Category: Tournaments Page 6 of 8

Round 6 of Norway Chess 2015 is roaring along with the eyes of chess fans looking in two directions: 1) at Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura’s game to see if Carlsen can squeeze out another win, and 2) at Veselin Topalov’s commanding 5.5/6 lead. Round 6 earned Topalov another win against Alexander Grischuk. Grischuk’s recent performances have brought him below the 2800 ELO mark to 2781 and another loss in this tournament (1 of 3) did not help his cause.

On the Carlsen front, the World Champion played a somewhat interesting game against Nakamura in which the position looked won at several times, but the competition eventually gave way to a draw. Nakamura is a master of tactical positions and that expertise shined through in holding off to get the draw against Carlsen. The 95 move game between the World Champion and his potential challenger was exhausting to watch, so I can only imagine how exhausting it was to play. In fact, I was able to run some errands, take a nap, and spend some time with the kiddos before the draw was made on move 95. Here’s the full game:

Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, and Jon Ludwig Hammer have almost completely disappeared from headlines and online tournament reports as each of them sit with Carlsen near the bottom of the cross table. Only time will tell if any of them can stage a comeback in the second half of the tournament and earn one of the top-three spots. Check out all of the games here:

If fortune tellers could predict the end of the world from the wins and losses of Magnus Carlsen, then they can put away their crystal balls and stop wearing signs that say The End Is Here because Carlsen earned his first win in Norway Chess 2015 today against GM Alexander Grischuk. The two players chose the Najdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense with 6.g3, which led to an excitingly devastating endgame in which Carlsen viciously pushed his opponent into the h8 corner:

The standings at the halfway point in the tournament are very exciting and definitely a surprise. Veselin Topalov is clearly in the lead with 4.5/5 at the end of Round 5 following his victory over Jon Ludvig Hammer. Hammer has contributed a number of wins to other players and sits at the bottom of the cross table with 1.0/5 with two draws.

Play through all of the games from Round 5 below:

I cannot imagine that anyone saw this coming! After finishing Norway Chess Round 3 with an unconvincing draw against Anish Giri, today’s game against Vishwanatha Anand was nothing short of disastrous. Anand probably wishes that this kind of win had appeared in the November 2014 World Chess Championship in Sochi. Magnus Carlsen’s loss against Anand today gives him 3 losses, 1 draw and makes him .5/4 for the tournament.

I am sure that some analysts are wondering what is happening to Magnus Carlsen and maybe even considering that he might have reached his peak playing ability. However, I think that by looking at the context of Magnus’ losses and the fact that the way he is playing right now is highly inconsistent with his usual classical style that most of it can be attributed to life distractions and the chaotic nature of chess. Magnus has a great amount of demands from chess fans, sponsors, and I am sure that his family puts some form of pressure on him to continue winning tournaments. Eventually, the increasing layers of expectations begin to get out of control and can weigh down the lightest of chess amateurs up to the highest in the professional world. Some have speculated that Bobby Fischer might have cracked under all the pressure of being #1 in the world. However, I think it is more likely that the world needs to take a break from searching for a reason to condemn Magnus for any misstep in his game and give him the rest from the demands that we place on him. As of the end of today’s round, the current standings look like this:

Check out all of the games from Round 4 below:

Norway Chess 2015 continued today by delivering more roundhouse kicks to the face to World Champion Magnus Carlsen while it also gave us our first sense of who is in contention for the top spot in the tournament. Of course, with is devastating 0-2 start in the tournament, all eyes were on Carlsen’s game against GM Anish Giri. I have family visiting this week from out of town, so I did not get the opportunity to sit down and follow much of the tournament throughout the day. When I checked in on the Carlsen-Giri game, this was the position:

It was hard to discern Giri’s exact strategy against Carlsen from this move, and it was about that time when my family’s plane landed and I had to shut the tournament off. Carlsen and Giri went on to play a grueling 76 move battle in which Carlsen squandered a clearly winning position to end up with a hard-fought draw from Giri. On the positive side for the champion, this ends his losing streak in the tournament, but the .5 points he received for the draw may not do much for his confidence. Here’s the full game:

I was very excited to look back on the game between Caruana and Nakamura since both of them have demonstrated their potential to rise the the pinnacle of professional chess in the last few years. This was one of those matches where I felt that it was hard to really pick a side. Nakamura is a blitz expert who plays regularly on Chess.com while Caruana is an exceptional player with a powerful presence in prestigious tournaments around the world. Either way, a loss for one of them in this match is a loss for all of us. Yet, Nakamura claimed victory in a beautiful and decisive 56 move game with the white pieces. Some of Nakamura’s moves just out of the opening lines were reminiscent of blitz and speed chess, which are designed to put pressure on one’s opponent early in the game, but Caruana equalized the position nicely. In the end, it was Nakamura’s deadly passed pawn and Rook combination that sealed the deal for the American Chess Champion.

