The King is Dead

About twenty to nine last night Anand agreed a draw with Leko and confirmed what's seemed inevitable for several rounds now - he's the new World Chess Champion. Unsurprisingly he didn't take any risks (the entire game is published in my old 1989 book on the Marshall), and after about 13 minutes thinking time, Vishy was able to leave the board for a celebratory drink,

and a press conference.




Anand got the ball rolling as early as the second round, showing some excellent prepration to win with black against Aronian. He went on to win games by accepting Svidler's Marshall and declining Grischuk's in rounds five and seven respectively before finishing off with a victory against Morozevich's Najdorf in round eleven.

Aside from the games he won, Anand also showed resilience in defence, surviving a difficult game against Kramnik in round three - how different things might have been if Black had ended up winning that one - and a similar ending against Grischuk towards the end of the tournament.

With the exception of the Svidler game, which is analysed on chessbase, all of the links above are to video reports provided by the ICC. Chessbase have also provided a free file of all the games from Mexico 07 in PGN format.

So that's it Anand is world champion and there can be no disputing it ... well not until he squares up with Kramnik in 2008 anyway. Vishy will need to find something against the Petroff and Kramnik will need to do better against the semi-slav. It should be a great match.


PS: I forgot to mention I stole the photos in today's blog from chessbase.com too.

My favourite moves II

Tony Miles v John Nunn

BBC Master Game 1976

20...Ne4!!

I should perhaps explain this one a little.

I remember being extremely excited, watching this game on television. I was just eleven. It wasn't a game in a book, it wasn't a game in which you knew in advance something spectacular was going to happen. Even if I had, at that age I would still have been excited. I'm still excited now, to tell the truth. But at the time it was the most amazing thing, to see Nunn, who had already put his knight en prise, proceed to fork his own knights.

It's funny, it's always that, the self-fork, that I've remembered. So it wasn't until I played through the game when writing this piece that I remembered that he also put his queen en prise as well.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

You don't dig repetition
You don't love repetition - Mark E Smith

Here's the crucial position - allegedly - in Anand's win over Morozevich in the eleventh round on Tuesday.

In his commentary on Chessbase Mihail Marin gets very excited about this:

An important moment in modern chess history. Anand's most dangerous trailers, Kramnik and Gelfand, had finished their games hours earlier and a draw would have maintained his comfortable lead in the tournament. The ambitious decision to play on will lead to a slightly irrational position, without any safety net for White. Therefore, Anand deserves the highest praise for the way he chose to climb up to the highest peak of the chess pyramide (sic). This is the kind of World Champion the public needs.

Now I don't know if I detect a dig at Kramnik in that last line, and maybe if I didn't disagree with what Jonathan wrote yesterday I wouldn't trouble myself with it, but I wonder if there's not a certain amount of humbug involved here. (Also, a pyramid can only have one peak, but we'll leave that point, ho ho, aside.)

Oddly, annotating in the daily e-newsletter, Chess Today, IM Max Notkin makes no mention of this "important moment" at all. It's not available online (you have to pay to receive it and I recommend you do) so you'll have to take my word for it. But it's strange, if it's so important, that a player of master rank should apparently overlook the possibility of a repetition. Particularly as the last two moves have been 30...Rh4-h5 31.Qg2-f1 Rh5-h4 32.Qf1-g2 Rh4-h5. Instead Notkin merely notes that 31... Bg5 would have been undesirable (32.Nxa6 Bf4 33.Qg1 Rxh3 34.Qxb5 "with an edge to White") and 32.Nxa6? an outright error (32...Rxe4).

I wonder why? Could it be that he doesn't think that a repetition was actually on the cards? That it never occurred to him that Anand would take it? Because rather than taking a serious risk Anand was simply preferring to play on in a position where he considered himself rather better? He could have taken a draw, for sure, but why not take a look first, see what Morozevich wants to do and then play on? At best it was surely a calculated risk rather than some leap into the unknown. He was going to have a safer king and a giant knight on d5. With those positional advantages was he really running much risk of defeat? Perhaps it wasn't a praiseworthy decision so much as a pragmatic one.

