K-M Olympiad, r3: Gashimov's Revenge

Murder on the Rossolimo Express.

Heh. Topalov seems to have gone the other way, and seems determined to squeeze out a positional win. He could have played any number of crazy tactical lines against the Alekhine, but perhaps after yesterday he wanted to go out of theory early and avoid any long theoretical lines.

Gashimov's own take on the situation (from http://www.chessintranslation.com/2010/09/gashimov-left-out-of-azerbaijan-team-for-olympiad/ ):

Q "Would you want to play for the Azerbaijan team or do you no longer have such a desire?"
Gashimov: "The answer’s unambiguous – of course I would. There’s nothing closer to me than Azerbaijan, and whatever they say behind my back, whatever they ascribe to me, it won’t change my relationship to my homeland. I promised the President that I’d do everything possible to glorify our country and achieve success in its name. How can I break a promise given to a man to whom I owe so much?"

This doesn't exclude "Schadenfreude", but makes it unlikely - in any case, he doesn't consider a federation change. BTW, there is a common equivalent term in Dutch (leedvermaak), but that might be hard to pronounce in English ... .

Regarding Olympiad coverage elsewhere, Chessvibes has a sizeable (and growing) number of links.

Really sad. However, I can´t understand one thing: Spassky suffered the stroke on Saturday and we find out it on Thursday. Does the russian press need five days to notice it? Or maybe they don't consider it a scoop?! For God´s sake, it isn't John Doe, it's Boris Vasilievich Spassky...

Just to add about Gashimov - on Rauf Mamedov's Facebook page (where Mamedov had written "Azerbaijan team without Gashimov, Azerbaijan team without heart!") Gashimov wrote (in Russian): "Don't worry Rauf, it'll all be fine! Even without me I truly believe that AZERBAIJAN will put up a good performance at this Olympiad". He seems to have conducted himself well despite all the ugly things that have been said about him.

A sad and strange story indeed, but this part of it - originally based on the Yemen News Agency - seems to be wrong. After "withdrawing from the event", Yemen played Brazil yesterday and submitted its lineup against Aruba today. Board 5 gets to play - if no information is received (as for the match against Israel?) it's automatically the top 4 boards.

The National Post has its own agenda, and the Independent apparently didn't do own research, referring to a chess event in Belarus ... .

Is it rather the USSR (plus Nakamura) against Russia? ,:) According to Dennis Monokroussos ("so I've been told"), Nakamura wrote on his Facebook page "Time to crush Kramnik like a bug". How come he copies Carlsen? It didn't work last time ... .

Other interesting games today are van Wely - Shirov (Fire on the Board?) and arguably Leko - Wang Yue.

Also Russian commentary at: http://www.chesspro.ru/chessonline/onlines/index_3282.html Looks as though Kramnik went wrong somewhere.

"Maybe Kramnik could have tried f4 instead of 34. Rfe1? But then the king's always going to be vulnerable to different perpetual checks, or worse..."

This is exactly what I thought, but I must say I never thought of 34. Rfe1 which I still don't quite understand. Maybe Kramnik preferred not to take a risk given the match situation and secured a safe draw?

34.Rfe1 took care of (34.-Qf3+ 35.Kg1) 35.-Ne2+ when Kramnik would have given an exchange and then pushed his d-pawn [which doesn't look completely winning to me without a board to move the pieces around]. After 34.-Qa8: white can move on with 35.Red1 to drive away the knight and support his most dangerous passer. It probably wasn't best, but there seems to be an idea behind it.

Anyway, the Russian team had "the better Ukrainian" (Karjakin-Onischuk 1-0) and "the better Russian" (Kamsky-Grischuk 0-1), match over.

Wouldn't 34.f4 run into 34.-Nc2 (also threatening Ne3+, and the knight on a8 is also still hanging)? But then I don't know what would have happened after 34.Rfe1 Nc2, neither does Golubev.

You may be right about the match situation, Kramnik may have thought "at the end of the day we won [and I drew], that's all that matters"!?

Yes, 34. f4 looked very dangerous and may have always allowed a perp at least. What is the prognosis on this line (I know far less theory than you do, and haven't bothered to keep up since about 20 years ago! :-) )? Kramnik looked to be playing very direct, dare I say it, obvious sort of moves that I would have played instinctively, usually overeaching myself and getting thrashed. (I'm talking of the pawn advances). It was either that piece sac or nothing for him in that variation wasn't it? Where was the novelty?

Hard to get a 4-0 with two draws already. What a crazy game van Wely-Shirov

pioneer referred to match points over the whole tournament, another notation would be 8/8 - BTW, Georgia also still has a perfect match score. This also means that
- Vietnam and the Netherlands will probably face a(nother) top team tomorrow, or each other?
- We might see Russia 1 - Russia 2 (including Kramnik - Ctrl V Nepomniachtchi)

I may be slightly biased, but I predicted the Netherlands as another dark horse team, maybe a medal candidate - as van Wely said in a Dutch newspaper interview "if things go well" ("als het meezit"). Somehow I don't think Georgia will stay at the top tables.

Hey Uff Da,

From which country are you to be legitimate to give moral lessons ?

Yemen/Israel has nothing to do with racism but with politics : USA boycotted the 1980 Olympiads in Moscow, was it racism ? No, political reason.

Think twice...

I don't know too much about the KID, which I don't play with either color. And generally I do not consider myself a "theory buff", I may rather have a good visual memory: When watching a game live, I remember if I saw the position before, then looking up the predecessor game.

For today's game I rely on Golubev's Google-translated comments: White playing a4 and Ba3 without f2-f3 seems to be quite rare - Golubev mentions a game Taimanov-Klovskii, Riga 1968, adding "your columnist has not had time yet in that year to be born". Technically, Nakamura's 17.-Qc7 may have been the novelty found over the board, and Kramnik's piece sacrifice was also played after a long thought.

BTW, I think basic plans in the KID mainline haven't changed much during the last 20 years ,:) and include pawn storms by both players. The art is how to do it and when/how to insert defensive or prophylactic moves (no obvious candidates in today's game).

Hey Le Metis:

Maybe Yemen's actions against the Israeli Chess team have to do with BOTH Racism AND Politics? By no means are such motivations mutually exclusive. You are right that the USA Boycott of the 1980 Olympics was not motivated by Racism or ethnic Bigotry, but that example is more the exception than the rule.

After so many decades of lurid propaganda, the element of (cynical) politics has been subsumed by visceral hatred of the Jews.

Once can't say for sure whether the Yemeni Chess team harbors such sentiments. (They might have even been willing to play chess against the Israeli players, in a different mileau).

But that is inconsequential, since the policy of shunning Israel is a manifestation of sheer animosity on the part of Yemen's citizens. There's many an opinion poll taken in the Arab world that can confirm this.

"Hey Uff Da,

From which country are you to be legitimate to give moral lessons ?

Yemen/Israel has nothing to do with racism but with politics : USA boycotted the 1980 Olympiads in Moscow, was it racism ? No, political reason.

Think twice..."

Hey DOug,

Is your other name Uff Da ?
Are you from the US ?

Don't bring those naive dreamed stories in a chess forum.

I had nice drinks in Paris with Russian/Israeli GM Yacov Murey and GM from Iran (actually playing in the Olympiads) MI from Marocco and Egypt. Nobody cared about Politics but just about the quality of the beers.
Lurid propaganda, you said ? Oh ! But, BTW, Who invades Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan in the name of so-called Democracy (in fact Oilo-Cracy)?

Think Thrice...

"You may be right about the match situation, Kramnik may have thought "at the end of the day we won [and I drew], that's all that matters"!?"

The good thing about Bareev's overly blunt updates each round is that we'll probably find out exactly what happened (sometime tomorrow morning)! It's funny to see players in such an individual sport as chess having to suddenly take orders from someone else about their games/strategy (e.g. Svidler having to ask if he can offer a draw etc. - I wonder if Kramnik consulted Bareev about the game... it certainly guaranteed an easy team victory).

At least Kramnik didn't have to ask for permission to draw - the way he played a draw became unavoidable. From Bareev's report, it isn't clear either whether Svidler _had to_ ask permission - he did and Bareev saw no reason for forcing him to play on. Actually for me personally it isn't strange or "funny" at all to play with the team result in mind, because I play mostly in team events.

BTW, I wonder whether Bareev isn't also sort of a psychologist ... . You wrote (on your webpage): "you do wonder if the public identification of the “weak link” in the Russian women’s first team isn’t taking glasnost a step too far!" The mentioned 'weak link' is Galliamova, who was the match winner in today's key match against Georgia? Galliamova!

Altogether - despite problems mentioned by Bareev - so far it looks like the Russian Men's team is in better shape than at the last Olympiad: Two years ago in Dresden, they also had a perfect score after four rounds, but already three close matches (2.5-1.5 against Switzerland, Poland and India).

And, given that it's Paris, about the prize of the beers? ,:) Anyway, what's your point? The very fact that players from Israel, Iran, Morocco and Egypt can get along well with each other on a personal level suggests (to me) that Arabs shouldn't refuse to play against Israel for whichever reason!

BTW, the fact that they were drinking beer implies that they aren't practicing Muslims, let alone fanatics. Maybe you even brought your Iranian GM friend into some trouble (if Ahmadinejad reads English-language chess blogs)? At least you didn't mention his name, and there are several GMs on the Iranian team.

Funnily enough I just wrote a comment on my site saying almost exactly the same thing! (about Bareev perhaps being a good psychologist)

One thing about consulting the trainer over draws - doesn't it leave the door open to all kinds of cheating!? e.g. if the player's allowed to talk to the trainer then can't the trainer hint at whether the player has a tactical win etc. Seems like a can of worms...

"Is your other name Uff Da ?"

No.

"Are you from the US ?"

Yes.

"I had nice drinks in Paris with Russian/Israeli GM Yacov Murey and GM from Iran (actually playing in the Olympiads) MI from Marocco and Egypt. Nobody cared about Politics but just about the quality of the beers."

What's your point? I never claimed that the Islamic or Arab or Persian world is monolithic in its sentiments.

Paris has a laudable histroy of attracting Iranian expatriots, and/or Persian intellectual.

Is it surprising to you that a beer drinking Iranian GM is not very likely to toe the Islamist party line? No doubt your Iranian GM friend would, if asked, condemn the Holocaust denying, "wipe Israel from the map" rhetoric of Ahmedinejad. But it wouldn't make the Iranian regimes rhetoric or actions any less racist/antisemitic, would it?

"Lurid propaganda, you said ? Oh ! But, BTW, Who invades Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan in the name of so-called Democracy (in fact Oilo-Cracy)?"

I would not have supported getting involved in Vietnam.

By the way, didn't France invade and occupy as a Colonial possesion ALL of Indo-China? France was there for about 100 years. Let's just say, Beau Geste aside, that France has a long history in foreign adventurism.

I did not support going into Iraq in 2003 (it would have been more defensible to intervene in 1988, merely to have US troops drive Saddam's military out of the Kurdistan region, after he resorted to the use of Chemical weapons).

Yes, the US "invaded Afghanistan, in the same way that it "invaded" France in 1944. Ousting the Taliban and scattering al-Qaeda was a veritable sacrament. The US/NATO freed the majority of Afghans from the yoke of the Pashtun/Taliban.

If the US is to be faulted, it is for putting up with the Taliban for so long. The destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan, and the execrable treatment of women all over, was justification enough. The shame in US policy, with respect to Afghanistan, took place earlier: when the USA supported, financed, and supplied the Mujahaddin against the USSR. Typical short sighted, vindictive Republican party policy.

