame.)

I've only had time to glance at a few games, mostly Carlsen's with Garry, so will save highlights until the event concludes tomorrow. With so many games, please help out and mention the stunning sacs and brilliancies you've spotted in the comments. Many of the scores are wrong or incomplete, alas, with little hope of their ever being completed. In Karjakin-Grischuk White missed a cute saving trick with 26.Rh7+! and got mated. And apparently Kasparov was right about Carlsen studying his basic endgames because he beat Leko in R+B vs R. Not sure whether that's harder to win or defend in blitz. Probably to defend. Kramnik's 32.Rd7 vs Aronian is nice.

Not in the Indian caste sense, mind you. Big Vlad brought home the title by defending against a misfiring Ivanchuk in today's final round. It looked like Chucky was loading up for a big blast against e6/g6 reminiscent of Carlsen's yesterday. But he made one preparatory move too many (23.h4 instead of the 23.Ndxe6! he'd been preparing for a century) and Kramnik's defense was flawless after that, quickly forcing Ivanchuk to offer a draw. No guarantee Ivanchuk would have won had he gotten the sacrifice in, of course; he was down to seven minutes for more than a dozen moves. But it would have been a thrilling way to end the event either way. So a bit of a fizzle, but Kramnik isn't going to complain. Here he is with us on Chess.FM after his game, chatting with Malcolm Pein, who hosts Kramnik, among others, at the London Chess Classic starting Dec. 8. (Only the Carlsen-Leko game was still going and I'd already signed off to work on this blasted Kuala Lumpur speech, so I missed talking with Kramnik.) More good stuff from Vlady, who sounds happy and hungry, just like we like'em.

Speaking of, I'll update this item later with game notes and comments from Kasparov, who couldn't resist following the games from Malaysia, especially Carlsen's, naturally. We were watching the R+2 vs R to the finish while talking on Skype. Garry was very happy not just for Magnus's second win, which gave him a share of second with Ivanchuk, but because "I said he should study these endgames and it looks like he actually did!" Carlsen played this difficult theoretical position with computer-like speed and accuracy. Garry also mentioned that Carlsen has a fantastic gift for endgame play. Leko shouldn't have gotten into such a position to begin with but got into time trouble just at the wrong moment and Carlsen was never playing to draw, but to win. Very impressive. Funny, often it was Kramnik who lay low, playing conservatively and not losing only to pop up at the end with clutch wins to nab a title. But Kramnik's usual old +2 wasn't enough here for Carlsen and Ivanchuk because of... Kramnik. Meet Mr. Plus Three! This is his second straight +3 undefeated supertournament win and it comes in the strongest event of the year and one of the strongest of all time. Congratulations to Big Vlad.

Anand either forgot something or picked a very bad moment to improvise against Aronian and lost horribly with white in just 25 moves. Aronian had the white side of this last year in Nanjing and clearly liked what he saw with good reason. This is the 4th time Aronian has beaten Anand with black in just the last two years. With no wins with white and no losses! That's just plain voodoo, which I believe is prohibited by the laws of chess. Ponomariov got a consolation win to wrap up his tournament in the battle of the abbreviations. Moro took a nap after the queens came off and Pono whipped up a nice attack. Svidler tried to improve in a very long line of Gelfand's Petroff and, yawn, you know how that goes. The mighty Tal Blitz event starts tomorrow.

The other news for the real geeks is that this win makes Carlsen the unofficial #1 player in the world, by all of 0.6 points. He actually did this a year ago in Bilbao, for one day. I think he'll still need to score +3 in London to make it official on the January list. (+2 and he'll lose a single crucial point, probably.) That detail didn't stop Kasparov from a loud "Bravo!" for his padawan, or whatever the equivalent is for the Sith.

After battling a bug and playing seven consecutive draws, Magnus Carlsen came alive in a big way in the 8th round of the Tal Memorial. He played e4 and ripped Ponomariov's Najdorf/Schev apart by brute force. It was a devastatingly simple attack in appearance: Aim everything at e6 and sac, collect point. No wonder Gelfand and other old Sicilian hands are playing the Petroff these days. As usual, the other four games were drawn, leaving Kramnik in clear first with Anand and Ivanchuk a half-point back. Tomorrow's final round is perfectly set with Ivanchuk-Kramnik in a winner-take-all. Anand also has white, against Aronian. Carlsen is the only other player with a plus score but can't reach a share of first because of the pairings.