I wrote in the last Kingpin that in the chess world, as elsewhere, there is a certain tendency to interpret the facts according to a preconceived narrative and I'm not sure that this is an exception. Anand - who is probably going to win the tournament - is to be praised as courageous. Kramnik - who is probably not - is to be damned as cautious (and never mind that he won, and twice retained, the title by playing in the style that suits him best). Meanwhile Gelfand, who actually had the best chance of overhauling Anand and passed it up despite having the White pieces, is ignored. (Kramnik, by contrast, in a similar situation two rounds later, made a hard and complex fight of it.)

It's funny, though, this early-draw thing. I mean what are we to say about the player who took a 21-move draw in round six and then a 20-move draw in round eight? And then followed it up by agreeing, with the White pieces, a 21-move draw in round nine?

Nothing at all, I should think. Because our apparently draw-addicted subject wasn't Vladimir Kramnik. It was Viswanathan Anand.

Brave Sir Vladimir Ran Away

In the comments a few days ago ChessBuff said, correctly, it was, "too early to write Kramnik off". Nevertheless, the fat lady started loosening up her vocal chords when he (Kramnik not ChessBuff) disastrously lost to Morozevich and then only drew with Anand and now the game's well and truly up.

Anand turned over Moro himself in Tuesday's 11th round. Vishy getting to +4 was not too unexpected, he's been in great form throughout the tournament (with the possible exception of his very first game against Gelfand) after all. It was more of a surprise, however, that when the aforementioned chubby bird got up to do her bit, Kramnik was already leading the singing.

Kramnik ran up the white flag with a 13-move draw against Grischuk. According to the live games transmission website at chessmexico.com Grischuk took 18 minutes for the game and Kramnik just 13. A world title surrendered in just half an hour ... and needless to day, it didn't go down very well. Not by a long chalk.

Leonxto Garcia, on the official tournament website no less:-

During the press conference we heard Kramnik's saying: "If I didn't accept the draw offered by Grischuk, I would have offended him", that phrase outraged the veteran journalist Arturo Xicotencatl who replied to the Champion: "Don't you think that you are the one offending the crowd of fans that follow you on the internet?" The Russian explained once more the supposed balance of the position, but the truth is that he convinces no one. Only a severe sickness could justify such behaviour, but Kramnik has no signs for it throughout this Championship.

Mig Greengard didn't miss out either, giving Kramnik a verbal kicking in his ICC Round 11 podcast.

It seems it wasn't only the journalists who were a bit surprised. According to Chessbase's Express Report for the round:-

Kramnik was asked why he chose to play the Petroff in this critical situation where he needs every point he can possible get to defend his title. Before he could answer Grischuk grabbed the mike and said: "Yes, I too would like to ask the same question."


People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones so I should perhaps own up to the fact that while Grischuk and Kramnik were getting it on, I was also playing chess. As it happens, I also whimped out and agreed a draw when I really should have played on. It's not really the same though is it? Two major differences spring to mind.

• I'm not world champion


• Nobody gives a shit about what happens when I play in the Surrey League

Most of all, nobody is ever going to bother to say to me, "Oi, Vladimir. You see that Monty Python knight ... that's you that is".

My favourite moves I

Gata Kamsky v Anatoly Karpov

Dortmund 1993

11...Ke7!!

Which is me?

Yesterday I began my morning reading Justin's post on unpopular openings. In considering how club players build repertoires of opening variations he wrote, "We tend rather to change than add."

Very true, I thought. Well, true for me anyway.

Like Douglas Adams’ private detective Dirk Gently, I believe in the inter-connectedness of all things. It was no surprise, therefore, that half an hour later, when in the coffee shop reading Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, I came across this passage:-

“… she continued to tinker with her handwriting, slanting it to the right or to the left, shaping it roundly or steeply, loosely or stingily – as though she were asking, ‘Is this Nancy? Or that? Or that? Which is me?”

Is this not the same thing?

