The game Aronian-Leko in round six of the Linares/Morelia supertournament is useful for making several cases. First is the case that draws can be thrilling even without silly blunders. (Grischuk-Svidler from Mexico City was the last best example of this.) It also illustrates the difference between watching live and seeing the gamescore later. Especially since because our sport is a pathetic backwater that refuses to retain and exploit readily available technology by recording essential data like draw offers and time used per move. Without watching live, and without access to the move times, you wouldn't know that Peter Leko used 84 minutes on his ninth move against Levon Aronian! Not that it wasn't justified, considering the fact that Aronian was offering up his f2 pawn to the black queen with check with his fantastic 9.Qa4 novelty. The massive time investment by Leko added a great deal of tension to the rest of the game. Leko's epic think paid off and he found his way through the minefield with spectacularly accurate defensive play -- if avoiding traps can be called spectacular. This was a defensive performance for the ages by the Hungarian, who had to play almost instantly for 20 moves in a hair-raising position against the tactical sharpshooter Aronian. Amazing stuff that had GM Larry Christiansen and I riveted, although waiting for 84 minutes to get on with it was rather painful considering how slowly the other games developed.
We were waiting for Shirov to be punished for his insouciant kingside expansion but Ivanchuk couldn't find a knight configuration to exploit the holes. Shirov's gamble was justified and for the second round in a row he was getting the better of things with black before agreeing to a draw. Anand allowed Topalov to play a Bxg7 desperado but still held the draw comfortably. Or maybe it was Topalov holding the draw considering it was the first time in four blacks that Anand failed to win. That left Anand alone at the top of the crosstable on +2 when Aronian couldn't crack Leko.
The day's only decisive game (the first time we've seen fewer than two, remarkably) was Radjabov's instructive win over Carlsen. It looked at first like Carlsen's voodoo with black was once again in effect. He was about to go up a pawn by move 20 for the second day in a row. But it turned out Radjabov had evaluated the resulting position better -- as evidenced by Carlsen's long think before finally taking the pawn. By that point there's no good alternative for Black. White's activity and the bishop pair proved more than enough compensation for the pawn. Radjabov needed the pretty 27.Ba6! to prove it though (25..b6 is a better defense). The endgame was nearly impossible to hold after that and Radjabov pushed home to score his first win. He's now back to an even score and Carlsen returns to -1, where he joins Leko and Ivanchuk. All seven players have at least one win and one loss already.
Round 7 is the last in Mexico. The Linares side picks up on the 28th at 9:30am EST. Round 7: Anand-Ivanchuk, Shirov-Radjabov, Carlsen-Aronian, Leko-Topalov
ANY COMMENTS ON THE ANAND-IVANCHUK GAME?
ALL CAPS RULE!!
DRAW! :)
CARLSEN RULES
Boy are you ever right about the technological retardation of the Sport of Chess - so, so ironic, given the intelligence level of its stars. The pathetically ugly and broken Morelia website, which didn't even work at all at the beginning of the tournament, is yet another example, as is the fact that Morelia's site isn't much worse than the one recently dedicated to the CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WORLD FER CHRISSAKES, to continue the yelling theme.
Aronian-Leko is a *prime* example of a completely televisable (or net-castable) chess contest, given a suitably clever and motivated producer.
Mig wrote:
{
our sport is a pathetic backwater that refuses to retain and exploit readily available technology by recording essential data like draw offers and time used per move
}
Who owns the .PGN file spec? The owner would have to agree to add Draw Offers.
Omission of draw offers is harder to understand than the omission of times; because the rules of chess require draw offers to be notated (tho that rule is often violated).
Clock time notations can really bring a scoresheet to life.
For those who appreciate the importance of including the clock reading at each ply, buy Speelman's book "Jon Speelman's Best Games", which often includes clock readings.
Fred Kleist co-runs the Seattle Chess Club (with his wife Carol). Fred writes elapsed times for each ply during his games -- meaning he does math during his games.
