As a great philosopher once asked, "If a chess game is played in Azerbaijan and nobody in the world can see it, does it piss you off?" The President should move decisively to distance himself from this President's Cup and not just because the home team is getting beaten like Ricky Hatton on a rented mule. For the second day in a row the live broadcast -- and the world champion is playing here, mind you, quickly became a mess. The games from yesterday don't even seem complete yet. It's as if nobody has ever broadcast chess on the internet before. I was complaining about the US Ch being unable to manually relay a dozen games, but in Baku it was just two or three at the most! Maybe the hosts are so embarrassed by the lopsided score they've decided to emulate the general freedom of the press standards there and black out the coverage. (Perhaps coincidentally, the Azerisport site has now dropped the prominent placement of the event on its homepage.) That would be a shame, because the few scores that have emerged intact contained some real gems.
So, chess was played, I guess. ChessBase pieces together some scores and has pictures. Can't someone just film the games and we can watch them in slow-mo? Take a photo after every few moves? Take a picture of a player's scoresheet? That last is my trick for collecting simul gamescores. Chessdom liveblogged the second round and write as though they could follow the games. How? Maybe the live broadcast was working for some people sometimes. They also mention Ilyumzhinov said Baku might sponsor the Anand-Topalov WCh match, which needs to happen in the next year. Good thinking, after they've done such a bang-up job of bringing this little rapid event to the world. If they set a couple of the players on fire they'll have the bid locked up.
The World team dominated the day thanks to Karjakin and Kramnik, who won all three of his games and reminds us that he's not exactly old news just yet. Unfortunately, only his win over Guseinov is available. The score is now 13-7 for the World. (Or "FIDE World" as is apparently the official team appellation. I always thought that was the magical place where nothing went right.) Only Mamedyarov has won a game for the Azerbaijan side. Kramnik has 4/5 to lead the field. Final three rounds Saturday, I hope.
I think FIDE should have a standard template webpage that every FIDE event has to use. So, if you want to host an event and have FIDE recognize it, you must have a decent website.
Especially, since most people "watching" the event are doing it through the internet.
It would also be nice to see: standardized press conferences of some sort, video directly from the playing hall and pgn with time stamping, but as a first step a working live feed of the moves is most important.
you are just so hilarious mig...who else can make me laugh out so loudly reading about chess
The PNG Boards that transmit the U.S. Championship games instantaneously to a digital format have malfunctioned today. Games will be back online for round two tomorrow. Check back tonight for the PGN files.
USA, Azerbaijan, same difference.
Sort of continuing what I wrote in the other thread: Here we are dealing with a rapid event, so score sheets aren't kept, righto? Then, in order to avoid that the games are 'lost forever', organizers (or journalists) would have to ask the players to reconstruct them from their memories? This would probably work in most cases, but is indeed embarassing for the organizers ... certainly if it happens again during (rapid [or blitz] tiebreaks of) the Anand-Topalov match.
On the other hand, there is hope for the USCh - the players can eventually publish at least their own (subjective) gems ... .
Wow, 13-7 is quite lopsided. Kramnik is definitely not old news yet!
Well it is not that dramatic, Day 2 games were posted at the evening in PGN files at the official site.
Basically, why organisers in Baku or anywhere must care much about the live translation? You invest thousands USD and other sites relay your tournament's games, using your own coverage, and the online auditory may even not bother to visit the ofiicial site - unbelievable. It is the most uninspiring environment to do anything that is only possible to imagine.
That's fair enough, Mr Golubev, maybe the solution is to somehow append the sponsor's name to all transmissions, original and copied, perhaps by naming the tournament as e.g. Company X Grand Prix stage 8, or something. That way the sponsor's name gets disseminated widely to chess fans watching live, which would be some incentive to sponsors. (Better than anonymity, in any case!)
"Basically, why organisers in Baku or anywhere must care much about the live translation?"
Presumably the funding model for most high-level tournaments is based on sponsorship, and sponsors would like information about the tournament disseminated as widely as possible. I agree with chesshire cat that including the name of the sponsor in the tournament is a good idea - in any case, if people like Chessbase and other websites report on it they'll link to the official site and probably give the sponsors some coverage.