Apart from the Carlsen-Ponomariov massacre it was a pretty slow day on the boards. Kramnik-Leko deserves special mention as a mildly disgraceful curiosity. The game was popular QID theory followed by a fantastic sharp series of tactical blows starting with 19.Bxg7 and resulting in a perpetual check or a drawn queen and pawn endgame. You can really enjoy it if you ignore the fact that the entire thing has been played before! Jussupow-Sax, Rotterdam World Cup 1989 reached 26..Bg4 and they agreed the draw without bothering to play the final, still pretty, drawing idea of 27.Rxh7+. Barus-Zarnicki, Elista 1996, varied only with 27.Rxd8 and drawn rook endgame. Leko admitted after the game he vaguely remembered the themes if not a specific game. No word from Kramnik. Both players used about an hour reconstructing the past. Tacitly or explicitly agreed, I'm not sure if this sort of thing is better or worse than a 15-move non-game. Better, I guess? Certainly no Sofia rules would prevent this sort of thing. I suggested on the air that maybe they could have played a real vintage draw as a sort of historical tribute, maybe a Tal game. A few listeners opted for the so-called Immortal Draw, Hamppe-Meitner 1872.

Anyway, with the amazing chess Kramnik has been playing I'm not going to begrudge an unusual way to go about consolidating without effort before what might turn into a tough final round with black against Ivanchuk. He had a nice interview clip with Macauley for Chess.FM yesterday and he really sounded pumped up. You don't hear Kramnik showing much emotion, win or lose, a trait that endears him to some while annoying others. He also confirmed that he, like Carlsen has been ill and was taking fever-reducers during the rounds until yesterday. He's been putting in a lot of time and energy on the board with both colors, too, with novelties, sharp positions, and long endgames for dessert. Kaidanov made the excellent point that that world champions often go on tears after losing their titles. Maybe they have a point to prove, or maybe they just feel they can relax and have more fun at the board without the weight of the crown on their brows. Spassky comes to mind. Karpov and Kasparov were still at the height of their powers when they lost the title, so it wasn't really a big deal to see them still doing well at tournaments. It's good news indeed if Kramnik, as it seems from Dortmund and this event, is shaking off that "never lose" mindset that made him the world champ but that sometimes bogs him down in tournament play. That said, nobody has played 1.e4 against him here yet, and I doubt he's given up the Petroff just to make the commentariat happy.

After smashing through against Ponomariov, Carlsen showed he's human by missing the strongest continuation of his sacrificial attack. Lucky for him, Pono is also of woman born and failed to find the tricky defense 22..Bb7! Now the planned 23.Qg5 (idea Nf5) is met by 23..Nd5 24.Nf5 Rxf5 and Black is surviving for a while, at least. The other idea 23.g5 is met by 23..Nh5 and now 24.Qg6?? Nf4 wins the white queen. Oops. Breaking 10m nodes per second on a quad-core is one thing, however, and a human trying to defend this position on the clock against Carlsen is another. Ponomariov returned the favor with 22..Rd8 and was duly lost again when Carlsen got back on track and played g5 the second time around. I could almost hear Garry screaming when his protege gave Black that ray of hope with 22.Bb3 so I'm glad it turned out all right. The finish was quite elegant, though White is spoiled for choice. 29.Rd7 is more a matter of taste over 29.Rd8+ I suppose. Fun stuff and definitely the winner of the most Tal-like effort of the tournament award, if there is one. Unimpressive play after the opening from Ponomariov, who meandered around with his queen while Carlsen was loading up the shotguns and planting the C-4 around Black's king. 11.Qe1 is a new move in an old position, btw, but Carlsen spent a long time on it so it if it's lab work it cost him a while to remember it. Ponomariov went into the tank in response and obviously didn't find any answers down there.

Aronian and Ivanchuk danced around for a long time out of another Catalan. The white could do was reach a theoretically drawn rook endgame. Seen our share of those during this event, which I think speaks to both the parity of the players and the work they are doing at the board. Very few draws by mutual fear. Gelfand didn't get anything in his Catalan vs Anand and they didn't bother playing it out past move 28. The last game to finish was Morozevich-Svidler. It looked like they were swapping down to a draw after Svidler successfully neutralized Moro's enterprising attempts to stir up trouble. But the Q+R endgame was tense as time trouble approached. Svidler gave up a pawn to push his kingside pawns toward the white king, guaranteeing enough counterplay to prevent White from getting ambitious. Bare kings resulted eventually, a touch I appreciate as a commentator, even though I admit we'd given up the broadcast by that point...

Final round 9: Ivanchuk-Kramnik, Leko-Carlsen, Anand-Aronian, Svidler-Gelfand, Ponomariov-Morozevich. Kramnik's on +3, Ivanchuk and Anand +2. I don't know the tiebreak info, if any.