Finally, don't delude yourself: The policies of your Parisian cafe set are not the policies of the French government, or the French nation.

france is just as capitalist, and just as corporatist as the US. It turns a blind eye to Francophine Dictators in former French West Africa. You think that your Total petrol is some altruistic corporation? Are you not aware that French companies sold chemicals to Saddam's Iraq before the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja?

And you might want to read up on French complicity in the massacre of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.

Just sayin'....

@ Thomas,
You hit the point I didn't want to mention any name...
It's forbidden to dink a drop of alcohol yes, but two drops no :).
But if their government orders not to go, they have to obey. Please, refresh my memory : In 1980, did the US sportsmen went to Moscow Olympiads or not?

@ Doug
I am eurasian, the French army destroyed at 100% the town in Vietnam where my father was born, he never found back his relatives..., after came the Yankees who poured over Vietnam 2,5 times the amount of bombs that have been poured over Europe during WWII. and also a bunch of chemicals like "Orange Agent"...
I don't need lessons on that ground.Thank You.

Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe out "the sionist regime" never he said Israel, you can check, big difference.
45 years ago I was living in a kibbutz, I know a little bit about all these problems which favor a minority of Billionaires as long as these problems are around.
There are a lot of twisted realities going around the world.
Meanwhile, the Peoples suffer.
The discussion could be endless if Politic is concerned, sorry no interest.

Let's keep on Chess.
Regards

Kirsan seems to believe that if more humans don't start playing chess, the aliens above will grow tired of us and blow us up... With such a leader of FIDE, the face of professional chess throughout the world for potential corporate sponsors, how can you blame them from getting a good laugh at a sport that allows such a personage to run the organization? It is imperative that Karpov is elected next week as the new President of FIDE. To continue with Kirsan, professional chess will become more and more marginalized as a sport comprised of true wierdos with no corporate sponsorship wanting to associate itself with the pure madness and corruption of its leadership.

"Did anyone watch Leko versus Wang Yue?"
I just had an occasional glance at the game, many others to watch ... . Maybe that's the type of game rather to be replayed once it's over - if it has a decisive result and if you can appreciate positional maneouvring chess. Check Aronian-Jakovenko from yesterday's round.
Quite to my surprise, van Wely-Shirov had started in a similar way: Shirov avoiding the sharpest lines (anti-Moscow? Botvinnik?) and going for an early queen exchange - but the game also became exciting and didn't finish with a draw.

BTW, today you will be spared or deprived of the opportunity to watch Leko-Kramnik. Kramnik takes, or Bareev is giving him a break - Grischuk on board 1, and "weak link"(?) Malakhov on board 4. We also won't see Carlsen-Shirov because Shirov is taking a break.

Perhaps not you, but this is the match-up I’ve quietly anticipated for over a year: Leko v. Wang Yue …in order to confirm the result: 1/2-1/2.

But jk aside, they’re three distinct characters:

Kramnik, resembles a crusher python in game and intent...

Wang Yue? - to Mig he's "the sleepy panda", but he’s more of a High-Horsepower Lawnmower to me… maybe not exciting, but the instinct is intact.

In no way should either be compared to Leko, whose lack of killer-instinct shows in his moves. That’s what makes his games unviewable for me… it’s as if a boxer could punch but doesn’t.

Indeed. Gets an edge, however small, and keeps it, and builds on it.

Well said, HardyBerger. Positional play in itself doesn't deserve denigration, just like in tennis a baseliner shouldn't be called a "pusher" just because they don't serve-and-volley.

However, I think that when positional players like Leko, Yue, etc. show a pattern of taking 20 move draws against other super-GMs (which they have done FREQUENTLY), this in combination with their less obviously flashy style leads to denigration.

In contrast, Karpov in his prime never seemed to take such wussy short draws, and that is why even though he is the mecca of positional play, he isn't denigrated as much, b/c he fought in many games where modern positional players would take a quick draw.

Indeed that's a valid point, and Svidler already took a short draw with white against Italy earlier. In my opinion you just cannot play like that in a team competition. Unless the opponent is a stronger player, you don't make quick draws with white. Today after the Svidler and Karjakin's ended in relatively quick draws, the games left were Leko-Grischuk and Malakhov-Berkes. Since Leko is a very solid player and very hard to beat with black, Russia's hopes were on Malakhov. Don't get me wrong, Malakhov is a very good player but surely a chess superpower should give herself more chances to win. I don't know, maybe Nepo should be playing in the first team, I don't think he is a better player than Svidler but he seems more "hungry" to me.

steven,

I can't disagree with your basic analysis. Russia 1 has had problems with chemistry in the past two Olympiad. I did not pick them to win the gold then, but I picked them this time because of Karjakin and the greater stability with Malakhov. I am also puzzled by the resting of Kramnik.

Bareev's comments are very troubling. He can certainly damage team chemistry without even realizing it.

It's easy to make such statements "in hindsight" - scare quotes because the tournament isn't over yet for Russia: if they recover from today's loss, they will end up playing the other medal candidates in some of the coming rounds. And Armenia, Ukraine and Hungary (at least two of them) will also lose match points against each other.

With so many strong players to choose from, it can always be argued that Russia selected the wrong lineup(s) - no such luxury problem for their competitors! Maybe Nepomniachtchi was put on the second team to increase _their_ medal chances, and it seems that Jakovenko wanted to play for Russia 3, the local Siberian team. BTW, what did Jakovenko actually win in his career? And doesn't it make sense if results from the Russian championship possibly affect the team compositions?

That being said, remarks about Svidler being a poor team player make sense - the issue is whether this was predictable before the Olympiad. He actually said himself that anti-draw rules (applied in Dresden, dropped for this Olympiad) help his play ... .

Makes sense. Their similar styles often lead to draws. That or they thought Leko would draw v Grischuk anyway without trying too hard. And then Kramnik, who is also that bit older, would be in better form for future games with more rest.

Since tomorrow is a rest day I think it would have been enough to rest Kramnik.

Did you watch Leko Grischuk? :-)

Or just that they didn't play well today. After all, those hungarians weren't exactly patzers... I think Svidler has shown enough strenght as to be placed before Nepomniachtchi. Even if you consider the Russian Champion title to be devaluated, he has won it several times, so it should count even with all those magical "hangover signs".

A recent marriage could explain the mediocrity of Topalov's play so far in this Olympiad. For almost a full year, Anand's results were very non-plus after he got married. Perhaps due to the fact that their chess studies became less of a priority for them.

"...that will certainly hurt the chances of all three."

Not if they cheat.

Hag

So interesting to read the Russian take on Kramnik-Nakamura contrasted with H-Bomb's own perception.

Conversely, the other teams could also derail the opponents!?

For those talking about Russia1's loss to Hungary, you need to put into consideration that this is not the first time Hungary has beaten Russia in the recent past.

I agree that the other teams can derail, but what I am saying is if Team Russia is trying to win a medal, then it is possible that a Russia1-Russia2, Russia2-Russia3 and Russia1-Russia3 matches could create a situation where they are beating each other up. What if that result of these three matches are 1 win and 1 loss for each? That would be devastating. Even draws would not help.

You can conceivably win a medal with two match losses. However, to win a gold, one is the limit.

Le Metis:

"Ahmadinejad said he wants to wipe out "the sionist regime" never he said Israel, you can check, big difference."

A-jad "said" many things about the topic of what he'd like to see happen to Israel. His first, probably extemporanenous, remarks were about erasing the State of Israel from the Map.
Apparently, some Iranian minister decided that it would be a good idea to have Ahmadinejad's remarks (no doubt spoken in the heat of oratorial passion) be, to use a term, "revised and extended". Thus, the offical record, as dutifully reported by the official state media, was emended to reflect a certain softening of the language.

It turns out that the A-jad statement still sounded a bit too harsh. So, a careless translation error was blamed, for inaccurately rendering A-jad's words from the Farsi.

I happen to think that Ahmadinejed's statement as originally recorded is more accurate that the officially sanctioned government approved glosses that were revealed on after a fair bit of "fine-tuning".

Why go to all of the bother?: Because even the "useful idiots" and fervent apologists in Europe could not countenance A-jad's original (actual) remarks.

In any case, to the Isrealis who are the target of Iranian threats, such a softening in the rhetoric is a "distintion without a difference". All the versions of what was said represent an existential threat to the Israeli people.

Let's try to keep politics off the blog eh? Yes, been guilty there myself.

Who should tell us what to do?

The Answer: Certainly not this chesshire cat guy.

Any discussion of international politics will only arouse back-and-forth statements of already established positions -- those problems will definitely not get resolved by anything we say in this blog.
It is a chess blog, after all, and, given some of the chess expertise we have among us here, there's a far better chance of us being influential by what we say about **chess**.

Who is our guest lecturer?

The Answer: You just heard from him.

Indeed, if you watch the Rybka commentary site it says 1 ... g6 Novelty (!?) Also Navara got a bit creative against Kramnik and interesting also should be how "I-like-white" Jobava will fare against Aronian. I think Aronian's style suits him way less to do his great performances as does that of more positional players (not meaning in any way i don't think Aronian can't play posi)

Like Miles beating Karpov with 1.e4 a6!!?

Nguyen is family name, duc hoa are given name at birth.

thank you much so.

Russia managed to beat the Czech Republic (it wasn't easy) and stays in contention - for once, they won't blame Svidler for taking a draw, though he probably could and would have played on under different circumstances.

Tomorrow we'll see the following matches:
Ukraine - Georgia (will Georgia continue to surprise?)
Armenia - Azerbaijan
Russia 2 - Russia 1 (it had to happen at some stage ...)
.....
table 12: Germany - Vietnam [interesting primarily because it took place as a friendly match earlier this year, back then with the German A-team]

Thanks for the article Mishanp.
At least Bareev takes the blame, but his explanation doesn't make sense in my view.
Kramnik is just a better chess player than Leko, and Bonn is already quite some time ago.
But he didn't tell that he was counting too much on time trouble Houdini Grischuk, who was extensively praised by Bareev before the 5th round.
It has been said before, but the biggest mistake was not to include Nepomniachtchi in the first team, who beat Van Wely today with one hour and a half left on the clock today.
It may be easy in hindsight, but nevertheless they should have known better since he's playing brilliantly since he became european champion.
As i wrote on your site, it's not unlikely the bad personal relationship between Bareev and Nepo contributed to this decision.
Now Russia 1 is behind in match points and low on board points, so they'll have to beat Armenia and Ukraine (not to mention Russia 2) in order to become champion.

Anand never plays for India; he only plays for rating and money.

India does better without Anand in the team than with Anand on the team.

Hikaru and Kamsky need to play every game from now on. I don't know why Kamsky was rested today after a rest day.

Completely agreed. USA got fortunate, b/c for some reason Vietnam put up a 2300 ELO against Hess (2500) and Hess only drew with the white pieces. Thankfully, Hikaru bailed the team out.

No reason why Hikaru and Kamsky shouldn't play the last five rounds. None.

Right now, few players are having a better Olympiad than Naka. Only one I can think of at the moment is Ivanchuk.

Anand has probably visited more primary schools in India than most top sportpersons put together. If he so chooses to focus on regaining #1 rating by year end, esp coz India are not going to be top-3 in Olympaid, its his choice and right.

It is his right, but IMO it is both bad for chess and bad for the Indian team that he is not playing. Most of the best players in world play for their countries.