The remaining games were drawn.

Earlier today, Norway Chess director Jøran Aulin-Jansson issued an official apology to Magnus Carlsen and the other players on behalf of the Grand Chess Tour and the Norway Chess Chief arbiter. The apology focused on the problems with sharing critical information about the revised time controls that cost Magnus Carlsen his loss in the first round. Here is a complete transcript of the notice:

On behalf of the Grand Chess Tour and the Chief arbiter, as well as personally, I would like to apologize to the players for the insufficient information with regards to the time control. Allthough [sic] the information was on the www.grandchesstour.com and was also announced prior to the first round, we learned that several players, during the first round, were not aware of the new and unconventional time control. This fact tells us that our work providing the information leaves room for improvement. For this, we are truly sorry, and especially towards Magnus Carlsen who lost his first game due to not being aware of the time control.

Round 4 begins tomorrow at 1600 local time in an ancient medieval monastery! In the meantime, play through all of the games from Round 3 below:

Professional and amateur chess players lose games all of the time. Unless you are the World Chess Champion, then most people tend to not notice or make a big deal enough to blog about those losses. Magnus Carlsen is the current world champion of professional chess and is 0-2 in Norway Chess 2015. The first loss was stunning on its own, but the loss today to GM Fabiano Caruana continues the shock and awe among the chess faithful.

On a positive note, Carlsen did adhere to the appropriate time controls in this round and his game with Caruana was the only game played today that was not drawn. At one point, Nakamura looked bored at his board (ouch…grammar) against Topalov in a drawn position:

The rest of the games were drawn as well, which puts Carlsen in the tragic position of last place in the tournament. There is still a lot of chess to be played in this tournament, but Carlsen is the only player that has put up goose eggs on the board in the first two rounds. Since it will already take a significant act of concentration and willpower on Carlsen’s part, another loss could doom his chances at winning this prestigious tournament. A significant loss in Norway Chess would probably only serve to embolden the likes of Caruana and Nakamura who remain close behind to challenge him for the World Chess Championship in 2016. Play through all of the games from Round 3:

There is a fantastic scene at the end of Star Trek Generations where Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Commander William Riker are walking through the destroyed bridge of the Enterprise. At one point, Commander Riker tells Captain Picard that he is going to miss the ship because “she went before her time.” Picard then proceeds to give one of the best speeches in science fiction film when he replies:

Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives, but I like to think of time as a companion who goes with us on the journey. It reminds us to cherish every moment because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.

Perhaps time can be a companion that guides us on the pathways of life, but for a chess player trying to score a victory in a tournament, time controls tend to be much more predatory. This was the case today with GM Magnus Carlsen, who was unaware of the established time control and lost on time in a position that was clearly won for his pieces.

Carlsen’s play was as strong as always, but his late arrival to the playing hall caused him to miss the crucial information from the tournament arbiter about the time controls. Carlsen believed that he had an extra 15 minutes on move 60, but lost the game when his clock flagged. This tragic end for the World Champion’s Round 1 is a memorable start to the incredibly strong tournament. Other wins include Anish Giri against Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura with an easy victory over Jon Ludvig Hammer, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave over Levon Aronian, and a draw between Vishwanatha Anand and Fabiano Caruana.

Nakamura’s game was the only one I had time to follow live, and looking at the PGN results I think that it is one of the more interesting games. He wasted no time creating a highly complex position and forcing Hammer into a corner. The pressure in that game was intense, and even when it looked as though Nakamura held a compromised position, victory was all but certain to the very end. Play through all of the games from Round 1 below:

The European Women’s Chess Championship recently concluded in the Georgian (Slavic) city of Chakvi. Ukrainian Grandmaster Natalia Zukhova emerged victorious, but that victory was overshadowed by questions and accusations of cheating directed not at the champion, but at Romanian WGM Mihaela Sandu (rated 2300 ELO). Thanks to a letter accusing the young chess player of cheating by utilizing computer assistance, WGM Sandu was tried and convicted in the court of public chess opinion before she even had a chance to defend herself. What terrible thing did she do to warrant such negative attention to herself? Simple: she holds a lower ELO than the opponents she was mercilessly destroying.