How about those old guys, eh? The classic 90s generation is on top in Moscow with two rounds to play. The oldest players in the field are at the top of the crosstable at the Tal Memorial. Gelfand, the oldest in the field at 41, had a setback today when he lost to Ivanchuk, 40, which put the Ukrainian into a share of second place with Anand, who is 39 for a few more weeks. They all trail Kramnik, a relative youngster at 34. The heralded leaders of the new generation, Carlsen (18) and Aronian (26) are stuck on even scores.

Kramnik moved to +3 in round six with another deep and complicated battle. He played a very sharp and offbeat line against Ponomariov (8.dxc5), leaving his king in the center and forcing Pono to take on the former world champ and the former world champ's computer in the opening. (Yes, Kramnik! Time to call him Vlad 3.0?) Impressively, Ponomariov was up to the task, defending creatively and finally getting Kramnik out of his book with the nice 15..b5. It looked like Kramnik missed a few chances to end things earlier after Ponomariov's inferior 17..Qa3. (Such as 19.Qxh7+, or later, 27.Qd7) But as happened to Leko against Anand the day before, Ponomariov navigated the swirling waters for a long time only to slip and slide down the drain after a long defense. His last hope was the theoretical endgame position with R+p vs B+p with pawns on the h-file. It's tricky, and Kramnik had to work it out a bit before finding the right plan to lose a tempo and create the winning zugzwang. But find it he did. Unlike Kasparov, who had the exact same endgame against Jussupow at Linares in 1993 and gave up after 30 moves. (Though to be fair they didn't have increment back then -- I was afraid to ask Garry about it to see what the time situation was! And we're working on his big business speech for Kuala Lumpur this week, which is why I have no time to be writing this...) Timman-Velimirovic, 1979, is a more famous example of the stronger side winning, though the pawns were one square less advanced and I believe that makes the win a little easier since the bishop's range of motion is limited. Educational stuff.

Gelfand-Aronian was a sharp and well-known tactical line of the Semi-Slav. After 25 moves of theory Aronian started playing wobbly chess and was quickly down a clean pawn. Gelfand mopped up efficiently to break his drawing streak and move to +1. He was subtracted back to an even score today by Ivanchuk in a rook endgame almost identical to the one he won against Aronian. These two consummate technical players made some very strange moves heading into the endgame, according both to GM Har-Zvi on Chess.FM and to the computer. (The expected and apparently superior moves we expected were 22.Rxc5, 22..Rxc1, 27.Bxb6 going into what looks like a won position, and 27..Nd7 trying to set up a blockade.) I speculated that maybe it wasn't really Ivanchuk playing. After all, you can't tell since he again wore the surgical-style face-mask to avoid catching (or distributing?) something. Only Chucky. Now that he's won two in a row maybe the other players will start wearing masks, too. In round six he destroyed Morozevich on the black side of a Benoni, a really wild game GM Benjamin didn't have much time for because the Kramnik-Ponomariov game was such a thriller. Carlsen-Anand was mostly solid stuff until Carlsen had a chance to go for more with 26.f5!? He waited a move, however, and giving away the tempo meant it was only enough for a sharp draw. One cute line tossed out by Hikaru Nakamura kibitzing on the ICC: 26.f5 Qxg4 27.h3 Qg5 28.fxe6 fxe6 29.Qb4! Ra2?? 30.Rf8+ Kh7 31.Qb1+ winning the rook. That's a blunder of course, but 29..Ra8 30.Qd6 is good for White as well, nearly winning. So Black probably can't take the g-pawn. 26..Nd5 perhaps. Carlsen might have tried to play on by pushing his e-pawn, but it would have been very risky at best so he forced the repetition. Comps say White has nothing anyway after 34.e6 Qe5 35.Qg6 Re1!

A few days ago I hyped today's Aronian-Kramnik matchup both for caliber and for relevance in the standings. But then Aronian lost and today he got very little against Vlad's 5..Bb4 QGD. There were some fun swaps, and after an inferior continuation by Kramnik it looked like Aronian could have tortured him for an hour or two with 20.Nd6 and the endgame is much more pleasant for White. Maybe Aronian just didn't enjoy the prospect of a long day, or more likely he simply missed the obvious 20.a3?! c4! and it's a dead draw just like that. He played a3 almost instantly from what we could tell and it cost him a chance to play for a win in a critical game. Morozevich has played some bad chess in Moscow, but today he played a very high-class affair to fend off Anand. Svidler-Carlsen was one of our few 1.e4 games and fewer Sicilians. It got lively after White allowed Black to capture on f3, doubling his pawns. Carlsen played very precisely with his knights to ward off the bishop pair and reach equality. That's 7/7 draws for Carlsen. He started Corus this year drawing 9/9, so watch out... Ponomariov-Leko was tagged as a snoozer from the start and it lived up to the billing, drawn in 31 plodding moves.