Anand has played as many if not more Olympiads as the Ks have individually (i don't know the exact figures). That's not an excuse, but just reflects a hard reality. Especially when you've crossed 40, as he has, he has to pick and choose his fights. Category 22 is one week after the Olympiad.

this must be incorect becuase nakamura play good and le quang play bad but now is said naka was lucky. i do nto think so. mabey you made mistake.

Gilruth is an American, but has lived in Kenya for many years.

I totally agree

May be, May be not...but 7.Re1 is very strange...at this level (7.Cc3 better :Nimzowitsch!)

Methinks the gentleman knoweth not of what he speaketh.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1587271

7. Re1 …

An idea of the fourth world champion, Alexander Alekhine. White temporarily refrains from playing Nc3, in order to avoid the exchanges after the reply … Nf6-e4! But White’s plan remains the same: to seize the center with his pawns. Everything depends on the opponent’s answer… (GM Shipov)

ha ha funneth talketh methinks althuogeth noteth all correcteth mesayeth. whateth thou sayeth noweth perchance.

Anand has played in 7 Olympiads : 1984 as an untitled player, 1986 and 88 as an IM , 1990 and 92 as a GM and 2004 and 2006 as an elite player.
So, in effect, he has only played 2 Olympiads as an elite player. There is nothing wrong with that decision. It is his prerogative to protect his rating by not playing against lower rated players. Visiting primary schools in India doesn't absolve him of the responsibility of not playing in the Olympiad for his country as an elite player.

Agreed about Nepo - the Russian first team could really use him around about now!

I added another interview with Bareev to the end of my article: http://www.chessintranslation.com/2010/09/bareev-takes-the-blame-for-defeat/

He probably talks too much, and this time slightly turns on Svidler, but in a way you can sympathise with his situation. It's true that only Karjakin and Grischuk (or arguably only Karjakin) have really impressed so far - though e.g. as he mentions, Malakhov has been playing with the black pieces.

Yeah, b/c when Naka beats super-GM phenoms with Black he's "lucky", but when (insert other 2720+ rated player's name here) does it, it "proves they belong with the super-elite". Please.

Yes, an excellent game by Adams. I'm sure Carlsen is more than a little upset at being outplayed in two games thus far in the Olympiad. Another well-played game on the top boards was Ivanchuk's win vs. Leko where Ivanchuk over-burdened poor Leko with his probing play on both sides of the board.

Well, check the truth whith Rybka 4!...
Shipov, Alekhine are just human beings, they can sometimes go wrong...

Dzidzindahsvili recognized, with humility, that some of his recommended lines for long times were just losing thanks to Rybka 4 help...
"With the computers, Chess is Dead!" (Bobby Fischer)

Here Rybka wasn't analyzing the position but looking at his/her opening book to find that 7.Nc3 is more common than 7.Re1 (but simplifying and somewhat drawish after 7.-Ne4). In any case, Le Quang Liem didn't go wrong in the opening - strangely he went wrong right after the time control on move 42. I won't claim that I would have drawn that position against Nakamura ,:) but I would have logically eliminated black's dangerous passed c-pawn and engines agree with me. If the game had reached its logical conclusion, Naka fans could have rightly claimed that their hero got an easy draw with black against the Vietnamese rising star, but nothing more than that.

If we add Nakamura's escapes against Gundavaa (win from a lost position) and, arguably, Kramnik and compare things with Ivanchuk's _convincing_ games against strong opposition ... at the very least I conclude that Chucky is so far clearly the most impressive player at this Olympiad. Nakamura may be second by result - because Jobava had one loss against Leon Hoyos before his 2.5/3 against 2700ers (Carlsen, Le Quang Liem, Aronian). And Karjakin also played some nice games, albeit on board 4.

Thomas,
I found strange that Le, as a pupil of Khalifman, choose this move 7.Te1( regarding Khalifman litterature on openings!), it's provocative and "violating rules" as Dzindzi says. Finally he got no tactical compensation from this -may be - Home Prep-, but all this looks to me more like gambling, at this level you get punishment sooner or later.
Finally on move 24.e5, he has an inferior position, please check. Le Q.L. has been more cautious on Moscow Open & Aeroflot Open.
May be, it's the "dizzyness of success" after his game againt Mamedyarov.
Funny enough, his knight went on the rim (Kh4), like Carlsen (Kh5) and they both lost.
Chucky is always impressive and can beat ANYBODY when he can control his emotivity, that's why he didn't become World Champion.

If you could pass a note to Kramnik telling him you've found a big hole in his repertoire with your laptop Rybka and Dzindzi video, I'm sure he'd be very grateful.

Sorry,
Not talking about Kramnik, but Le Q.L.
No laptop (outdate, obsolete) but parallel processing, "a must".

Kramnik played the same move v Ponomariov, as you would know if you either knew the variation or had clicked on the link. Also played by Fressinet, Rodshtein, Gustaffson. Thank you, parallel processing, for granting patzers the "knowledge" they now think they have.

The specific points are: 7.Re1 (actually called "Kramnik Variation" on chessgames.com) or 7.Nc3 is just a matter of taste. 7.-c5 8.d5 ed5: 9.Nh4 "with a strong initiative for White on the white squares" was actually Shipov's suggestion - and he must know something about chess, else he wouldn't have a GM title. Note that, different from Carlsen's game, the knight either gets exchanged soon (game continuation) or might move on to f5. There are many cases where white plays Nh4 or black plays Nh5 and proceeds to win the game, maybe because the move isn't that bad _in the given situation_. ,:)

The general point: No need to search for excuses as a fan of Le Quang Liem (guess you are one), at least not regarding the opening which didn't decide the game. Also no reason to become overly enthusiastic as a Nakamura fan. He lost today, and one could see it coming: he had a 2964 TPR but clearly didn't play at that level. Easy to say so in hindsight, and yes I waited with this comment until Wojtaszek had actually cashed in the full point ,:) .

The tournament isn't over but in full swing: Russia 1 and Azerbaijan are fully back in contention, only Ukraine (particularly Ivanchuk) separate them from gold at this moment in time.

BTW if there is some "Schadenfreude" regarding Nakamura, it's in response to him and his fans: He managed to complain about not beating Kramnik, when he could and should have been happy with the draw he got - given both the opponent AND the position he had during most of the game.

Thank you for your wise remarks.

Regarding Naka, this tournament just shows how good he is...he is clearly not playing to his potential, and yet still has gained rating points, despite his loss today. Haters gonna hate.

you so wrong so very wrong becusae these are not so wise remarks they are nto wise any time at all. the maker of remarks is well kown hater who always scruongeing a round to hate peoples especally nakamura. maybey you do not know but you will find out. but even so it is clear that nakamura played like stupid bum today and very child ish.

If Nakamura's potential is to become world champion and "crush Kramnik like a bug", he hasn't reached it yet - the issue is that it's inherently hard or impossible to predict the future. Tomorrow he can first try to crush a Panda ... .

About Canada: Their match draw against Bulgaria (Bluvshtein-Topalov 1-0) is actually their second upset in a row - yesterday they tied Croatia who had themselves upset Bulgaria and even, as the only ones so far, Ukraine (on Ivanchuk's rest day). Seems like anything can happen, not only on the top tables.

Great mines stink alike,d_tal : )

Maybe this team format helps Ivanchuk's nerves, since he is primarly concerned about his country's success and not his own.

Has he done well at past Olympiads, or is this his first super result at this tournament? He'll be very close to top-five after today's win.

THe "crush Kramnik like a bug" was a reference to Carlsen's same quote about Kramnik in the Netherlands earlier this year...unlike Carlsen, Naka didn't actually lose to Kramnik after making the quote :).

I personally think Naka has a few too many holes in his game to consistently remain at the top 5 without some retooling, but he is young and has plenty of time if he is willing to humble himself and continue to work on his weaknesses.

The "anything can happen" is a reason I love this tournament -- its the only time the top players can't just hide behind their ratings playing in super-GM only tournaments -- you actually get to see what 2500s and 2600s can do against them in serious action. A pleasant change from all the GM draws in many of these invitational tournaments.

Ivanchuk is 6 out of 6 (he sat out Round #3, vs. Croatia. That was the match that Ukraine ended up drawing!)

Ponomariov has only managed draws for all 5 of his games--a poor result for Board #2.

At this rate, Chukky could surge past Eljanov's 2761 rating. Hopefully, he'll rack up an epic score on Board 1

Canada actually gets a "Pair Down" with Mongolia. The could be on 11 Points after Round 8.

Russia 2 is only on 10 Points, but they'll need to defeat a tough to beat France team. Bulgaria is the only Top 10 team that is really out of it.

As for Nakamura, the Olympiad still has 4 rounds to go, and he ought to to be playing in all of them. If he maintains his 2800+ TPR, then all credit (plus a nice handful of ELO points) goes to him.

Yes, good point. He is not in the limelight and can just play and not worry too much about having to prove anything. Of course the opposition is on average weaker, too. I think he normally does quite well at Olympiads, though my memory is sketchy. Agree with all your second post, too.
I also get such an impression of huge chess strength from Karjakin's games, watching him completely outplay strong GMs, that I wonder why he isn't even higher in the world rankings, even a challenger for the WC. He is a bit too peaceable at the supertournaments, maybe?

The true masters of the game know when basic rules can be bent, even broken. That's often what serious chess is all about.

Starting with 4.a3? the opening looked like a random collection of nonsense moves by both players.

Hag

And your ELO to make such a comment about an opening involving two 2700+ players is what, approximately, Hag?

-If you quote game, please give date & location, (I am lazy)tks.
-Well, In a tournament I participated, there were where 93 GM's and 80 IM's. On one day there was two rounds, between the first one and second one everybody GM & IM was with his laptop checking lines...like patzers? As Boby F. said in one of his interviews, for chess first quality is memory, Well,Silicon has more memory than me! Therefore I use the Silicon Friend :).
BTW, here is the final ranking list of the first hundred ones who were using computers.---:)
Enjoy !