As someone else said maybe standardising the software for showing live games and hosting it on the FIDE site would be the way forward - something like ATP do with tennis, where you can find a link to the live scores on the ATP site. FIDE should have the servers to handle increased traffic, and the amount of bandwidth needed for the tournament organisers to send the moves to FIDE should be trivial.
For rapid games with as few as four boards I can't see any reason not just to have one or two people sitting at each board recording moves, or at least watching a webcam feed and recording moves if they'd otherwise interfere with the spectacle.
Anyway, as you say yesterday's games are available on the website now.
What has Kramnik been eating?! Wow. Snacked twice each on Mamedyarov and Guseinov, yum. The round 8 Mamedyarov-Kramnik game had hanging pieces and piece imbalances all over. I wonder how these players can keep it together, saying to themselves, "Oh I can always get my rook back, later." We see Kramnik go for mate and just forget that he's down two pieces, then the mate doesn't come, but he manages to get pieces back - how?! I'd call it luck except he's a former WC. And all the time, tick, tick, tick, tick... That's why we want to be able to read the games from Baku.
"The round 8 Mamedyarov-Kramnik game had hanging pieces and piece imbalances all over"
Yes, that was a very fun game, Mamedyarov had already crushed Kramnik in the middlegame but such players you must crush more than once to actually beat and in the end Mamed blundered away not only the win but even lost somehow in time trouble.
@"me": Do you really understand this game, are you a strong enough chessplayer yourself? I am not (tjallen doesn't seem to be either or at least doesn't make such an implicit claim), but here is my summary of what I think to understand:
1) Kramnik chose a relatively quiet opening (Queen's Gambit declined), implying that he may have been happy with ... maybe not a draw, but a quiet, slow, solid manoevring game.
2) Mamedyarov went for a kingside attack (so he was the first one trying to mate his opponent).
3) When the attack didn't crush through [when, where, why did Mamedyarov miss a stronger move?], Kramnik took over - using the open lines which had become available ("thank you Shak").
4) Then Mamedyarov seems to have lost track on move 36 (avoiding a move repetition) and maybe 39 (missing 40.-Qg2+ ?). Of course, a ticking clock and time trouble are part and parcel of rapid games at all levels ... .
BTW, @Mig: "Kramnik ... reminds us that he's not exactly old news just yet."
Wasn't this clear already after the Amber tournament? He did not win the rapid section, but 6.5/11 against a considerably stronger field than the Azerbaijan team was not at all a bad result ... .
Well that was a sad mismatch. I hope we don't have more of these lopsided events. Perhaps the world team should have had Aronian; that would have motivated the Azeris :)
take this spuedo-world(because no Armenian included!) team to an Armenian encounter, and then Aronian and the rest of his gang will show what is the real value of motivation in the game of chess, when you playing in your own homeground!
"@"me": Do you really understand this game, are you a strong enough chessplayer yourself? I am not (tjallen doesn't seem to be either or at least doesn't make such an implicit claim), but here is my summary of what I think to understand..."
No, I don't understand anything of these games, but then I am 1000 Elo weaker than the players so I just went by my engine's showing Mamedyarov as well over +3 and going wrong on several moves after that (one suggested improvement being 26. Rxe6 followed by Rxg6+, another one being 30. Rh4). But if I would comment on games by 2700+ players going by my own understanding all their moves would be excellent. :)
Obviously Kramnik and Mamedyarov didn't have engines at their disposal during the game, so isn't it sort of reassuring that they couldn't always find the best moves? ,:) Not only because both were (differently) involved in cheating accusations ... .
Seriously, I would suggest that people make clear what are their own ideas, what is "going by my engine" and what is analysis by others (with the source given). Of course this is not specifically against one person, nor limited to this chess forum. As far as I am concerned: I do not use, nor even own an engine - probably one, but clearly not the only reason why I am not even an "average titled player" ,:).
"if I would comment on games by 2700+ players going by my own understanding all their moves would be excellent."
Point taken, but I think most chess fans, regardless of their rating, can still appreciate which moves or games by top players are "more excellent than others" ... .
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