Round 8: Kramnik-Leko, Carlsen-Ponomariov, Morozevich-Svidler, Gelfand-Anand, Aronian-Ivanchuk. No games between players with plus scores. But looking ahead to the final round on Saturday we get Ivanchuk-Kramnik. Ivanchuk has beaten Kramnik three times in the past year or two without a loss: one classical, one blindfold, one blitz. Anand finishes with white against Aronian.

Another day, another decisive game at the Tal Memorial. Today it was Anand's turn, and the victory put him into a tie for first Kramnik on +2. The world champ trampled Leko with the latest hot novelty in the Semi-Slav. Last year Kramnik took out Aronian in similar fashion in the same line, giving back the extra piece with the spectacular 25.Nc3!, improving on Radjabov-Anand, 2006. Today it was Leko's turn to step into a world champion's sights when Anand dropped 22.Nxd4! on him. The Hungarian was up to the challenge for a good long time, however. He used his time judiciously and wended his way down a very narrow path toward safety. It wasn't until move 30 that he started to slide off the cliff under the intense pressure. After that it was a ruthless dismantling job by Anand, closing in on the open black king. After White eliminated the black d-pawn, all the rook and queen endgames were doomed for Leko, who hung on grimly even after reaching the time control in a hopeless position. A sweet piece of preparation and a classy win by Anand.

Gelfand-Kramnik took an unexpected turn for the dramatic after a tranquil start. Kramnik steadily made progress on the black side of a hybrid Catalan. It wasn't clear if Gelfand was going to be able to ge this pawn back without suffering, but it seems like he had it under control. Time trouble began to set in for both players before move 30 and Kramnik's nerves held up much better than Gelfand's. Just when White could have played for an advantage with 27.Rb7, the Israeli began a series of retreating moves that left Black in control. Soon they were both blitzing and they crossed the finish line on move 40 with seconds to spare. During the scramble both missed improvements. The cool 36..Rd8 would have eliminated White's only source of counterplay. Instead, Gelfand got a miracle save just in time, the saving geometry of 41.Rc7! coming when he had time to find it.

Gelfand's day still wasn't over though, as they reached an always annoying to defend R+4 vs R+3. This is almost always drawn, but Kasparov encouraged a generation of players on the stronger side twice in a single year. First, in February 2000, Kasparov shockingly lost a 4 vs 3 to Jeroen Piket in the final of the KasparovChess Online Grand Prix. Later that year, in a slightly more prestigious event, Kasparov came very close to beating Kramnik in it near the end of their London world championship match. Oddly, they've played it a few other times as well. So you definitely play on, but you don't expect to win against someone as steady as Gelfand unless the weaker side's pawns are in bad shape. Kramnik gave it a go for 80 moves before accepting the inevitable. A great second-half battle.

Carlsen is still quite ill, but Ivanchuk was the one showing the symptoms today. He played what GM Larry Christiansen called "The Granny Opening" today, aka the London System. These Colle-ish lines with the white bishop on f4 are a form of anti-theory, notably favored by Kamsky in the early parts of both phases of his career. It has the advantage, if you want to call it that, of avoiding an opening discussion. Perhaps it was Ivanchuk's plan to avoid having such a discussion with Carlsen and his illustrious coach. Carlsen held the long and uncomplicated fight without any punches landing. Morozevich took a risk by playing a Dutch against Aronian. The Armenian made a little progress, and is usually very dangerous in such fixed maneuvering positions. But he lost his way somewhere along the line and ended up with a dominating position and no way to make progress. Svidler played an aggressive line against Ponomariov's Berlin but couldn't avoid liquidation and a draw.

That Berlin was the second game of the round attended by the spirit of Etienne Bacrot in Novi Sad a few weeks ago at the Euro Teams. He drew against Adams in the stem game. And his win over Aronian in the Semi-Slav was duplicated up till move 17 in Anand-Leko. News you can't use.

Round 6: Carlsen-Anand, Kramnik-Ponomariov, Leko-Svidler, Morozevich-Ivanchuk, Gelfand-Aronian. The heir apparent vs the world champ is the obvious top billing even though it's hard to say if Carlsen will be in fighting shape at all. Leko and Svidler share the cellar on -2 and have only rating points and pride to lose at this point. Hard to imagine a Marshall when they want to lick wounds, but we can hope. I'll be on Chess.FM in, blargh, seven hours with Joel Benjamin.