1 GMI WANG YUE CHN 2644 7 2784
2 GMI MIROSHNICHENKO EVGENIJ UKR 2632 7 2753
3 GMI GASHIMOV VUGAR AZE 2658 7 2736
4 GMI ARUTINIAN DAVID GEO 2552 7 2688
5 GMI DROZDOVSKIJ YURI UKR 2562 7 2681
6 GMI YEMELIN VASILY RUS 2539 7 2616
7 GMI BOCHAROV DMITRY RUS 2602 6,5 2700
8 GMI GRIGORIANTS SERGEY RUS 2592 6,5 2669
9 MI PETROSIAN SUREN ARM 2391 6,5 2666
10 GMI LANDA KONSTANTIN RUS 2596 6,5 2664
11 MI WIRIG ANTHONY FRA 2433 6,5 2654
12 GMI POSTNY EVGENY ISR 2616 6,5 2651
13 GMI NI HUA CHN 2632 6,5 2648
14 GMI DVOIRYS SEMEN RUS 2534 6,5 2638
15 GMI BRODSKY MICHAIL UKR 2597 6,5 2632
16 MI MORANDA WOJCIECH POL 2468 6,5 2624
17 GMI CHERNYSHOV KONSTANTIN RUS 2556 6,5 2611
18 GMI KRYVORUCHKO YURIY UKR 2592 6,5 2611
19 GMI IONOV SERGEY RUS 2522 6,5 2610
20 GMI OLEKSIENKO MIKHAILO UKR 2541 6,5 2605
21 MI RODSHTEIN MAXIM ISR 2520 6,5 2604
22 MI MALETIN PAVEL RUS 2527 6,5 2602
23 GMI ROZENTALIS EDUARDAS LTU 2582 6,5 2601
24 GMI GAREEV TIMUR UZB 2551 6,5 2594
25 MI ORLOV ANDREY RUS 2447 6,5 2589
26 MI GASANOV ELDAR UKR 2477 6,5 2588
27 GMI SHNEIDER ALEKSANDR UKR 2532 6,5 2570
28 GMI KOVALEV ANDREI BLR 2533 6,5 2559
29 MI KRAVTSIV MARTYN UKR 2464 6,5 2545
30 MI DUMITRACHE DRAGOS ROM 2455 6,5 2539
31 MF WARAKOMSKI TOMASZ POL 2486 6,5 2516
32 MI DANIELIAN ELINA ARM 2426 6,5 2418
33 GMI FEDORCHUK SERGEY UKR 2601 6,5 2642
34 GMI BOBRAS PIOTR POL 2542 6 2635
35 GMI GOLOD VITALI ISR 2597 6 2629
36 MI VOVK ANDREY UKR 2487 6 2627
37 GMI SPRAGGETT KEVIN CAN 2633 6 2598
38 GMI GEORGIEV VLADIMIR MKD 2529 6 2586
39 MF HAMMER JON LUDVIG NOR 2360 6 2575
40 GMI RADULSKI JULIAN BUL 2475 6 2574
41 GMI BURMAKIN VLADIMIR RUS 2568 6 2567
42 MI GHARAMIAN TIGRAN FRA 2477 6 2565
43 GMI GAGUNASHVILI MERAB GEO 2611 6 2562
44 MI VOVK YURI UKR 2497 6 2560
45 GMI SUMETS ANDREY UKR 2533 6 2535
46 GMI GUTMAN GENNADI UKR 2490 6 2529
47 MI ABERGEL THAL FRA 2475 6 2520
48 GMI TIMOSHENKO GEORGY UKR 2563 6 2516
49 GMI AKESSON RALF SWE 2475 6 2514
50 GMI WANG HAO CHN 2619 6 2513
51 MI MARZOLO CYRIL FRA 2472 6 2509
52 MI NINOV NIKOLAI BUL 2506 6 2509
53 GMI ANDRIASIAN ZAVEN ARM 2508 6 2507
54 MI LANDENBERGUE CLAUDE SUI 2445 6 2506
55 GMI KHARITONOV ALEXANDR RUS 2503 6 2491
56 MI KRIVONOSOV OLEG LAT 2434 6 2491
57 MI LE ROUX JEAN-PIERRE FRA 2486 6 2484
58 MI GLADYSZEV OLEG RUS 2455 6 2483
59 MI OKHOTNIK VLADIMIR FRA 2486 6 2483
60 MI FIRMAN NAZAR UKR 2481 6 2474
61 GMI GRABARCZYK MIROSLAW POL 2461 6 2461
62 MI MANNION STEPHEN SCO 2337 6 2453
63 MF VAN DOOREN DIRK NED 2303 6 2443
64 GMI PETKEVICH JUSEFS LAT 2434 6 2424
65 GMI KLOVANS JANIS LAT 2448 6 2414
66 MI ZAWADZKI STANISLAW POL 2417 6 2398
67 MI TOMCZAK JACEK POL 2457 6 2390
68 GMI SHAW JOHN SCO 2440 6 2389
69 MF FELLER SEBASTIEN FRA 2431 6 2380
70 MI SANCHEZ JOSEPH PHI 2482 6 2367
71 GMI KHENKIN IGOR GER 2611 6 2533
72 CF ROTHUIS VINCENT NED 2413 6 2401
73 GMI GUREVICH VLADIMIR UKR 2445 6 2529
74 MI PRUESS DAVID USA 2416 5,5 2611
75 GMI VOROBIOV EVGENY RUS 2563 5,5 2569
76 MI CZAKON JAKUB POL 2485 5,5 2550
77 GMI MOROZ ALEXANDER UKR 2507 5,5 2545
78 MI ERDOS VIKTOR HUN 2518 5,5 2539
79 GMI LALIC BOGDAN CRO 2522 5,5 2536
80 GMI KRITZ LEONID GER 2597 5,5 2517
81 GMI MALAKHATKO VADIM BEL 2604 5,5 2513
82 GMI GAJEWSKI GRZEGORZ POL 2540 5,5 2511
83 MI MARHOLEV DIMITAR BUL 2351 5,5 2505
84 GMI PLACHETKA JAN SVK 2410 5,5 2504
85 GMI BALOGH CSABA HUN 2616 5,5 2502
86 GMI DANIELIAN OGANES ARM 2515 5,5 2502
87 GMI DZHUMAEV MARAT UZB 2526 5,5 2502
88 MI GOZZOLI YANNICK FRA 2453 5,5 2481
89 GMI DEGRAEVE JEAN-MARC FRA 2548 5,5 2477
90 GMI DGEBUADZE ALEXANDRE BEL 2504 5,5 2472
91 GMI CYBOROWSKI LUKASZ POL 2580 5,5 2471
92 MI BERKOVICH MARK ISR 2389 5,5 2467
93 GMI MAMEDOV NIDJAT AZE 2549 5,5 2467
94 MI ZINCHENKO YAROSLAV UKR 2507 5,5 2467
95 MI MATEO RAMON DOM 2417 5,5 2457
96 GMI HEBERLA BARTLOMIEJ POL 2557 5,5 2456
97 GMI YANDEMIROV VALERI RUS 2523 5,5 2455
98 MI PEREZ RODNEY CUB 2395 5,5 2450
99 MF STRZEMIECKI ZBIGNIEW POL 2310 5,5 2436
100 MI SZELAG MARCIN POL 2464 5,5 2432

chess-results.com has easy links to past Olympiads, so I checked for Ivanchuk's earlier results. Altogether, they seem almost as mixed as his round robin performances:

Dresden 2008 6/11, TPR 2722 - including losses against Jobava(!) and, in the key last-round match, Kamsky. Hence USA won bronze, Ukraine was 4th, concrete pillars suffered and Chucky missed a doping control.

Turin 2006 8/13, TPR 2716, Ukraine finished 8th

Calvia 2004 9.5/13, TPR 2819 (starting with 5.5/6 then slowing down a bit), Ukraine won gold.

Will history repeat itself? Funny that back then Ponomariov also just had a modest 50% score on board 2, TPR 2626.
But there's also hope for Russia, because the other Ukrainian hero was ... 14-year old Karjakin on board 5 (6.5/7, TPR 2929). Regarding Karjakin, I wonder if his federation change and working with Dokhoian is now bearing fruits. In the Carlsen-Kasparov case, effects (also psychological ones on his opponents) were immediate, in Karjakin's case it may be more a longer-term project?
It would be understandable if Karjakin skips tomorrow's match against Ukraine, but I wonder if Russia can afford it ... .

Really, you're not bowling me over with your mental acuity today. If you had clicked on the link you could have got the date. Or searched yourself on chessgames.com. Now, did I say laptops were bad in general? Or that people who used them were patzers? No. You made that up by yourself. Well done. I said, one bad effect of computers in chess is that patzers like yourself think they know a lot more than they do, and make silly statements like Re1 is a terrible move cos its not Rybka's no.1 choice. I too am a patzer (1900). But I don't make such outlandish claims about my knowledge. Maybe you should think about it too, no disrespect intended.

Actually Ireland's current standings partly reflect randomness of the Swiss system: after their first-round loss against Russia, they didn't play a single team ranked ahead of them. Estonia also didn't overperform that much. Iran did - drawing against Brazil and Russia 3, so did Canada as I mentioned before. And Belarus earned their "visit" to table 3 beating England today (Teterov-Short 1-0, Podolchenko-Howell 1-0). Tomorrow shaky England - all but board 5 losing rating points at the moment - faces the German B-team that also does better than expected beforehand (crushing Mexico 3.5-0.5, drawing Vietnam today).

The German men had beaten Chile before, and the women had won against Venezuela, Chile and Peru. Mexico is also Latin but not South America, what about Vietnam? ,:)

"The true masters of the game know when basic rules can be bent, even broken. That's often what serious chess is all about"
--
Fine !
Vassili Mikhaïlovitch/"Chucky" has been very smart with his "Fantasy Caro Kann".
He just invites Jobava to "break" the rules who couldn't refuse the offer, but after move 17 look at the material, control of the center-dark square light squares, and no attacking plan for Black...
Inviting to break is better than breaking. :)

hello le metis. i did nto enjoy your list becuase i do nto konw what i should do with list. but mabey it just me.

This sounds more realistic about Nakamura - as I wrote several times before, I also consider myself a neutral and objective observer, not a hater of anyone. I didn't like "crushing like a bug" from Carlsen either - but at least the first time it was original, and Carlsen at least had winning chances against Kramnik in their Corus game, even though he subsequently lost ,:) .

"its the only time the top players can't just hide behind their ratings playing in super-GM only tournaments"
Not quite true, maybe you forgot about other (European) team events, or - writing from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean - you are not aware of their existence. I quickly scanned the German Bundesliga pages, surprisingly (or maybe not) there seem to be rather few Elo upsets, all I could find for the 2009/2010 season was
Shirov - Bezold 0-1 *
Vachier-Lagrave - Ikonnikov 0-1

GM Bezold (2517) also beat McShane, actually there were persistent rumors that Bobby Fischer had visited him at his home - did he share some secrets with him? When queried, Bezold had only replied "no comment".

This question was recently asked: Can someone please give an example of a respectful post from chesshire cat? I've looked and looked, but can't seem to find one.

The Answer: Follow the link above. No disrespect intended.

None are so blind as those that will not see, Lukey.

Just Laugh with it !!!

ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha
ha ha

First of all, what makes you think I'm not writing from Europe? Not all people who like Nakamura's games are American. Secondly, I am aware of those club tournaments, but name how many players under 2650 have Topalov, Carlsen, Kramnik and Aronian played since the last Olympiad in FIDE-rateable time controls? I would bet that combined it is less than 25 (and that's over 2 years, with likely most of those games coming in the annual Netherlands tournament)...I'd be happy to be proven wrong if someone can crunch the numbers.

I suggested that you _might_ be American because you seemed to be unaware of club events. You are basically right about the top 5 who probably don't depend on club competitions as a source of income and have too busy a supertournament schedule. Anand and Carlsen are part of the Baden-Baden lineup but hardly play, Aronian used to play in the Bundesliga but maybe he became too expensive or too busy.

But things change if we move slightly down the rating list - I am a bit selective because I only checked three players (as I knew that they play club events):
Since the last Olympiad:
Gelfand played 14 games against sub-2650 (7* Austrian League, 3* Spanish League, 4* European Club Cup)
Shirov had 35 games (16 Bundesliga, 2 Hungarian League, 4 Spanish League, 5 European Club Cup - and 8 at the Canadian Open)
Svidler had 29 games (10 Bundesliga, 11 French League and 8 Gibraltar Open).

Thanks, Bartleby. Nice to see my opinions supported by fact :).

i m stoopid is definitely a cultural icon for this blog. I enjoy your reflectons, i m stoopid.

It seems you can discuss draws, as Bareev keeps mentioning team members asking him about it during matches. e.g. Grischuk yesterday: http://www.chessintranslation.com/2010/09/russia-beats-russia/

I've also put some more up there on Wojtaszek's win against Nakamura. Wojtaszek "had the better of" a draw against Aronian today, while Nakamura looks in trouble...

Bareev also mentioned that Vocaturo was not allowed to accept Grischuk's draw offer ("the captain of the Italian team went over to his protégé and, bringing an end to peace talks, very strictly said: “Play!” ") - so it's not just him and the first Russian team.

