In Mainz, Anand leveled his rapid match with Radjabov with a convincing win in game three out of a prepared Semi-Slav line. In game four he got into a peck of trouble again against Radjabov's Sveshnikov but held the endgame. Nice long report up at ChessBase. Official site. Svidler outplayed Aronian from two tepid positions to equalize their match 2-2 at the half.
Shredder won the computer Chess960 tournament. German programmer Stefan Meyer-Kahlen mentions in the report that he's now focusing on a mobile version coming out soon. It looks like we'll have plenty of choices for mobile chess. I suppose it's too much to ask that we be able to play against each other with all the products. Universal mobile gaming? Never happen.
Bacrot won the FiNet Chess960 open to qualify to play the winner of Aronian-Svidler next year. Mamedyarov was running away with the event but blundered into a mate in two against Bacrot (and then had a seven-move touch-move loss to Grischuk). You can replay the games online from the link charts here. The 11-round Ordix Open, regular chess at last, is this weekend.
TWIC and the official site seem to be keeping mum about it, but it appears that top seed Jonathan Rowson just won his third consecutive UK championship. I'm basing this on the results of the final round live game page, which shows Rowson beating Parker with black to reach 8.5/11 and clear first. Parker resigned after reaching the time control. There's nothing he can do against Black putting his queen on a8. A nice maneuvering achievement by the three-time champ. After nearly 60 years without a Scotsman winning the championship Rowson has owned it. Maybe now the English – with the new English Chess Federation – will ban the Scots. Speaking of, Georgian-born femme Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant again came close to the overall title, beating Pert in the final round to finish on eight.
Though it's yet another official site not updated, Ivan Sokolov stretched his lead at the Staunton Memorial by beating Howell in the fifth round. Saturday is a rest day. The NH Old Dogs vs Young Pups Scheveningen tournament starts today at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam. I previewed it here a week or so ago. The pairings are up. They are saying there will be streaming video, let's see how that goes.
The streaming video is working for me, actually. I'm watching Smeets-Beliavsky. It's very good quality and good framerate, surprisingly. I don't hear any sound, but of course I'm sure it's very quiet in the playing hall. Here's the direct link for what I'm seeing: http://www.bestuuronline.nl/nhchess/assets/Round%201/table_4/index.html
I caught Yussupow commentating on his game afterwards ['press conference']. Most excellent, and what an exciting game.
It turns out that 37..Kxh7 by Jussupow was a terrible blunder that evidently leads to a forced win for white after Rae1. Fritz initially gives Rae1 as +1.15, but a kibitzer on ICC followed the fritz line several moves and then the eval was up to +6 and still rising.
Rather than 37..Kxh7??, Qh6+ Qf4+ and Rxg2+ were all winning for black by 8 pawns according to fritz 9. In all those lines, black plays Qd2+ and Qxc3 when the pawns win. Stellwagen must have either missed Rae1 and resigned or ran out of time. An interesting finish to a fantastic game.
How about those veterans? Looks like the youngsters may have a bit left to learn. :)
Anand-Radjabov, 3:3
Aronian-Svidler, 3:3
The World Championship in Coffeehouse Chess remains very entertaining today in both variants, traditional and 960. Title holders and challengers each won a fighting game. In the second(!) round of the Ordix qualifications tournament, Bareev lost against an unknown player in a tepid game
Interesting note: The strongest team at the rising stars vs. veterans match is probably the seconds of the rising stars. Carlsen has P. Nielsen, Karjakin has Ponomariov(!), Smeets has Naiditsch, Stellwagen has Seirwan, and Wang has Wenliang (the only player I do not recognize).
How did they all get such good seconds? Professional courtesy, or sponsors?
Changing the BCF to the ECF was the beginning of a massive conspiracy to kick the Scots out and get an English champion! :-)
(by the way Arakhamia lives in Scotland too, she's married to the current Scottish champion)
There's a Russia-China Summit match going on in China. I have not found the official website. There are news reports in chinese websites, but no English news reports that I know of. Live games at
http://sports.sina.com.cn/chess/live_gx/index.html
So far China is leading in women's match and trailing in men's match. Russian men's team has
Jakovenko, Najer, Dreev, Zviagintsev, Malakhov; women's team has the Kosintseva sisters, Matveeva, Kovalevskaya, and Tairova. Chinese teams are mostly the same as their Olympiad men's and women's squads.