Chess is famous for its ability to equalize the playing field by eliminating the social, cultural, racial, and practically every other kind of sociopolitical differentiator out there. However, chess replaces all of these differentials with a single number, called the ELO rating system. The ELO system was designed by Arpad Elo, a Hungarian physics professor and chess player. Although the methods for determining the exact quantification of a player’s exact ELO rating can vary between countries and federations, the basics of the system are mostly universal and give chess players, fans, clubs, and anyone else involved with the game an idea of the player’s strength. Just like people around the world with high IQs like to brag about them, chess players have most, if not all, of their existence within the chess world determined by their ELO.

For example, the best that Campfire Chess can hope to promote in its current state is amateur chess because your friendly host has a blitz rating of ELO 930 and a standard rating of ELO 1010. Unfortunately, I have not played in an official USCF tournament as of yet and have not established a baseline ELO outside of my online training efforts. If you consider that a player rated 900 who wins a game against a player ratined 1100 will gain approximately 11 ELO points, you might get a sense of how much work is required to advance an ELO rating to the Grandmaster or Candidate Master levels!

In the context of the European Women’s Chess Championship, it was the simple crime of having a lower ELO than her opponents that brought the claws of her challengers out against Mihaela Sandu.

The accusations against WGM Sandu are that she was using some kind of electronic assistance to win games against her higher-rated opponents. After only five rounds into the event, the Romanian Grandmaster was leading the event with an amazing score of 5.0! I am not sure that I see this being a problem for most Grandmaster-level players, but at least 32 players in the tournament took exception to Sandu’s games and submitted a letter to the tournament organizers demanding that they take actions against her for cheating. Here is the text of the letter:

• We, the participants of the 16 European Women Chess Championship would like to express our grave concern regarding raising suspicion of cheating in the tournament. We would like to ask organisers cooperation in this regard. There are a few ways to fight with advanced technology, and we believe organizers should do their utmost to avoid such situations. We have already asked for a 15 min delay in the live transmission of all the games. It is a common solution, used in many top level tournaments. If this is technically not possible, then we would like to ask organizers to propose another solution of this problem for the remaining rounds of the Championship.

It was not long after the first letter was published that a second letter was posted that specifically requested a blackout of WGM Sandu’s games for rounds 8-11.

• We, the participants of the 16th European Individual Women’s Chess Championship want to express concern about the situation with M.Sandu’s performance. We would like to ask organizers not to include her games from round 8-11 in a live transmission and publish them after the rounds. We do not see any important reason to dislike this precautionary measure for both sides. We hope that such a decision will prevent all possible suspicions.

The letter is correct in that there are few ways available for tournament directors to fight against advancing technology. As smartphones become smaller and more powerful, other devices that can transmit data in amazingly inconspicuous ways are popping up all over the chess world. In some ways, the suspicions surrounding WGM Sandu are not surprising given the recent cheating cases that continue to arise in tournament chess. However, do the actions of some individuals represent the actions of the whole? There are hundreds of thousands of chess games played every month in professional tournaments around the world, but what percentage of those players participating are outright cheating the system?

I like to think that chess is different from other activities because its players (for the most part) tend to be among the most intellgient, analytical, and creative thinkers in the world. However, that does not elminate the human desire to break the rules at times or for the desire to win at all costs to overtake a person’s mind. As I mentioned above, cheating has a long and unfortunate history in professional chess. While it might make sense in some ways that the 32 players on the letter might suspect cheating, there are many systems in place at top professional tournaments that are designed to sniff out players who might be receiving information from remote computer systems or other forms of outside assistance. In June 2014, Chess Life ran a fantastic article on Dr. Ken Regan of the University of Buffalo and his customized algorithm designed to search live game broadcasts for moves that might indicate a player is receiving information from outside sources.

Surely it is not possible to catch every cheater in a tournament, but even cheaters utilizing advanced technology are not likely to work hard enough to draw attention to themselves. No one that I am aware of even broached the possibility that Fabiano Caruana was cheating during his historic run at the 2014 Sinquefield Cup. Immediately after his 7-0 winning streak, Fabiano swiftly returned to his mere-mortal status, just as many chess players before him have done. Unfortunately for WGM Sandu, the fact that her game performance deteriorated significantly following the institution of the 15-second delay and the continued attacks on her character.

Many skeptics will point to this deterioration of performance as validation of their cheating claims. To me, this seems rather asinine given the fragile nature of the human psyche and the intense amount of focus necessary to win at top levels of professional chess. Who could perform flawlessly after they are mercilessly smeared? I wish WGM Sandu the best in her future chess tournaments and hope that someday the professional chess world will be able to find that delicate balance between calling out true cheaters and letting great winning streaks continue to be the great pieces of chess history that they are.

Not convinced? Check out all of WGM Sandu’s games from the tournament:

• Official Site – European Chess Championship 2015
• Complete Tournament Standings
• ChessBase Articles: Suspicion at the European Women’s Championship | Support for Mihaela Sandu