Today, it seems that Bareev made the right decision leaving out unpredictable Grischuk and keeping the drawish Svidler and Malakhov. This also gave Karjakin yet another white (his sixth in seven games), and he converted in what may well have been home preparation. A Chessbomb live chatter mentioned an earlier 2010 game Inarkiev-Eljanov(!) in the same line, won by black.
Svidler drew, Kramnik drew - also defending his #5 spot on the live rating list for the time being (Ivanchuk would have overtaken him with a win), Malakhov still has to defend an apparently inferior (Berlin) endgame.

I wouldn't want to be Malakhov facing up to Bareev after this game if he loses - in general the pressure on the players in these team events must be enormous!

The pressure is enormous, but only for the top teams and medal candidates. Carlsen could have fun playing junk like 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6?! without having much to fear from his team captain (Peter Heine Nielsen)!?
In the meantime, Nakamura can again try to prove that two pawns down in an endgame is "less than a zillion" - as against van Wely (NH tournament) but it didn't work against Wojtaszek yesterday.

Malakhov does look lost to me (move 47).

He lost indeed. Will Russia be able to get on the gold fight with 3 rounds to finish? Isn't Nakamura in need of a rest now? Shulman won and now guess what can happen in Onischuk-Zhou.

Onischuk-Zhou was drawn (wrong rook pawn for white). To answer your question: who knows? ,:)

Current standings are:
Ukraine 14
Russia 1, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, France 13
USA, China, Israel, Cuba 12
In case anyone is missing Russia 2, after losing against France today they are down in no man's land with 10 points.

Ukraine obviously still has the best chances for gold, but "anything can happen". I think the USA probably cannot afford to give Nakamura a break if they want to fight for a medal: fifth board Robert Hess, while nominally not much weaker, is less experienced at an international level.

Thomas is so cute with his obvious and constant attempts to criticize and denigrate Nakamura. "...fifth board Robert Hess, while nominally not much weaker..."

Nakamura = 2733.
Hess = 2596.

Thomas = "...fifth board Robert Hess, while nominally not much weaker..."

Of course, as Thomas always reminds us, he is not a Nakamura-hater. Perhaps he will remind us again.

OK this was prone to misunderstandings, but obviously things have to be assessed top down. If Nakamura takes a break:
- Kamsky replaces Nakamura on board 1: no disaster, Kamsky also still has world top potential and is more stable than Nakamura
- Onischuk replaces Kamsky on board 2: another experienced GM
- Shulman replaces Onischuk on board 3: another GM who played several Olympiads before
- Hess replaces Shulman on board 4: "nominally not much weaker" referred to the gap between him (2596) and Shulman (2636). But all competing teams (see list above) have players rated above 2600 on boards 4 and 5. So far in 2010, Hess scored 2/9 against such opposition [I include his US Ch win against Akobian, 2599] - and IMO the limited number of games is even more relevant than the results he had.

Apology accepted.

Hag

Even in the Reverse Modern, you fight for space when you can. Nakamura got a passive, cramped position, and evidently thought that he could mesmerize Wang with fancy Knight maneuvers.

If Hikaru had just played in a solid, Classical opening style, he would have encounted Wang's well known choices for defense, which are Super-solid, but unlikely to yield any advantage for Black. Maybe Donaldson instructed him to play for a win at all costs on Board 1?

Doug, I count 10 FIDE Vice Presidents: http://www.fide.com/fide/directory/fide-officials.html?comid=1&task=committee

So it doesn't actually mean anything and you don't need to worry about Makropoulos and Azmaiparashvili & co. being out of a job.

"If Hikaru had just played in a solid, Classical opening style, he would have encounted Wang's well known choices for defense, which are Super-solid"

Do you realize that he played Wang Hao, not Wang Yue? I don't know why "the Panda" didn't play today, maybe the Chinese team captain decided that the dynamic Wang would be a better match for Nakamura.

I agree. The 56 members who voted for Karpov, the real chess power nations, should ally themselves and start a new chess federation, one that seriously is interested in the growth of chess around the world and truly cares about its professional chess players.

OK, and Makro has Deputy President post anyhow. :-)
Though Kirsan *would* discard Makropoulis without a moment's hesitation.

The offer of a Vice-Presidency to Karpov is more of a calculated insult than I had reckoned.

Since the whole FIDE hierarchy is essentially comprised of toadies, flunkies, flacks, and henchmen, I hadn't bothered to delve more deeply into FIDE's "political structure". Pretty hideous Rougues' Gallery.

Yep, my bad. I thought that because Wang Yue hadn't played in Round #7, that he was due to appear at Board 1 again. Maybe Wang Yue is ill? My sense is that Super-solid Yue would have matched up quite well to Nakamura....

Wang Hao, on the other hand, has played all 8 rounds. If it was a Captain's choice, it turned out to be an inspired decision on the part of the Chinese. But maybe it cost them on a lower board.
Before this Olympiad, I'm sure that the USA would have been happy with a drawn match vs. China.

I reaize that Hao's middlegame is certainly more dynamic than Yue's, but is Hao's repetoire of Openings for Black also in the "Dynamic range?"
What does he usually play against non-1.g3 openings?

"If Hikaru had just played in a solid, Classical opening style, he would have encounted Wang's well known choices for defense, which are Super-solid"

Do you realize that he played Wang Hao, not Wang Yue? I don't know why "the Panda" didn't play today, maybe the Chinese team captain decided that the dynamic Wang would be a better match for Nakamura.

Hao could Yue get the wong Wang?

Which openings does Wang Hao play with black? According to chessgames.com, mostly various Sicilians against 1.e4 and Nf6/e6 stuff against 1.d4. Nothing Nakamura had to be afraid of, but ... he probably prepared for Wang Yue's Petroff or Slav and, surprised to face the other Wang, chose something non-theoretical. BTW, Wang Hao had faced such systems before, twice against Movsesian.

Talking about surprises: it might actually be a wise, certainly an interesting decision to give Nakamura a break tomorrow and put Kamsky with black against Topalov? Kamsky is solid, Nakamura might get the worse end in a wild battle between two ever-ambitious players who both seem to be a bit out of form.

the professor wrote:

Hao could Yue get the wong Wang?

My nomination for the "Funniest Post In A Very Long Time" Award.

I don't know about the whole world (who would?), but in Germany such elections are either secret, or people can ask that they will be secret. Of course, anyone doing so might have eyebrows raised, as if that person had something to hide(!!?). How do various sources (Europe Echecs, Chessbase) actually know (for sure!?) that Europe mostly supported Karpov, while Kirsan's victory relied on "small federations from Asia, Africa and South America"?

Some details and quotes from the English and French Europe Echecs videos:
- Sweden, France and apparently Belgium (refusing to be explicit) supported Karpov. Namibia refused to reveal their secret (fair enough!). Papua New Guinea seemed skeptical that either candidate will do something for Oceania ("we are in the bottom of the world").
- Jean-Claude Moingt (French federation president): "If the heart voted, Karpov would win easily. As the wallet takes priority, it will be tense."
- The person standing up ("regarding the verification of proxies ...") was GM Bachar Kouatly.
- The person shouting at Kasparov ("Respect the house!") is still anonymous to me.

Hao could Yue get the wong Wang?

Haha. Brilliant.

Glad you've come up with a new cover story, Chesspride. You were really starting to show some cracks in your faith, in some of your recent postings.

Aside from the Las Vegas Knock-Out World Chamionship in 1998, which as we know was not exactly a success in popularizing chess in the US, what is it that the USCF gained from FIDE?

What are Kirsan's prospects for coming up with his magical money, once his ATM (Kalmykia) is taken away from him?

And don't try to fool us: You don't care about the USCF (Why should you? You were er, "let go" from employment by the USCF)

What are the remotely plausible scenarios here:

--"Business as Usual": FIDE treads water, manages to barely stay afloat.

--"Capsizes": Without the blood money looted from Kalmykia to bail out FIDE, the organization quickly succumbs, and sinks.

--"Dies on the Vine": a new International Chess Federation is created, and the civilized chess world flocks to it. FIDE is left only with its parasitic cronies, who have clearly latched on for good. Each year, FIDE sinks more and more into oblivion.

@Doug: Would you consider Russian-speaking countries as part of the civilzed chess world?

Just when you suggested that he lacks energy ... OK you wrote "for a sustained effort" so you aren't proven wrong. It looks like Shirov "wins when the opportunity arises" and, at other occasions, is happy with a draw - maybe also in the interest of the team.

In any case, he does a better job than Topalov and Carlsen: both lost again today, making it five losses in total for the World's #1 and (former, as far as live ratings are concerned) #2 - who would have predicted this before the Olympiad? Absentee Anand is getting close(r) to his goal of becoming #1 again, but will have to add some own effort in Bilbao and Nanjing.

DOug,

Organize an Olympiad-type tournament? There is already the World Team Championship.

You say 95 who voted for Kirsan are corrupt. I don't believe any group owns a monopoly on that and it is simplistic to make such a statement.

Carlsen and Topalov shedding points like never before. Aronian would move to live #3 now. Carlsen's cushion would still keep him #1 but one more loss and he wont be there.

Unfortunately there are a lot of simpletons out there peddling knee-jerk analyses, informed by ignorance and fuelled by naked prejudice and ill-considered assumptions about the honesty or otherwise of some federations/delegates.

I have been an active member of 3 separate national federations, 2 european and one african, over the past 2 decades and have never been consulted about the voting intentions (in FIDE elections etc) of my federation. Such opacity in decision making could be a mask for corruption or merely administrative expediency but some assume that it must be the former for the third-world and the former for the 'civilized world'.

I don't know if German Chessbase understood things correctly ... . They actually write "according to the applied tiebreak rules, which noone really understands, Russia is leading [ahead of Ukraine]".

Yes, the rules are hard to understand, maybe better if they had used points. Anyway I think Russia will win this on tiebreak since Spain have a couple of players in the 2500s and Israel-Ukraine feels like 2-2.

Thomas,

You mean there is opacity in the tiebreak rules ???
Oh :)
Opacity is everywhere !

I think "somebody" is going to accuse quickly Kirsan about that !

It used to be that pairings in Round Robin events were tweaked a bit to prevent two compatriots from playing each other in the last round, and possibly colluding to manipuloate results to benefit National prestige.

Given that there are other apparent tweaks to these Swiss System pairings during the Olympiad, it might have been a good policy to force pair the leading Russia teams a few rounds earlier, or simply re-pair the last Round to have them play different opponents.

There is at least some strong motivation on the part of some individual Russian players to not tank, and even have the ambition to play for a win.

2 of the players for Russia 1 need to play, just to be Board Prize eligible. IM N. Kosintseva needn't play: She can win a high Borad Prize by sitting out. One of the Top 3 Boards for Russia 1 needs to sit in Round 11. Probably, IM Bodnaruk could sit out.

Too many scenarios to ponder...

For Russia 1:

Board #1:

GM Tatiana Kosintseva is leading in the competition to get the Board #1 Gold Medal prize, with a Performance Rating of 2662. She probably needs to win in Round #11 to take the Gold. If she draws or even opts to sit out, she might not hold off Nana Dzagnidze, if the Georgian were to win.

Board #2:

IM Nadezhda Kosintseva is ALSO the leader for the Board #2 Gold Medal. She has a better Winning percentage, has accrued more points (and played more games) than her sister, earning her a higher Performance Rating. She could conceivably rest (she has played all 10 rounds thus far), and maintain the winning margin. 9it is hard to believe that she has not earned the GM Title, yet. she should obvious earn a Norm from her Olympiad performance.