Apologies to Ray Milland. It's not easy being Peter Svidler. Everybody knows he's going to play the Grunfeld and yet he still does quite well with it. The drawbacks of not surprising anyone is compensated for by being the leading expert and by developing an uncanny, or perhaps just canny, feel for the positions. This argument between breadth and depth has a long history in chess, of course. Walter Browne was married to the Najdorf and occasionally suffered a loss to a much weaker player who had cooked up something nasty. That doesn't happen to Svidler, but sometimes his Grunfeld looks like a big target on his back. His weekend at the Tal Memorial consisted of defending the honor of the Grunfeld on back to back days against world champion Anand and his predecessor Kramnik. Not a fun way to spend your weekend.

Both games were sharp and violent. Kramnik came prepared with yet another novelty from his deep stockpile. 12.h4 demonstrates what seems to be a trend toward direct kingside attacking plans against the popular defense. Ponomariov-Aronian, Anand-Svidler, and yesterday Kramnik left his king in the center and threw his h-pawn forward. It's always nice when hyper-sophisticated super-GM play breaks down into simple themes, even when it's really just an illusion. The quick attack on the kingside looks like a logical counter to the off-sides positions of the black knight on a6 and the black queen on a5. They end up spectating for quite a long while. Svidler took a long time considering his reply and responded in true Grunfeld fashion, opening lines with 12..f5. It still looked very precarious, though GM de Firmian on Chess.FM thought Black had come through the worst when Svidler found the counter-intuitive 16..Bxh6! That gave Black time to get his pieces back in the game. Unfortunately for Svidler, he picked the wrong piece to rehab first. 18..Qa4? was met with the wonderfully subtle and powerful 19.Qe3! Svidler must have missed the strength of the queen move because it forced him to swap queens and go into a dismal pawn-down endgame that Kramnik converted with his usual steamroller efficiency. 18..Nc7 was the right way to get back on defense, although the complications are alarming. 19.Bc4 b5! (19..Rdd6 runs into 20.Qe3 again.) 20.Nc6 Qa4 21.Bxb5 (21.Nxd8?! Qxc4 is dangerous for White.) 21..Qxb5 22.Nxd8 Qd7 23.Nb7 Qb5 and the knight must go back to d8.

The win put Kramnik into clear first on +2 and he's looking very good indeed. The other four games were drawn, so Anand and Aronian stay in the chase at +1. Carlsen, Ponomariov, Gelfand, and Ivanchuk have drawn all four games. Carlsen is still quite ill with a throat infection and fever, but has steadfastly declined to entertain the thought of exiting the tournament. If a player is contagious should the organizers take steps? Just wondering, since so much is going on around here these days to combat H1N1. I doubt anything will be done, especially since Carlsen has already faced Kramnik, Russian Chess Federation honcho Bakh's main concern! Leko and Morozevich are on -1 and Svidler has the cellar alone with -2. There are now five rounds on the trot. Mark your calendars now for round seven on Thursday, which sees Aronian-Kramnik.

Ponomariov got little against Anand's Grunfeld, partly thanks to a petite tactic that, it turns out, was already played once this year by Anand's countryman Negi. 16..Nc4 apparently wasn't known to either Pono or the world champ, who invested considerable time. Negi played the shot against the Russian GM Maletin at the Chigorin Memorial a few weeks ago in St. Petersburg. It seems to equalize quite handily. Morozevich and Gelfand gave it a go in an unusual reversed Sicilian for a good long time and things got exciting in time trouble, but the balance was never disturbed. Leko-Ivanchuk was one of the few disappointing draws of the tournament so far. Ivanchuk parried Leko's attack well but Nick thought there was still plenty of action on the board when the draw was agreed on move 27. Carlsen played the Immune Defense against Aronian, taking it easy with the white pieces. Aronian managed to stir up a few brief flurries but it was clear Carlsen just wanted to get back to bed, which he achieved in 32 moves. The conclusion is actually quite witty and worth a look. Swap like a Grandmaster!

I'll be on with the inimitable Larry Christiansen bright and early for round five: Gelfand-Kramnik, Aronian-Morozevich, Ivanchuk-Carlsen, Anand-Leko, Svidler-Ponomariov.