No math for me -- I just write down what the clock says. This is easier when reading a digital display than an analog face.
It would help if scoresheet cells were larger.
"Leko the Rock" somebody forgot to tell that to Topalov.
Yay. Shirov defangs the kid
Has no one at all recorded timing info for major events? Can MonRoi do that, at least approximately?
So are there another drawing of pairings for the Linares leg?....or has this all been determined from the last drawings?
Mig wrote:
"It also illustrates the difference between watching live and seeing the gamescore later. Especially since because our sport is a pathetic backwater that refuses to retain and exploit readily available technology by recording essential data like draw offers and time used per move. Without watching live, and without access to the move times, you wouldn't know that Peter Leko used 84 minutes on his ninth move against Levon Aronian! "
Interesting comments, but I don't know exactly what that means.
Which "available technology" are you talking about?
Who is responsible for chess remaining a "pathetic backwater that refuses to retain and exploit readily available technology"?
I agree 100% that your suggestions are great, but I don't know exactly whre the improvements should be "inserted". Would it be enough to add the time and draw offers as game comments in a pgn file?
Are you talking about some sort of automated process (sensory board synched to clock, whatever) that should be made availalbe by tournament organizers?
I'm not blaming anyone in particular, just raging. The times aren't recorded by the players, preserved by the organizers, or kept in databases and books. There's a FIDE rule that draw offers have to be noted on the scoresheet, but that info is not transmitted online or saved after the game. Even if someone is on the scene or the player mentions it in later commentary, it's anecdotal instead of statistical.
With top level chess, scoresheets (and clocks) are obsolete since they have sensory boards. The moves and times per move are recorded by the broadcast software but times aren't displayed. Draw offers are ignored but could be added trivially. Put a button on the board if need be.
PGN has the capacity to record this info, if rather clumsily as text comments. ChessBase format can do it as well. It would be a major advance if organizers made an effort to collect and preserve this information so the onus could be put on the distributors (TWIC, ChessBase, etc.) and publishers to keep it. For print, adding tiny superscript move times would not be invasive -- same goes with a superscript '^' (or whatever) for a draw offer.
It's incredible when you think about annotating a game without knowing when a draw offer took place, or if someone made a blunder in twenty minutes or ten seconds. How many times have we read, "probably the result of time pressure" after a ?? move? Did Aronian spend 20 minutes on his novelty or did he bang it out instantly? There's no need to continue living in the dark ages. These things add a great deal to the narrative of each game and we throw them away.
By technology I meant that now we have sensory boards, database formats, and digital printing that make collecting, preserving, and displaying these things very simple both in print and digitally.
Thanks for the explanation, Mig.
I agree 100% with your notion that adding the timeline for moves and draw offers would greatly enhance a game's narrative.
Perhaps the PGN notation would denote a draw and time offer in a simple way:
33.Rc6@
or
33.Rc6^
whatever...it would be nice.
Time is a bit trickier, but can be done by agreeing on a format: elapsed time, or time remaining, etc. Each has it's own advantages:
Time elapsed makes it easier to keep track of a player's response (time-wise) to every move.
Time remaining becomes very useful when players are banging moves in time pressure!
Very interesting, either way.
Mig's themes here (which I entirely agree with) were also of course concerns of the great David Bronstein (and others, no doubt, but he comes to mind).
Absolutely. I had this rant on the air and mentioned Bronstein's efforts to get "clock cardiograms" published, showing the time per move on a graph. Fritz uses these, actually, and has for years.
When playing, I keep the times for all moves and put an asterisk at the time of the draw offer. Keeping a record of the latter makes perfect sense. The times are a tremendous help when annotating the game.
I like the button idea. When you offer a draw, just press the button. However, we need to come up with a way to stop people from offering a draw every move in a lost position. This one guy did that to me once... until I had mate in five.
Maybe the sensory board can also detect three-fold repetition and stop the game in such an occurance... especially in time scrambles and/or long maneuvering endgames.