I have a question for you guys (don;t ask me why I had this question): Suppose you want to lose a blitz game against a strong computer with white by losing all your pieces before being mated and without taking none of opponent pieces or pawns, surviving the biggest number of moves possible.
In other words, something like "I gave you the possibility of playing white, I gave you all my pieces, I didn't take none of yours, not even a pawn and still you couldn't mate me in less than X moves... you are not that good after all!"
In my case, against Crafty playing 30 secs p/move, I survived 16 moves in this attempt
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nc3 Nd5 4. exd5 Ba3 5. bxa3 O-O 6. Bc4 d6 7. O-O Bh3
8. gxh3 Nd7 9. d4 Nc5 10. dxc5 Re8 11. Rb1 Re6 12. dxe6 Qd7 13. exd7 Rf8
14. Qd5 Kh8 15. Qxf7 Rg8 16. Qxg8#
{White mates} 1-0
Can you survive a longer number of moves against your computer (of course, the opponent must try to make the best it can, otherwise there is no sense in this question)? What is the optimal value of this number X in best play of white?
For example, I guess is important to castle as soon as possible to lose the rooks, and you need to give up pieces without participation of white queen, otherwise the computer can mate you sooner.
You can try also to play against a friend.
This is another attempt surviving 17 moves and giving up even more pawns.
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Qg5 3. Nxg5 Nf6 4. Bc4 Nd5 5. Bxd5 Ba3 6. Bxf7+ Ke7 7. Nxa3
Rg8 8. Bxg8 d5 9. exd5 Bh3 10. Nxh3 Nc6 11. Bxh7 Rd8 12. dxc6 Rd7 13. cxd7
g6 14. Qg4 Kd6 15. d8=Q+ Kc5 16. Qxc7+ Kd5 17. Qgc4#
{White mates} 1-0
PS: It is interesting both matches Aronian-Svidler and Anand-Radjabov are tied. Who is going to win? (I root for Aronian and Anand)
Exciting battles in Nunn-Carlsen and Beliavsky-Stellwagen, still going on.
After the penultimate round Ordix open, Kasimdzhanov leads by half a point. Morozevich lost against an unknown player in an exciting game.
Kasimdzhanov won Ordix open, confirming that he won Tripolis on the rapid portion of the KO tournament. He will thus challenge the winner of Anand-Radjabov next year. Also, gaining a little credibility for his FIDE title, methinks.
Oops, Mamedyarov also won and got the same 9.5 points as Kasimdzhanov, not sure about any tiebreaks
Score of Mamedyarov game may not be correct even now (he still looks lost to me), but the result may be correct (?)
Carlsen is now pressurizing Nunn in a R+B+P vs R+P ending, but both pawns are on the h-file and the Bishop is of the wrong color. Moreover, Nunn is an endgame study expert, highly interesting position.
Carlsen won, congrats! The other 'baby' (Stellwagen) also appears to be winning the tactics
Stellwagen won, congrats! Hey, is nobody else here watching the highly exciting games from Mainz and Amsterdam?
Well, anyway, Anand retains his Rapid Chess World Championship title for the 9th time. Aronian is the new Chess960 World Champion.
Not only were the NH games exciting today, the video press conference coverage is outstanding. It was really interesting watching Carlsen explain his win over Nunn. After entering that rather hairy endgame, several times he admitted he just didn't know if he had a win or not. It's really interesting to listen to his mature commentary and then see the teenager come out at moments. This is one of the best features I have seen online from a chess tmt. Great stuff. Even Stellwagen was interesting to listen to though he spoke in German. You could still follow his ideas as he demonstrated the game without understanding the language.
Beliavsky wins again with black (against Wang Hao) to go to +1 overall with all three games decisive. He's been easily the most agressive player there. Aren't the youngsters supposed to be the attacking tacticians?
Jussupow held a difficult endgame two pawns down in a oppposite color Bishop endgame. Probably the Dvoretsky method training showing through. Good to see him doing well.
Andersson, to the surprise of no one, has liquidated down to 3 drawn endgames in 3 games. He's very good at that.