If I've learned one thing about chess over the years it's that selection of opening variation is really about the types of middle game one wants to play rather than the sequence of moves with which we would like to begin the battle. Like a Rorshach Inkblot Test, how we respond to a chess position tells us something about ourselves - and not just how good at chess we are. The traits that combine to make up our chessboard tastes are as distinctive as the way we write our names and the personality differences reflected in our relative preferences for, say, IQP or piece activity (the diagram here makes a good chessblot test I think) will be played out in other areas of our lives too.

So, getting back to Capote, is this the reason why I've often changed my openings over the years? Is 1. ... e5 Jonathan B? Or the French? Or the Caro-Kann? Which is me?

It's not true anymore, but when playing with the White pieces 1. e4 used to be me. Even longer ago, I used to play king's pawn openings hoping for

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. c3 Nf6 5. d4

caring not a jot for the fact that The Moller attack that often followed

5. … exd4 6. cxd4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 Nxe4 8. 0-0 Bxc3 9. d5

was hideously unsound.

I won many pleasing games in this variation. I played into it hoping to catch my opponents in sharp lines they knew less well than me or, failing that, expecting I would be able to out-calculate my them using a tactical ability I fondly, though probably naively, considered to be my strength at the time.

Although it brought me many memorable victories, and wins in the Moller tend to be rather flashy by nature, over time my enthusiasm for the line began to wane. I started to notice that although I would often win against players graded higher than myself, I would also sometimes have accidents against people I thought I should beat easily.

I clearly remember the game that finally put me off the Moller and encouraged me to switch to the somewhat less racy Four Knights Opening.

I don't remember my opponents name, where it was played (possible a tournament in North London around 1993) or whether this was the very last time I played the line, but Jonathan B v A. Bloke went...

9. … Bf6 10. Re1 Ne7 11. Rxe4 0-0 (11. … d6) 12. d6 Ng6 (12. … cxd6 13. Qxd6 Nf5 14. Qd5 Ne7 15. Qd6 Nf5 =)

I didn't mind too much when Black played ... 0-0 rather than the theoretical ... d6, but 12. ... Ng6 was new to me. It was, I realised afterwards, one of those situations which often caused me trouble - a lower rated player punting an inferior move which I then failed to refute over the board.

The main variation I calculated here was ...

13. h4 Nxh4 14. Nxh4 Bxh4 15. Qh5 Bf6

This isn't best play by any means (amongst other things Fritz suggests 13. Qe2 [clear advantage for White] and 13. ... b5 [small advantage for Black]), but at the time giving up another pawn to add fuel to the attack looked sensible to me. The problem was I couldn't see how to proceed from there. Unfortunate given that White has a forced win starting with his 16th move. Alas I didn't find it*, played something else and again went on to lose.

So, my taste for highly tactical games gradually morphed into the more positional game I now prefer. The Moller was replaced by The Four Knights just as later I would abandon 1. e4 altogether as I headed for the calmer waters of 1. Nf3 - a change, I'm sure, that is not at all unrelated to the process of ageing.

Is that, I wonder, ultimately the reason why we club players tend to change opening variations? Is it because we ourselves are always changing?













*from the line that follows the last diagram:-
16. dxc7 Qxc7 17. Qxf7+ Rxf7 18. Re8 mate

Variations club players don't seem to play

There are some variations which, while popular at club level, rarely get an outing at the top. One obvious example would be the Colle, perhaps no longer a serious try for advantage at grandmaster level but a solid - very solid - points-scorer lower down the food chain. Then there's the variety of anti-Sicilians, which while not absent from the elite tournaments are rather more rare than 2.Nf3 and 3.d4, save that period a few years ago when everybody started messing about with 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 e5 (which isn't really what I'd think of as an anti-Sicilian anyway). The scrappers, by contrast, are more likely to see 2.c3 or a Morra than a main line. Similarly, I know from some experience as a Lopez practioner that if White is stronger than I am, 1.e4 e5 will lead to a main line Lopez more often than not - but if they're weaker, it's a big surprise if we get as far as 5.O-O without some deviation.

This is odd, in a way, since it's an established phenomenon that top players tend to set the fashion in openings, not only for other grandmasters, but for chessplayers in general. Nothing else can explain the interest that players who can barely remember the theory beyond move five show in the Najdorf, as if the fact that Kasparov and Fischer played it must perforce mean that it is a deadly weapon in their hands. Well, an atom bomb would be a deadly weapon in my hands but I wouldn't actually like to touch one, and that goes for the Najdorf too.