Board #3:

GM Alexandra Kosteniuk is in 4th Place, just out of Medal classification. She has not had a great event, and as things stand now, she will LOSE 5 or 6 rating points. Nevertheless, a Victory in round 11, along with any faltering from those ahead of her, could easily propel her to the Silver Medal.

Board #4:

IM Alisa Galliamova has a 2538 Perforamnce Rating, which would put her in position to win the Bronze Medal. However, she has only played 6 games, shy of the minimum threshhold. If she plays 1 more game (for a total of 7), I believe that Galiiamova becomes Board Prize eligible. Her result is almost unimportant: Even if she plays and loses, she stands a good chance of winning the Bronze medal. Interestingly, she might get paired with either IM Anastasia Bodnaruk of Russia 2, or even WGM Kashlinskaya Alina, also of Russia 2, both of whom are also in Borad Medal contention, for Boards #4 and #5, respectively!

Board #5:

WGM Gunina Valentina has scored 5.5/6 on Board #5, for a TPR of 2657. this would easly suffice to win the Board #5 Gold Medal!Having only played 6 games, she needs to play just 1 more to be eligible for the Gold Medal.
___________________________________________

Russia 2:

No real Board Prize Medal chances for the top 3 Boards of Russia 2.

Board #4:

IM Anastasia Bodnaruk would be a cinch to win the Board #4 Gold Medal, if it were not for the blistering 2691 TPR of Ukrainian IM Anna Gaponenko (highest among all women in the Olympiad). Bodnaruk's 2619 TPR (6.5/7) should assure her of the Silver medal, though.

(Gaponenko faces a tough decision of whether or place, as the Ukraine faces China on Table #2, with the Silver/Bronze team medals completely up for grabs. Losing team goes home empty)

Board #5:

WGM Alina Kashlinskaya is sitting in Bronze Medal position currently, but as soon as WGM Gunina plays her game, she'd drop down to 4th. She's played 8 games so far, so could sit out. However, her chances of getting a Bronze Medal on Board 5 are enhanced, if she were to play, and score a draw.

1. Russia 1 (RUS1 / RtgAvg:2536, Captain: Dokhoian, Yury / TB1: 20 / TB2: 370)
Bo. Name Rtg FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Pts. Games Rp w we w-we K rtg+/-
1 GM Kosintseva Tatiana 2573 RUS 1 1 ½ ½ 0 1 1 ½ 1 6,5 9 2644 6,5 5,59 0,91 10 9,1
2 IM Kosintseva Nadezhda 2565 RUS 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 8,5 10 2662 8,5 7,43 1,07 10 10,7
3 GM Kosteniuk Alexandra 2524 RUS 1 1 1 ½ 0 1 1 ½ 0 6,0 9 2438 6 6,56 -0,56 10 -5,6
4 IM Galliamova Alisa 2482 RUS 1 0 1 1 1 1 5,0 6 2538 5 4,36 0,64 10 6,4
5 WGM Gunina Valentina 2465 RUS 1 ½ 1 1 1 1 5,5 6 2657 5,5 4,45 1,05 10 10,5

Board-prizes (Rank after Round 10) - Women
Board 1
Rk. Name Rtg Team % Games Pts. Rp
1 GM Kosintseva Tatiana 2573 Russia 1 72,2 9 2478 6,5 2644
2 GM Dzagnidze Nana 2534 Georgia 77,8 9 2406 7,0 2626
3 WGM Mamedjarova Zeinab 2234 Azerbaijan 80,0 10 2368 8,0 2608
4 GM Hou Yifan 2578 China 75,0 10 2384 7,5 2577
5 IM Muzychuk Anna 2535 Slovenia 72,2 9 2390 6,5 2556

Board 2
Rk. Name Rtg Team % Games Pts. Rp
1 IM Kosintseva Nadezhda 2565 Russia 1 85,0 10 2366 8,5 2662
2 WGM Ju Wenjun 2516 China 85,0 10 2310 8,5 2606
3 IM Zimina Olga 2334 Italy 77,8 9 2247 7,0 2467
4 IM Zatonskih Anna 2480 United States of America 66,7 9 2339 6,0 2464
5 WGM Chelushkina Irina 2325 Serbia 62,5 8 2362 5,0 2457

Board 3
Rk. Name Rtg Team % Games Pts. Rp
1 WGM Marrero Lopez Yaniet 2324 Cuba 87,5 8 2175 7,0 2511
2 IM Melia Salome 2439 Georgia 70,0 10 2309 7,0 2458
3 WGM Stojanovic Andjelija 2337 Serbia 75,0 10 2261 7,5 2454
4 GM Kosteniuk Alexandra 2524 Russia 1 66,7 9 2313 6,0 2438
5 WGM Berzina Ilze 2283 Latvia 80,0 10 2182 8,0 2422

Board 4
Rk. Name Rtg Team % Games Pts. Rp
1 IM Gaponenko Inna 2469 Ukraine 93,8 8 2247 7,5 2691
2 IM Bodnaruk Anastasia 2399 Russia 2 92,9 7 2197 6,5 2619
3 IM Dworakowska Joanna 2315 Poland 83,3 9 2142 7,5 2415
4 WGM Baginskaite Kamile 2328 United States of America 78,6 7 2136 5,5 2366
5 WIM Schut Lisa 2288 Netherlands 77,8 9 2123 7,0 2343

Board 5
Rk. Name Rtg Team % Games Pts. Rp
1 IM Muzychuk Mariya 2464 Ukraine 75,0 8 2244 6,0 2437
2 WGM Velcheva Maria 2272 Bulgaria 71,4 7 2209 5,0 2367
3 WGM Kashlinskaya Alina 2358 Russia 2 68,8 8 2220 5,5 2361
4 WIM Fuchs Judith 2237 Germany 75,0 8 2064 6,0 2257
5 WFM Hakimifard Ghazal 2173 Iran 57,1 7 2178 4,0 2228

5. Russia 2 (RUS2 / RtgAvg:2427, Captain: Tregubov, Pavel V. / TB1: 15 / TB2: 287)
Bo. Name Rtg FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Pts. Games Rp w we w-we K rtg+/-
1 WGM Pogonina Natalija 2491 RUS 1 ½ ½ 0 1 0 ½ ½ 0 1 5,0 10 2377 5 6,40 -1,40 10 -14,0
2 WGM Girya Olga 2414 RUS 1 ½ 0 ½ 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 5,5 9 2413 5,5 5,41 0,09 10 0,9
3 WGM Savina Anastasia 2404 RUS ½ ½ 1 0 ½ 0 2,5 6 2262 2,5 3,67 -1,17 10 -11,7
4 IM Bodnaruk Anastasia 2399 RUS 1 1 1 ½ 1 1 1 6,5 7 2619 6,5 5,02 1,48 10 14,8
5 WGM Kashlinskaya Alina 2358 RUS 1 ½ ½ ½ 1 1 1 0 5,5 8 2361 5,5 5,14 0,36 15 5,4

Mr. Noone should post here to enlighten us.

Interesting, you really must love the Caro-Kann if you check things in such detail ,:) .

At the same time it's surprising to me because I remember only spectacular wins with the white pieces:
Shirov-Jobava
Sjugirov-Carlsen
Karjakin-Eljanov
Ivanchuk-Jobava (not a typical Caro-Kann ...)
Ivanchuk-Beliavsky
The only black win I remember, Nakamura-Wojtaszek, wasn't related to the opening. So were the black wins mostly in "boring" or less important games (on lower tables)?

Second question or observation: It seems that 3.e5 has more or less become the main line. Here black gets unbalanced positions with winning (and losing) chances. The earlier mainline 3.Nc3 (or 3.Nd2) seems more consistent with the "traditional" view of the Caro-Kann as a drawish opening!?

How could he do so if he doesn't understand himself? He may have looked at the situation after round 9: yesterday, Ukraine closed and slightly reverted the gap thanks to their crushing 3.5-0.5 against France - Ivanchuk playing on and eventually winning against Vachier-Lagrave after the match was already decided may turn into a key game.

Of course, there were earlier ones from an Ukrainian perspective, notably Efimenko's consecutive wins against Malakhov and Safarli from rather even endgames. Efimenko - who already got lots of praise from Ponomariov for being his second in Dortmund - is another rating winner and a recent addition to the (live) 2700+ club.

It may backfire badly, as Svidler as a rough time against Salgado, and so Kramnik's likely win would only tie the match. Certainly, and not even in the craziest nationalistic dream i would think we could win against Russia. A tie makes a great reverence to their bad match strategy. It's not normal for Svidler to lose but accidents do happen...

Indeed, he already lost. Bye bye, gold.

Well, i wonder if you shouldn't consider 2595 most likely in the 2600s but still, it has a point (albeit less) Wonder what punishment his teammates will inflict on Peter Bogdanovich. I think however the main responsable is the captain, giving two early draws in such an important match. I think that playing against a clearly inferior opponent you should try to keep as many options open as possible. It's easy to say such things now, but you now, accidents happen, phones ring and so and so...

To be fair to Malakhov he was basically given the unenviable task of trying to hold with black in all but one (I think) of his games - so Karjakin could have white. Of course Malakhov's a pretty solid player and generally up to the task (despite his one serious failure), but as he said recently: "I love to have the initiative and I play that type of position very strongly". He wasn't given much chance to show what he could do and it's not certain than e.g. Nepo would have done better if only given black.

Of course you can criticise Bareev's general tactics of not simply playing the four best players and letting them have an equal number of whites and blacks... but on the other hand the tactics very nearly worked. Without that Malakhov loss or Svidler's disaster today they'd have won the tournament (despite never really impressing).

The reason they gave Karjakin so many white games was taken during the tournament because they saw he was the only one who was in really good shape.
You always have to select your best players for the first team.
Elo is one criterion but other criteria nearly as
important are actual shape,recent results,live rating , fighting spirit, motivation,stability, commitment and experience.
with all these criteria in mind Nepomniachtchi should definitely have been included in the first team.
Personal sympathy on the other hand is not a valid criterion.

But we have to wait for the next BCM magazine to get the juicy details.

"big rating favorites" : The rating average of Russia was only slightly higher than that of the Ukraine.
"buying over karjakin" : Nobody talks of buying when i don't know how many former soviet players went to play for western countries and are still doing so. Did Holland buy Anish Giri recently? Karjakin went to Russia because he saw better opportunities in Moscow. Besides he's an ethnic russian born in the crimea.
Yes they didn't win gold in the last four olympiads but they won the last two world team championships and the european team championship in 2007.
The fact that they had 5 teams in this olympiad was of no advantage at all.

"The reason they gave Karjakin so many white games was taken during the tournament because they saw he was the only one who was in really good shape."

Sure, but e.g. at the beginning Malakhov won his first game with black, and despite the dodgy opening he played very nicely after that. So at that stage I don't think it was so clear who was in the better form. But then he was given black the next day and Karjakin won again with a second white and after that Malakhov didn't really get a chance (the advantage for the team captain was that Malakhov was the one player in the team who he could get away with treating like that!?). Details here: http://www.chess-results.com/tnr36795.aspx?art=20&lan=1&flag=30&m=-1&wi=1000&snr=1

Who knows what would have happened if he'd also been given the chance to play white more than once in the tournament.

Plus at the end Bareev said that Karjakin was very tired, but still he played him even though he finished with 3 quick draws - maybe a fresh Malakhov could have done more?

That said I do basically agree Nepo was the way to go - and then perhaps with Karjakin and him Russia might have got some easy wins instead of it being a grim struggle each round!

