Russia was lucky to escape the Netherlands with a 1.5-2.5 loss today. Van Wely mangled a winning endgame against Grischuk, but of course this is still a great result against the mighty top seed. Sokolov decided not to find out about Kramnik's form and the game was a short draw. Nijboer turned in the decider by beating Rublevsky, who is looking every bit the sixth board so far. (What was wrong with 30.Rd2?) It's damaging because Russia usually scores big on the lower boards.
Armenia is the sole leader after edging Uzbekistan. Lots of close matches again with none of the blowouts I expected. (Not as bad as my predicting that Topalov was "out of contention" at the MTel, but as a mitigating factor most of my other predictions during that event were pretty good. Not Migstradamus bad at least.)
USA beat China 2.5-1.5 with wins from Onischuk and Kaidanov. Kamsky suffered his first lost, to Bu, when he took a solid position and went pawn crazy on the kingside. There is a downside to trying to win every game. Iran surprised by holding Ukraine to 2.5 points. India showed signs of life, beating Germany 3-1 to move into the pack at 16.5, a point and a half behind Armenia. Round six board results here. Round seven team pairings here.
Quick replay link for a few of the top round six games here. PGN here. Culled from Playchess.com and thanks to the relayers there. (Fixed some errors in early moves of the Shirov score with best guesses.)
I think Kamsky kind of over reached himself pushing the king side pawns so agressively.
I thought kamsky had some pressure up to is first pawn move of h5. someone said it kept the white knight off g4, but in this game I dont think Ng4 was a threat.
I thought he should have kept the pressure up on the backward c pawn until he won it. that is where Bu had a permanent weakness and Kamsky had opportunities to expoit it. I think it was at least twice where Kamsky did not increase pressure on the pawn.
but I am a Kamsky fan. and I will remain a Kamsky fan. this one loss is acceptable. cant win them all.
Bu is doing very well against difficult opposition. although I think Kamsky kind of self destructed in this game.
i was watching the Bu-Kamsky game and enjoyed seeing kamsky equalizing early and then gaining a slight advantage. i thought he was going to win and took a nap. after my nap i checked the results and found that kamsky had lost!
btw anyone knows what happened to his father Rustam?
It is improbable that Rustam Kamsky has found another player of genius he can exploit.
For his own sake, one can but hope he has additional skills.
I wonder how the US team Captain felt about Kamsky's "go for broke" strategy against Bu? Certainly, from Kamsky's standpoint, it would have been a bit of a coup for him to beat Bu, when Anand and Kramnik had been unable to do so. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Despite Kamsky's loss, the US still managed to win the match vs. the Chinese. And before the match, I'm sure the members of the US team would have been pleased to achieve a 2.5-1.5 match victory.
Interesting factoid: Among the men, the only teams to win all 6 of their matches are the USA and...Belarus. Indeed, Belarus has quietly moved into =3rd
It looks like there will be exciting matchups from here on out.
Maybe the US could have gone 3-1 if they had Nakamura in their lineup. It seems both China and US did not put all their best players in the lineup. Maybe China and the US cut a deal and agreed that Nakamura would not play if Zhang Zhong did not play. There may be greater forces at work as this may be part of the deal for China to gradually float its currency and the Bush administration to cool down Congress about it.
That's an interesting theory. I thought it was actually just a chess match.
Not necessarily: remember ping-pong diplomacy, from the Nixon administration? (Yeah, I know, it's an insult to call it "ping-pong" instead of "table tennis." Sorry.)
Normally on a chess Web site I'd assume everyone reading was too young to remember that. But happily I've seen that a good many Dirt readers, perhaps even 50% or more, are contemporaries of mine (born 1954) or even older.
Yeah, I'm sure our fearless leader is burning the midnight oil, poring over scoresheets to figure out where the US could have gained advantage over our future arch enemies. (He probably thinks Nakamura -is- Chinese.)
Magnus Carlsen versus Michael Adams in round 7. Hopefully this matchup will be more to the liking of Carlsen, who was apparently dissatisfied that he had to spend as much as 27 minutes on his clock, when he beat IM Rafael Prasca (2448) yesterday!
Regarding chess and diplomacy, I also note that Henry Kissinger (who always enjoyed playing chess but is reportedly a weak player) back in the Cold War days was often asked to play a "friendly" game by this or that Russian diplomat. He always resisted the temptation, because, as he later wrote, he knew the Soviet spymeisters would do extensive post-mortems of his chess style as part of their psychological profiling of him, and might thereby glean insights about his thinking style and personality that could be turned to their advantage in other areas of "competition."
Great article, you are a good writer.