Someone finally perpetrated some violence at the Tal Memorial after two rounds of five draws. Three of the favorites notched wins. World champ Vishy Anand scored his first classical win since late March, taking out Svidler's Grunfeld in a sharp effort. Aronian beat Leko in the latest chapter of the Anti-Moscow Semi-Slav saga. Kramnik, again playing aggressively with black, took the initiative from Morozevich, won material, and then finished off with a great sacrificial counterattack when Moro's sense of danger failed him. Ivanchuk-Ponomariov and Gelfand-Carlsen were relatively balanced draws, the former going on into the third time control in a knight and pawn endgame.

The good news is that things are heating up in chilly Moscow. The bad news is that there are reports of at least two of the players falling ill. Magnus Carlsen is suffering from a fever bad enough to consider requesting a postponement of his round four game. He's been to the doctor, so let's hope things improve. I also heard a comment that Kramnik is dealing with some flu symptoms. If so, he should get the flu more often the way he shredded Morozevich today. This came after he drew in the second round against Anand's Grunfeld, in which the champ never left his opening preparation. Also in the second round, Ponomariov pushed Aronian in yet another Grunfeld. White's blunt attack resulted in a piece sac for a perpetual check. White could have continued with the very speculative 29.Rf1, taking three pawns for the knight in an endgame. With bishops and rooks still on the board it would have been very risky for White.

I've basically given up trying even to keep track the various Grunfeld lines in fashion at the moment. It's gotten worse now that it seems to be spreading like the flu. It's long been Svidler's reply to all things d4, but now it seems there are more players in the elite who play it than don't. Anand got a surprising amount of play from a direct f4-f5 plan. It looks like Black was holding against the onslaught until Svidler made a serious miscalculation on move 25 and allowed the e-file to be opened. Suddenly his d4 knight was pinned up and the game was over after a few more nicely calculated points. The knight can die on e6 instead after 26..Ne6 27.Qe3 Rfe8 28.Re1. A win that looks almost ridiculously straightforward. Pin, undermine the knight's support with b4, win. But a look at the subsequent tactics makes me wonder if it was only there that Svidler missed something. Poor Peter was lamenting the draw to me after the loss. Now he has to face Kramnik with black, surely another Grunfeld. Consecutive blacks against the reigning and previous world champ isn't a fun way to spend your weekend.

After outpreparing Carlsen in the first round, Kramnik again showed his work in the ..d5 Nimzo, this time against Morozevich. White seemed to be getting the worse of things very early on. Moro declined to take the c-pawn on the 11th move. His typically aggressive 11.e4 left his king in traffic, where it would later be run over by the bus of Kramnik's queen and knight. The attractive invasion 19..Nb3 20.Qd3 Nc1! led to a decisive attack. It's surprising that Black's attack is so strong with just the queen and knights, but the white bishop and Rh1 are just spectators and the knight on g5 isn't doing much either. Many nice touches from Black as well, including the deflection 22..a6. White had a startling attempt to confuse the issue that even Morozevich couldn't find. The computer tosses out the insane-looking 26.Qb7!?, leaving the knight hanging on g5 thanks to the threat of the opening of the h-file. The point is 26..hxg5 27.e6! threatening both Be5 and Qf7+ and now it's Black who has to play very carefully. First 27..Ne2+ to push the white king in front of the rook. Then 28.Kh2 Rxe6 29.Qxa8+ Kh7 30.hxg5 Qe4! stalemating the white king. Black's attack is still overwhelming, but at least there are chances he'll make a mistake. Kramnik faltered in the game, however, getting his knight hung up after 27..Qe4. Morozevich would have been close to saving his bacon with 30.Qd1, but he went on the offensive with 30.Qb7?? and missed the spectacular, and crushing, 30..Nxf2! Thanks to the pawn on f4, the black queen is a wrecking crew. And if White doesn't give up another exchange a black rook comes in on the c-file. Kramnik finished with flair, giving up a rook with 42..Rf8! to force mate. Another great battle and Kramnik appears to be renewing the upgrade we saw from him in Dortmund, which was the first supertournament he played in after losing his title to Anand last year.

Aronian came out on top in another sharp Semi-Slav against Leko, though he's usually on the black side. Maybe after losing twice with it to Grischuk this year, and a week ago to Bacrot in the Euro Teams, he figured he'd prefer it with white. Here he offered a surprising queen exchange despite being down the gambited pawn, though Leko gave it right back and even sacrificed one of his own a few moves later. Aronian steadily outplayed Leko from there despite his tangled queenside pieces. It resolved into a 4 vs 2 pawn situation on the kingside with no counterplay for Black. These positions almost always seem to be horrid for Black when his queenside pawns get immobilized. A nice piece of chess alchemy from Aronian, who looked a little shaky in Novi Sad at the Team Ch.