Thanks mishanp, this is critical and constructive, most other comments are "annotating by the result" and, quite possibly, anti-Russian from the start:

- If Russia had beaten Spain to overtake Ukraine on tiebreak, we could instead criticize Ukraine for their "safety first" approach in the final round. We could even criticize Israel for doing so if they lose bronze to Hungary on tiebreak, or if France-Armenia had been decisive (it was 2-2, hooray for France again) with the winner getting bronze.

- Svidler played aggressively for a win today. It backfired upon him, this can happen - e.g. Nakamura-Wojtaszek (and some games by myself and, possibly, danyplayer who don't make it into databases ,:) ). At which stage could he have played it safe, e.g. bailed out with a perpetual check??

- I think Nepomniachtchi may have been put on the second team with the idea of getting two medals rather than one. It didn't work out, not clear what exactly went wrong for Russia 2: boards 4 and 5 underperformed, and they ended up narrowly losing some key matches.

- Karjakin changed federations because he was unhappy with the Ukrainian one. He is neither the only player ever changing federations (Gelfand and Shirov to name the highest-rated ones), nor the only one who was unhappy with the Ukrainian one. Things changed for the better in Ukraine, just in time to get Ponomariov back on the team but too late to keep Karjakin. For lack of evidence, Russia "buying over Karjakin" is at best speculation, at worst a serious insult.

I'm relying on Google Translate, but if Weizsäcker really did have a heart attack then Makropoulos mocking him when he collapsed is an impressive new low even for Makropoulos' appalling career:

"From a dreamer who believed Karpows lies, nothing more was expected than that he was weak on his legs."

http://www.zeit.de/sport/2010-10/schach-iljumschinow-karpow-weizsaecker

It was 2755 against 2738 so not that much on paper, but that's with Eljanov rated higher than Grischuk and the latter is a much stronger player so it isn't only about rating. Kramnik is better than Ivanchuk, etc, down to Karjakin being better than Efimenko. Russia had to pay FIDE quite a big sum of money for the federation switch and it's of course no difference if Netherlands buy over some player with the intention of winning an Olympiad at home.

Russia winning all other important team events doesn't make their once again failing in the Olympiad looking better. I thought they would win easily this time, they are after all favorites every time and this time Ukraine was the only team within 50 points on average rating. But it's twice Armenia and twice Ukraine in the four latest Olympiads.

"From a dreamer who believed Karpows lies, nothing more was expected than that he was weak on his legs."

Wouldn't surprise me one bit if that quote was correct, some really scary people in Kirsan's team.

I guess Shirov went into deep thought around move 20 because he thought/realized that he was worse at that stage: his queenside weaknesses and passive bishop on b7 matter more than the potentially weak white pawn on d4. At least that's what the game continuation suggests, Shirov went on to lose without making obvious blunders - and in some positions 2750+ GMs may still be stronger than engines.

The Google translation is accurate ,:) - I will also give the preceding sentences:
"At the general assembly in Khanty-Mansiysk FIDE treasurer Nigel Freeman announced that he will sue the German federation for one million Swiss Franks financial compensation and threatened with personal action against von Weizsäcker. Several times von Weizsäcker asked to be allowed to reply on this. When he didn't get the word, he collapsed [nervous breakdown is one way of translating it]."

It's absolutely in Makropoulos' style. One of the most annoying things after following this election pretty closely is to read the totally misguided (to put it politely) and lazy opinions of people like David Levy: http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6712

e.g. "Ilyumzhinov's election campaign exhibited very little anti-Karpov rhetoric. Where Karpov's campaign fell down badly was in its anti-Ilyumzhinov emphasis..."

Every interview Makropoulos gave included a brutal attack on Karpov and Kasparov - Ilyumzhinov was more Jekyll and Hyde - he'd occasionally be "charming" i.e. patronisingly condescending, then switch to calling the 2Ks "accomplices" etc. Though the most notable approach of Ilyumzhinov was to criticise the 2Ks for bringing disunity and discord... as though it was a crime to actually try and get people to vote for them! You can see the same if you watch the Ilyumzhinov documentary that was posted at Chessvibes just before the election - there he's also talking about unity when asked about the opposition (one of whom was subsequently murdered): http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/kalmykia-documentary-posted-on-youtube/ The subtext is of course: join us and support us as one happy FIDE (or Kalmyk) family...........or else.

One would have to be blind not to agree on all counts.

Concerning Ukraine match draw, i think at least two players drew from a better position (they would no doubt have played on) once they saw what happened in Svidler-Salgado. I don't know if Bareev was really that bad. I think he really failed with the last round and sure he could have given some rest earlier to Karjakin. But I don't envy his job.Sure they could have put Nepomniachtchi on first team but I certainly think twice before taking out Svidler. As for Malakhov, i think he was OK with being the reserve (don't know if Nepo would be) and playing many blacks. In general, i find it too easy to criticize them, even if they obviously failed as they are in my view clearly the stronger team. Congratulations to Spain, 5 shared (8) is a very good result. Best PR overall to Sutovsky but i think best performances (subjective of course) to Ivanchuk and maybe Nepomniachtchi who certainly shows he deserves a spot on Russia 1 on the next tournament.

"Instead, he promised to create some sort of pension fund for chess professionals, something only a real retardo would deem feasible at this point."

Hmmm, that's actually from Kirsan's incredibly slapdash "vision": http://www.onefide.com/one-vision/

"LIVING STANDARDS of all chess Grandmasters need to be improved by mandating titled players for training missions. FIDE will study the introduction of an additional financial contribution by organizers of its events, so as to create a pension fund for Grandmasters after reaching the age of 60."

My comment on the Ukrainian strategy referred to two quick draws, understandable as they might be: Ivanchuk had learnt from Mamedyarov that he isn't invincible after all (hence a GM draw with black against Gelfand), and Ponomariov was drawish throughout the Olympiad.

To your list of individual heroes, I would add
- Belorussian Teterev who won board 3 by a large margin (and with Elo 2511 he is one of the lowest-rated players in the top twenty on all boards). It probably won't yield him supertournament invitations, but maybe a financially attractive spot in some club competition(s)!?
- Aronian whose 2888 TPR was just two points lower than Ivanchuk's. For various reasons he was largely overlooked: Armenia didn't really fight for the medals this time, his five wins were distributed differently (three at the start, two in the final rounds), and his games weren't as spectacular. Methinks his wins against Jakovenko and Vachier-Lagrave were impressive nonetheless. The Frenchman played "allright" throughout most of the event, but really got some lessons from Ivanchuk and Aronian at the end.

BTW, this is somewhat, or almost reminiscent of two years ago: Topalov and Gelfand were in contention for first prize on board 1, but suddenly Leko overtook Gelfand with the smallest possible margin (TPR 2834 vs. 2833 for Gelfand), thanks to a 130-mover in the last round.

Irv (and David Levy),

Please get a clue. Karpov did not "let Kasparov become the face of his campaign."

This was a Kasparov campaign. Kasparov invited Karpov to be the campaign's presidential candidate.

Any reason why you ignored their result from the 5th round? You know, the one right before their 6th round pounding by USA. Vietnam got pounded by Georgia even worse. So, USA didn't start them on their downhill slide. Georgia did.

Hag

The real mistake by Shirov was allowing Kramnik to get a slightly favorable position with absolutely zero dynamic counter chances for himself. Shirov allowed just the sort of game Kramnik loves and he hates. Shirov, obviously disappointed at the state of things on the board, lets his play become very sub-par, and he loses like a child. An easy game for Kramnik and one that must leave Shirov depressed at being out-played so completely.

Surely you can show some variations of that resistance that wouldn't make your post seem "pre-arranged" (just a random opinion with cheating allegations) by one of those Rybka-bots... Oh, wait, the one at the official site at least was giving variations from time to time to support its appreciations of the position. Sure Shirov would appreciate. Why is it that when one gets a tactically lost position people think he fell on the trap and when it's a positionally lost one people think he should fight? Sometimes you just can't, and even less against such opposition.

I'm a huge Shirov fan and have been since the mid-90s, and it is painful for me to watch what happened to him yesterday vs. Kramnik, and I'm sure Shirov was undoubtedly a lot more critical of his own play than I was in my post. I'm also certain he'll find a way to remedy his play next time he faces Kramnik with the black pieces -- suggestions from me would be entirely way too superficial.

What would be more critical than "losing like a child" (BTW, wasn't this a comment from 14-year old Carlsen after losing a game of chess?)? Losing like a baby??

Actually Shirov's next game with black against Kramnik will be in about a week in Bilbao.

Which of course probably explains the opening choice.

On second thoughts, that runs into the Catalan...

It's really hard to avoid the Catalan without playing indian defenses, and then one should rather aim for Grunfeld or KID which is no cake against Kramnik. What to do? Already on "Fire on the Board" Shirov makes a comment about how strong Kramnik was, especially with white... at 13!

It's all about names of opening variations: the anti-Meran is (after 5.e3) 6.Qc2 rather than 6.Bd3, not 5.Bg5 instead of 5.e3. You probably meant that Shirov wasn't satisfied with his prep in the Botvinnik or anti-Moscow - maybe he doesn't have any fresh ideas and didn't follow recent developments closely, as (it seems like) he gave up on those lines for the time being.

And I also don't understand Dondo's comment: Shirov played his new pet line, which may well be part of his Bilbao preparation - he might reconsider it now but doesn't have much time left. More radical options would have been:
- play something really weird: a mirror variation to Carlsen's 1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6 might be 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6
- take a rest day, as he did before when he was due to play Carlsen with black.
Both choices would have eyebrows raised among teammates, Ukrainians and neutral observers ... ,:)

Ah I see - actually I looked at the same Wikipedia article but only at the table of contents ,:) . TWIC also refers to 5.Bg5 as "anti-Meran gambit", e.g. in the recent Leko-Gelfand rapid match where it was played in 7/8 games. One move later white could still be anti-Meran without sacrificing a pawn, or again do so on the next move playing the Shirov-Shabalov gambit. And the various anti-Meran gambit lines each have their own proper name ... more familiar (to me!) than the overarching term.

I wonder if ECO codes are less confusing, I don't memorize them with the exception of B33 for my beloved Sveshnikov Sicilian.

Please tell me you meant 'Luke,' and not 'Loek!'

CO

Variety is the spice of strife, co.

http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Luke/m

Rather surprising the anti-Kirsan propaganda hasn't stopped (and it continues on multiple sites.)

Apparently the KK Team intends to continue the fight... it'd be interesting to see what new org & tournaments they unveil in the coming days... Have to disagree with Irv on their putative lack of funds: the KKs have a huge amount of backing: from the U.S. government.

**Stay tuned, cuz it ain't over.**

(In fact, because of the geopoltiics involved it'd probably continue for years to come.)

Why is this "Rather surprising the anti-Kirsan propaganda hasn't stopped (and it continues on multiple sites.)"

Hag

Certainly, if the Russians (USSR) had controlled FIDE during the height of the Cold War era, then I might have expected that the CIA would have thrown some money into either co-opting FIDE, or in creating a rival Chess Federation.

But times have changed: Nakamura is not as talented as Fischer (even if he shares personality traits), Russia is no longer an ideological rival, and (thanks to Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue) chess has lost nuch of its cachet and prestige in America, if not in all The West.

Russia is committed to propping up FIDE. It has been doing so since Kirsan took over FIDE in 1995, and will continue to do so, with even less pretense of being discreet, now that Kirsan has nominally ceded power in Kalmykia.