Anyway, if there are openings which are rather more popular at our level than at the level where the good players are, it must surely mean that the opposite is true. There are surely fewer Petroffs at our level than at the highest, possibly because the club player's repertoire is necessarily limited and you can't afford to spend time on an opening which gives White a draw when they might be forty ECF points worse than you. (Of course, if we stuck to our openings, you might learn a more combative opening very well and then add the Petroff to your repertoire. But we tend rather to change than add.) You also see rather fewer Semi-Slavs from club players than from supergrandmasters: mind you it'd be hard not to, as they're barely playing anything else in Mexico City.

However, there's a couple of opening variations, frequently seen in grandmaster praxis, that I've seldom or never seen, in any club match I've played in or any tournament game I've seen, save for grandmasters on the high boards of a very strong open. Variations which, for one reason or another, are basically absent from the repertoires and the thoughts of club players. One of these is the Marshall Gambit in the Lopez, which is currently considered so sound that it is more often avoided by White than actually played by Black. Indeed, it's got to the point that I rarely recognise a grandmaster Lopez any more, since rather than use the order 7...d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 that I play and love, everybody goes 7...O-O then 8.a4 or 8.h3 Bb7 and we get into positions which are not quite the ones I know.

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d5


You do, however, still see a lot of the position above when grandmasters play, one leading swiftly by way of 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.Rxe5 to the position below:


and sometimes White wins quickly! In fact it looks like a position offering decent and comprehensible play for a pawn, which indeed it does, very much the sort of thing that attracts club players to, say, the Benko Gambit. But, unlike that less-sound gambit, among club players it is rarely seen. Very rarely indeed. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that in my thirty-year experience I've seen it, to my recollection, precisely once. I remember that, because I was playing it, with the Black pieces. I got beaten convincingly. I didn't play it again, which might normally be considered an extreme reaction, but I think was fairly sound: you have to remember an enormous amount of theory to play it, theory which you will almost never get to play anyway. And if you do, it will be to little purpose because the only people to play down the main lines will be people who know them well themselves.

That's a big difference between club players and grandmasters, as regards the openings. They can and must assume that the opponent knows existing theory. They therefore look for novelties. We, however, seek only to know more than the opponent. Which is pointless, if they'll never let you show it. Or if you'll only get to play the theory when, in fact, you don't know more of it than they do.

Added to that, the fact that the Marshall won't, in many lines, give you more than a draw, and you can see why it's rarely seen (though not, perhaps why quite so rarely). I once saw the estimable Tim Harding recommend it as an ideal choice for the club player, or a phrase similar to that. I thought that was completely wrong. I think it is the opposite.

The neglect of the Marshall, I can understand. But there's another line I can think of which, while being not at all rare in published games, I cannot recall seeing ever except when played by a professional. Unlike the Marshall, it's a line that White chooses, it's not grotesquely complicated and if there's draws to be had, they're probably available to White rather than Black. It's not attached to a rare opening, it being a line of the Queen's Gambit Declined, and there's even been a decent book about it, written a few years ago by Colin Crouch. It goes as follows:

1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 Be7 5.Bf4

Maybe I've just been looking in the wrong direction, I dunno. But I've not seen it played. Never. Not once. I wonder why not?

Should Grischuk have got on with it?

“Control of the clock”, as Simon Webb wrote in Chess for Tigers, “is one of the most important and neglected aspects of practical play.”

I was reminded of Webb’s book when I noticed that, in between reports from Mexico 07, ChessBase had published Time Pressure (and other maladies). I haven’t read the article yet. This is partly because, oh the irony, I’m really busy at the moment and haven’t been able to find a spare a moment, but mostly because the only real solution to constantly running short of time is mentioned just a few lines in to the fairly lengthy essay:-

“Play Faster.”

While I’m far too lazy to bother my arse and actually read this piece, Alexander Grischuk may want to have a look. He’s been plagued by time trouble throughout Mexico 07, and particularly so over the past few games.