Round 4: Kramnik-Svidler, Ponomariov-Anand, Leko-Ivanchuk, Carlsen-Aronian, Morozevich-Gelfand Let's hope for good health for all the players. I'm on Chess.FM with Nick de Firmian bright and early Sunday at 7am NY time.

A follow-up note to round one's slugfest between Carlsen and Kramnik. Apparently after the game Kramnik expressed some shock that Carlsen was playing to win the endgame as shown by his ambitious move 31.e4. Kramnik expected White to play 31.Ra3, steering for exchanges and a draw.

Wow, what a way to start the strongest tournament of the year, the Tal Memorial in Moscow. All five games finished drawn, and several of them were without a lot of action. But all were interesting and we got our money's worth and more in the game most were focused on from the start, the battle between the prince and the former king, Carlsen and Kramnik. Kramnik struck the first blow by outpreparing Carlsen (and Kasparov, by proxy) with a sharp Nimzo-Indian line Anand just used against Karpov a few days ago in Corsica. It was a notable departure stylistically for Kramnik, who also played some aggressive chess in Dortmund this year. Black takes considerable positional risks for attacking momentum, just about the opposite of Kramnik's usual solid style with black. Carlsen rose to the challenge, avoiding some early drawish lines and banking on his long-term possibilities. Kramnik might have played a little more ambitiously by keeping the queens on with 19..Qa6, a move touted by GM Kaidanov during our Chess.FM show. (Show, I meant six-hour marathon. What a way to start the event!)

But when you play complex endgames as well as Kramnik does, and nobody plays them as well as Kramnik does, "ambition" takes on a broader meaning. The concepts of "best play" and "theoretically drawn" also go out the window when Big Vlad is at the controls of a position like this. His precision is heavenly, his ability to find hidden resources demonic, and he turns the screws like a combination of Ruy Lopez and Torquemada. Again and again he found new problems to create winning chances despite the opposite-colored bishops. Even the questionable decision to bury his own rook on b3 couldn't stop Kramnik from keeping up the pressure. Carlsen fought back wonderfully, ripping open the center and sacrificing a pawn with 31.e4!? to try to gain enough counterplay to hold the balance. Or was he playing for a win, too? Of course! There were perpetual checks and center-board mate tricks all over the place for both sides. Was the h-pawn enough? It wasn't at all clear, even to Kaidanov, until Kramnik's exchange sac made it obvious only Black was playing to win and that White was going to have to find many good moves to hold the draw.

And find them Carlsen did, despite getting into time trouble in the second control as he labored to grind through the complexities. 50.Kg5 came with just a few minutes left and it was one of several few moves in a row that were essential to split the point. 51..Rc5 was actually a more forcing draw, but it's incredibly hard for a human to literally waste a tempo in such a position. Remarkably, it's close to mutual zugzwang and Black has nothing better than 51..b4 and now 52.Rc4 is a fantastical forced repetition with mate threats thanks to the white king's proximity. 52..b3 53.Kf6! Several other lines require a draw by one tempo after White gives back the exchange and ends up with a rook versus two connected passers. Kramnik had a last chance to keep the game alive with 52..Kd5 instead of going to f7 after Carlsen found the last difficult move, the check on e8. It's also worth looking at 51..Ke5, giving up the b-pawn with check to advance the king, as counter-intuitive as that looks. White had an immediate draw with the computer-like 49.Rhh8 Bc6 50.Rh6! and Black has to accede to the repetition.

A titanic battle and a big round of applause to both players. Kramnik wrested the initiative with black from the start and played to win. And defending such an endgame against Kramnik is a real trial by fire for anyone, even the Hero of Nanjing. The other games certainly couldn't live up to that battle, but there were some highlights. Morozevich sacrificed a piece against Leko but the Hungarian defended creatively to force a draw. Ponomariov used his unusual 5..Bd6 against the Catalan (which ended up looking more like an Anti-Moscow Semi-Slav), which he used earlier this year against Topalov. Gelfand couldn't prevent the ..c5 and ..e5 breaks with rapid simplification. Aronian gave it his best shot against Svidler's inevitable Grunfeld, but it was Black who came out with a little something to play for. After some sharp exchanges it fizzled to the first draw of the day.

World champion Vishy Anand, finally playing a classical event, also trotted out the Grunfeld against Ivanchuk. White got a good position but as usual Ivanchuk was in bad time trouble. It never became lethal, but it was enough to cost him his advantage. Anand missed a chance to play for a win with 30..a3 31.b3 Nb5 with a potent bind. Instead Ivanchuk had a relatively easy time of blitzing to the control and into a drawn rook endgame.