It is more likely that Deep-pocketed China will be the entity that will endeavor to move the Center of Gravity of the Chess World away from Southern Russia....to the East.

The only problem with your theory that Karpov and Kasparov will receive $$ for the US governement to form a new International Chess Federation is this: Karpov and Kasparov are such money grubbers that it is difficult to conceive of them letting go of any "free money" they would get their hands on. For every Dollar that flowed through, they would take their share "Off the Top", and leave mere pennies for actual Chess operations. After all, how many ex-wives do Karpov and Kasparov have, respectively?

Kirsan may be the problem (although it is probably the case that the Body Politic of FIDE is even more rotten than the head), but Karpov is not the solution.

I had thought/hoped that K/K had some corporate and philanthropic money lined up, to launch a new Chess Federation when their bid to take over the reins of FIDE inevitably failed.

Maybe they are waiting to depart Siberia before making their next move, but it is beginning to look like this is it.

Perhaps Mig can provide some enlightenment about what transpired, and indeed post that material to The Daily Dirt, if not to Wikileaks.

Doug wrote:

"Kirsan may be the problem (although it is probably the case that the Body Politic of FIDE is even more rotten than the head), but Karpov is not the solution."

I absolutely agree.

I don't think there is any involvement by the US government - there is nothing to be gained by installing anyone (Karpov, Kirsan, Mother Teresa or Ted Bundy) as head of FIDE. Chess is insignificant from a global perspective and there are better ways of investing the money and effort.

That said, I repeat my question: IF (big IF) the backing is real and the promises of sponsorship are real too, why not create a new federation?

I mean, they could start rather small with a series of professionally-run tournaments (two per year would be enough) so that everyone could see what can be done. In fact, running these tournaments and showing a great organization would put Karpov & Co. in a perfect position to challenge Kirsan in four years - if that's even necessary by then.

Why is FIDE necessary, really? A new federation could recognize FIDE title and ratings and even take the opportunity to create a SuperGM title. It would be a smooth transition, guaranteed to kill FIDE in short order.

The problem is that it takes some money to do all this. Do Karpov and his 'millionaire friends" (as Mig put it) have any money and sponsorship? I seriously doubt it.

What personality traits does Nakamura share with Fischer? I don't see any myself.

I agree with every one of your points, chesspride.

The point I tried to make is that FIDE's functions (the ones you mention and others) could be easily replicated IF there is a solid financial basis.

When everything is said and done, it is a matter of money: if the KK Duo has "millionaire backers" and real sponsors lined up, they would not have any problems operating in parallel with FIDE. They don't even need the support of ANY federations. All they need is enough money and regularly-run events to attract the professional players. But it is all dependent on whether there is real sponsorship available for sustaining the effort long term. I doubt it.

"KK would purchase an administrative headache of no geopolitical value."

In all honesty, FIDE has no value except to professional chess players or amateurs with title aspirations. Most chessplayers in the world (the 99% not good enough to obtain a published FIDE rating) spend their playing "career" blissfully oblivious to FIDE and its circus-like affairs.

I can't imagine what constitutes FIDE's "geopolitical value", either. Chess is a very marginal activity, along the lines of backgammon and poker. Nobody thinks of chess as more than a game (except for some chess players, of course).

"Kasparov isn't interested in becoming a tournament director. His goal is rule over Russia itself - nothing else."

Then Kasparov is more deluded than I thought. I mean, if the only goal is to rule over Russia, becoming behind-the-scenes FIDE President is definitely not the way to go about it.

Naka's biggest problem is that he has a lot of loose games with W against the 2700-2750 crowd that cost him -- i.e. Gelfand in the Youth-Experience match, Gashimov in the 1st round of the Spanish league, Wang Hao and Wojtaszek in the Olympiad.

For his sake, I hope he will be able to shore up this weakness -- I think he will. Would like to see him invited to the Tal Memorial next month.

Apparently Nakamura will play the Tal Memorial, together with Kramnik, Grischuk, Karjakin, Aronian, Gelfand and Shirov and three players still to be determined. Ivanchuk and Anand declined the invitation, Carlsen will play only the blitz event (source: TWIC partly based on an interview with Ilya Levitov).

My impression is that Nakamura does relatively better whenever he is not among the favorites. If this pattern holds, he may positively surprise in the classical event, but not in the blitz competition!?

I agree that Naka does better when playing against the best...he is still career even score against 2800+ competition (3 draws, including 2 with the black pieces).

I would expect Naka to do very well in blitz...he's easily as good as anyone in the world given his style. Whether that's enough to win the World Blitz title is another story, but I'd put him in the short list of favorites that would include Carlsen, Anand, Aronian (2009 World Rapid champion), and Kamsky (2010 World Rapid champion); IMO Naka would be 3rd favorite after Carlsen and Anand.

BTW, Aronian is quietly moving up (2794 and counting)...if he wins the Tal Memorial, he'll break 2800 and depending on how Anand and Carlsen do could become world #1.

Naka hasn't played much against the best, either. In those 8 games against the top 5, he's had black in 6 of them (Kramnik twice, Aronian, Carlsen, Topalov, Anand), yet is only -2 and as I noted earlier is even score against 2800+ competition.

Plus Gelfand was world #6 when Naka shellacked him on the Black side of the KID.

Bottom line: the jury is still out on Naka; these next 4 months will tell us a lot. I'm looking forward to it. My biggest concern with Naka is not the top players (2750+), but the players in the 2700-2725 range.

I agree that eight games against the top 5 is a (too) small sample, and the color distribution was uneven. However:

- his losses against Kramnik and Aronian were positional lessons showing the weak spots of his play (Vachier-Lagrave had similar lessons from Ivanchuk and Aronian at the end of the Olympiad). For me, positional squeezes are as relevant or more so than tactical "shellacks" - in any case, both count the same in terms of tournament standings and Elo.

- Does it then make sense to reduce things to even less games, three against 2800+ (BTW, Topalov was already below 2800 on the live rating list when he drew against Nakamura ...)? If you mean to imply that 2800 is a different league than 2780, I would disagree: at the Olympiad, Kramnik and Aronian (who, as you say yourself, might cross 2800 soon) did better than Carlsen and Topalov.

Instead, Henry took the logical next step to include the next group of opponents, making it 29 games. And for that expanded Elo range, Nakamura had losses with white against Gelfand (twice), Svidler and Karjakin (not mentioned in Henry's list because he was "only" #21 prior to Corus 2010).

So yes, the jury is still out on Nakamura - he is not yet convicted guilty (of doing badly against 2700+ opposition) - but for the time being the tendency is against him. Why is it so hard to deny this?

Yeah, Nakamura beat Gelfand once with Black (at World Team). But he also lost against the same Gelfand twice, both with White (at NH and Bundesliga).

In fact, that win against Gelfand was his only win with Black against anybody in the top 20.

Nakamura played about equal number of Whites and Blacks against top 20 (including top 5).

He got 14 games with White and 15 with Black.
In both cases, with negative score.

White games: 2-4=8 (14 games)
Won vs Navara, Shirov
Lost vs Gelfand (twice), Svidler, Mamedyarov

Black games: 1-5=9 (15 games)
Won vs Gelfand
Lost vs Aronian, Kramnik, Svidler (twice), Grischuk

There is no reason to say Nakamura has a disadvantage of playing more Blacks. He has about equal Whites and Blacks, and is negative with both colors.

If you say this statistics is not much, then your 3 games against 2800 players is meaningless statistics, and there is no reason to say he "does better" against the best. As far as we know, so far he produced 37.5 % against the best (top 5), and 39.7 % against top 20.

Yes, I didn't include games against 2700 players if they are not top 20. If we also include the other (lower) 2700s, we will find more losses, such as against Karjakin at Corus, and the 2 losses in the last Olympiad (against Wang Hao and Wojtaszek). The final conclusion won't change.

"Interviewer: There are rumours that Teimur Radjabov has special status in the team. At events held overseas in contrast to the rest of this teammates he lives in a more prestigious hotel…

-------

- I read somewhere that Radjabov's father is a VERY rich and powerful man in the small country of Azerbaijan. Proberly his son enjoy some of his fathers wealth and prestige. Deservingly or not...

Nakamura hasn't played in supertournaments, but he did play those 29 games against top 20 players (and more than 30 games against 2700 players), with a negative score. That's a fact.

Whether that's enough statistics to predict his future results, that's another story. But that's enough to say that SO FAR he has not proven himself equal to 2700 players on a face-to-face basis. He might improve, of course, but he hasn't shown it yet, so far it's negative.

His no. 15 position shows that his overall performance (against all opponents) is comparable to the overall performances of other top 20. But that's not the same statement as saying he had performed well against (i.e. face-to-face against) the best. He had not. So far, his performance is negative.

Pioneer said:

"However, I think that when positional players like Leko, Yue, etc. show a pattern of taking 20 move draws against other super-GMs (which they have done FREQUENTLY), this in combination with their less obviously flashy style leads to denigration."

-------------

What statistics do you have to show that Wang Yue shows a "pattern" of 20 move draws against super-GMs, which he has done "FREQUENTLY"? I am not asking for a few examples. Show me statistics.

From my record of all Wang Yue's games against top 20 players (about 100 games), his average move is 43.09 moves. If you want to take just the draws, his average move is 40.02.

So where is your so-called pattern?

Of course, Wang Yue did play some 20 move draws, just like other GMs, but he is also ready to play long engdames. Contrary to your statement, my impression is that he actually loves to play such long endgames.

Pioneer said:

"Right now, few players are having a better Olympiad than Naka. Only one I can think of at the moment is Ivanchuk."

---------------

This is a few hours before Nakamura lost to Wojtaszek, followed by another one against Wang Hao.

Be careful when making statements :-).

Which is why I said "right now". At that time, it was absolutely correct...btw you were pretty quiet when his ELO for the Olympiad was 2964. Everyone is a genius after the fact.

The stats thus far (since you claim to love stats) say that Naka is even score against 2800+ competition, and is most vulnerable to players rated 2700-2725...albeit all on a small sample size as he has yet to be consistent invited to the 2700+ supertournaments the way everyone else in the top-15 has. Making broad judgments about Naka's future based on such a small sample size is foolish, regardless of your opinion about his ability.

I have said my peace on Naka, and the next 4 months will give us all a much better picture of the caliber of player he really is. If you want to keep hating, go ahead.

If you want to take objective expositions of facts and statistics for hate, go ahead. You may feel a bit lonely (or, sadly, not). I also think Nakamura is a good player, but by no means consider him such a promising one. Only time will tell. So far, it's what it is.

All this speculation about the paucity of Elite tournament invitations Nakamura has received implicitly assumes that all other factors are equal (i.e. That Nakamura demands roughly the same terms/conditions for his services as a typical 2700+ or Top 20 player. If his demands for money are not in scale with his peers, it could explain why organizers might prefer to invite other players, if they suffice to maintain the category/prestige of the event. Nakamura WILL get invitations to Elite Events--Category 19-21, and he will be given some opportunity to excel. His sample sizes against the 2800+ players, Top 5, Top 10, Top 20, and 2700+ players will grow, and so will our basis to draw conclusions about where he belongs in the Chess hierarchy. Nakamura's record against the "28s" may indicate that he in potentially an absolute peer of Carlsen, Anand, Topalov, and Kramnik...or it may simply indicate that these players have not deemed it worthwhile to invest the time and effort in dissecting Nakamura's playing style. Nakamura has exploitable weaknesses, and it is a race to see whether Hikaru can recognize and remedy those weaknesses before his rivals manage to detect and exploit them.