In round six, playing White against Svidler, Grischuk whipped out

1.Nf3 d5 2.d4 Nf6 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5 9.Be2 Bb7 10.h4 g4 11.Ne5 h5 12.0-0 Nbd7 13.Qc2 Nxe5 14.Bxe5 Bg7 15.Bg3 Qxd4 16.Rfd1 Qc5



16 … Qc5 is a new move apparently. At this point the Russian thought for getting on for an hour before playing 17. Bd6 – probably the first move that flashed into his head the moment he saw Svidler’s TN appear on the board.

Not surprisingly after this mega long think Grischuk then ran short of time and missed a win while scrambling to make the time control at move 40 (which he achieved with just seconds to go). You can find Speelman's video review of this highly entertaining game here.

On Friday night (round 8) Grischuk was at it again. Black against Leko he played,

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.a4 b4 9.d3 d6 10.Nbd2



a position well known to theory and, indeed, well known to Grischuk - he’d had it against Anand the round before (losing in 50 moves - see Fedorowicz's video).

Here he thought for over half an hour before deciding to vary from …Na5 with … Be6. Unfortunately for our favourite time trouble addict, it didn’t help him any and he went on to lose against Leko too. De Firmian reviews it here.

At the end of this interview (recorded just after the Svidler game) Grischuk is asked about his time management problem and what he intends to do about it. As you can see for yourself, his response is to ask for advice.

Perhaps Simon Webb could help …

“ … many experienced players, including some grandmasters, seem unable to avoid getting into time trouble game after game. As a result they regularly throw away good positions, and fail to achieve the results of which they are capable … Forget about openings, tactics, strategy, and all the rest of your game. First concentrate on this one aspect of chess, and when you have conquered it your results will improve automatically.”


PS: The videos I've linked to are all from the ICC - who are providing a whole range of free stuff relating to Mexico 07. Their website is well worth a visit.

Should Gelfand have gone for it?

I'm not normally in the camp which demands that chessplayers - or any other sportsmen - always attack. It's a limited view at best- it fails to appreciate how much there is to chess as well as attack. It's also easier to demand from the sidelines than to deliver in practice. Me, I was brought up on Karpov and on Nimzowitsch and on the Italian teams of Enzo Bearzot: and I like intelligent defence, the war of manouevre, defeating the opponent by out-thinking rather than out-calculating them. I like the clash of styles rather than having two tacticians at the board, and I like to appreciate the viewpoint of the player, the particular perspective of the competitor, rather than demand that everybody plays like Shirov just because the fans may wish them to.

For that reason, too, I've always been fairly understanding of the short draw, of the desire to put off battle till it's necessary, of the choice to stay in the pack as long as you can rather than take the risk that might knock you out of the competition. It's how professionals approach the job, and professionals don't take advice from amateurs. You need to be in the shake-up at the end: take your risks when you have to, in the last two rounds, because if you take them earlier and as a resultm you're halfway down the field, then who will care how admirably brave you were? Fortuna favet fortibus, but sport often does not. It is about winning and world championship tournaments all the more so.

That said - why did Boris Gelfand give Anand such an easy time last night? A draw in twenty moves, the Catalan bishop easily swapped off. Black in fact looks slightly better, to my eyes, in the final positon, so perhaps this was discretion rather than an absence of valour, but it's hard to believe that Gelfand went into the game with the intention of putting Anand under any serious pressure. And you might, drawing on the paragraphs above, think that makes perfect sense - he was just half-a-point behind the leader, and he stays that way, tucked in, as it were, with just a few rounds to go. Ready to have a go if anything should befall Anand in the run-in.

Maybe. But just for once I wonder if caution was not the wrong option. In the next round, tomorrow, Anand is the only one of the top three to have White - against Aronian. A point (or more) would be a big lead when you are solid as he is. If a half-point behind is as close as Gelfand gets, then he may come to regret that he did not use his White game aganst Anand to try and take the lead.