Round 2: Kramnik-Anand, Svidler-Ivanchuk, Ponomariov-Aronian, Carlsen-Morozevich, Leko-Gelfand. Macauley is hosting with Larry Christiansen while I battle print deadlines.

Woo! Even with all the strong events we have these days it's hard not to get excited about this one. The 2009 Tal Memorial in Moscow is the strongest event of the year and, despite not including world #1 Topalov, easily makes the top 20 strongest events ever list. Not just in the obvious and steadily inflating Elo average, but in the meaningful measure of how many players from the elite are there. No outsiders in Moscow. The field:

Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Peter Leko, Boris Gelfand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler and Ruslan Ponomariov.

That's eight of the current (Nov 09) top ten, plus #12 and #13: Ivanchuk, who was #2 as recently as a year ago, and Ponomariov, a former top-five player and FIDE KO WCh). Pono is the only player who hasn't been a consistent top-ten star for years, though he did well here last year and seems to be getting his groove back. Ivanchuk is the defending title holder. Only Topalov and Gashimov are missing from the top ten, though it would be more accurate to say Radjabov and not his countryman Gashimov, since Radjabov was #7 on the relevant list and Gashimov, now #6, was #14. Anyway, it's hella strong, as we used to say in the hood.

Rounds begin at 3pm local time, 7am NY. I'll be back on the mic for ICC Chess.FM with the usual impressive array of Grandmaster (and broadcasting) talent. Kaidanov, Christiansen, Benjamin, de Firmian, and my old Herzlia homeboy, Ronen Har-Zvi, now of upstate New York. The off day is Monday the 9th. The official site doesn't have the pairings up yet, but a little Russian bird told me that it's Carlsen-Kramnik in the first round. An incredible 22-player blitz tournament follows the event.

Any dark horses out there? It's only nine rounds so unless lightning strikes +3 should do the job with +2 possibly good for shared first. Anand has barely played this year so how the world champion is doing is the biggest question to me. Hard to imagine Carlsen putting up another result like Nanjing in this field, but something tells me it's almost time to stop using the phrase "hard to imagine" with the Norwegian star. Another subplot is whether or not Carlsen can add the handful of rating points he needs to pass Topalov for the #1 spot, though he'll also be in Corus London in December and that should count on the January list.

Update: Ah, the rest of the draw is up, so now we can figure out the rest. Here's the first round: Карлсен (1) - Крамник (10), Морозевич (2) - Леко (9), Гельфанд (3) - Пономарев (8), Аронян (4) - Свидлер (7), Иванчук (5) - Ананд (6).

That's Carlsen-Kramnik, Morozevich-Leko, Gelfand-Ponomariov, Aronian-Svidler, Ivanchuk-Anand. That also means, and I was just on the phone with an interested party, that Carlsen has five whites. That's the good news. But his coach was a little disappointed that four of them are against guys who are very tough to beat: Kramnik, Anand, Aronian, and Ponomariov! (The other is Moro, who is always dangerous, but apparently Kasparov mostly wants to sharp fights, and no trouble with Moro on that count.) This is an interesting piece of strategery, the mostly moot question of against whom you would rather have white. You'd think it would be against the stronger guys in principle, but Garry is more concerned about Carlsen getting the maximum of chances to play with a win with both colors and said he'd be happy swapping all four of those whites for black for whites in other games because then those favorites would have to press for a win. Not sure if his charge would agree, since Anand and Kramnik in particular are far more dangerous with white. Garry just feels that danger is what Carlsen should be seeking. Easy for him to say! [Hah, Carlsen's Facebook status was just changed to "Hvit mot Kramnik... What to do?"]

I asked Kasparov if he felt the same way in his own events -- if he preferred to have black against the solid tough-to-beat guys, but he didn't give much of an answer, saying it really depended on the player and the tournament. I suppose it's different when the goal isn't just to win, but also to expand and develop your overall game, which is what Garry's role with Carlsen is. I.e. becoming the 300th person to get next to nothing against Kramnik's Petroff isn't exactly mind-expanding. He wants all nine games to have value and chances to complicate.

Garry just finished giving two big speeches in Mumbai, India, today btw. To IBM! And yes, Deep Blue was on the menu. (In the Q&A: "Will machines dominate the world?" "You shouldn't ask me. Ask James Cameron!") Speaking of, he has a letter in the new issue of New In Chess as well as a column on his match with Karpov. The letter is in response to the last NIC with Illescas's fascinating article on Deep Blue now that the Spaniard's non-disclosure agreement has expired.