Moreover, and perhaps more importantly - what message did Gelfand give Anand last night? More importantly still, what message did he give himself? Did he not say that he does not think he is as good as Anand, that the best he can do against him, with White, is to swap off the pieces? It's a long, long time since Gelfand beat Anand - never, if my researches are correct, with the Black pieces and not for more than twenty games (and almost as many years) with White. I'm sure that sort of sequence leaves an impression, but it's surely an impression that you have to shake off if you're to win a tournament like this. Chess is a game played in the head and if you don't believe that this can be your week, that just for once, you can beat the other guy, then surely you will not.

There's one other thing too. When the professional ensures than he, or she, is in the chasing pack, it's partly because there are more prizes than the trophy to be won. There are livings to be made. You do your best to make sure you win something, and if you do that often enough, then surely, sometimes, sooner or later, the top prize will be yours.

But in Mexico City there are no real prizes except winning (unless you're Kramnik). Especially for the Gelfands, the outsiders, the players who have not had a chance before and may never get one again. Presumably, and wholly understandably, that's why Gelfand kept it quiet last night. He didn't want to thow it away. Maybe he'll turn out to be right. But if it slips away from him over the next couple of days, he may find himself thinking that he could have had a go for first place, but lacked the strength, the will, to do so. And the worst position to be in is, surely, the one where you ask yourself what might have been.

Alas ... a post mortem

The ICC have a bunch of free stuff available relating to the Mexico World Championship Tournament.

One of the things they're doing is a free video of the day. This link will take you to yesterday's ... which includes several minutes of Kramnik and Leko analysing their game from round five. They don't seem to be talking with each other so much as at each other. Not only that, it kind of reminded me of those old Smith and Jones head-to-heads, an example of which you can find here.

Anyhoo, Vishy Anand is now clear out in front at 5/7 at the half-way stage. Gelfand is half a point back and Kramnik is a notch further behind. Is Vlad already out of it? His game with White against Anand in round 10 is now looking like a must-win.

Anybody out there think that Kramnik is going to retain his crown?

The new Najdorf?

One of the least likely chess book titles you could ever wish to see is “Winning with the Petroff”.

Such a book does indeed exist – allegedly authored by one A. Karpov although I doubt whether Anatoly contributed much more to the project than an agreement to the use of his name.

Anyway, back to the point … The Petroff Defence. It doesn’t have a reputation for friskyness does it? In Playing to Win as long ago as 1988, James Plaskett wrote …

“ … I will stick my neck out and predict that because of the excruciatingly bland middlegames which it all too frequently generates it will be thought necessary, in the not too distant future, to proscribe the Petroff ….”

Well that never happened and the Petroff is alive and well, appearing four times in the first four rounds in Mexico City.

But what’s going on?

Anand-Gelfand* in round one ended quickly it’s true but had Black played 22. … Rxf4 instead of 22. … Rxe1 with a draw offer he might have been winning.

In round three Kramnik emerged from the opening a pawn up against Anand (again) and Leko had to defend a dodgy Queen ending for a hundred moves against Gelfand (again) before the point was split. True, Leko had been better before losing the thread some time around the time control and Svidler-Gelfand (again again) in round four was a typical Petroff short draw but now I come to think about it … what about Brissago 2004 when Kramnik gave Leko a Petroff spanking to open their match.

Can the Petroff really have become the way to go if you want to win with Black when playing against 1. e4 at World Championship level???

At the other end of the scale, twenty plus years ago my second ever game with a chess clock, and my first serious club game with the Black pieces, began

1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nf6, 3. Nxe5 d6, 4. Nf3 Nxe4 and now White came up with the not particularly impressive 5. Bc4 to which I responded … d5 and went on to win.

Perhaps I should have stuck with it.













* Anand punted 5. Nc3 against Gelfand though presumably he wasn't hoping to end up on the right side of a six move victory.

White To Play, & Mate!

Thanks for Angus to sending this delightful puzzle by T. Nissl (1910) in to the blog for publication.

Complicated variations

A. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 c6 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 dxc4 7.e4 g5 8.Bg3 b5 9.Ne5 h5 10.h4 g4 11.Be2 Bb7 12.0-0 Nbd7 13.Qc2 Nxe5 14.Bxe5 Bg7 15.Rad1 0-0 16.Bg3 Nd7 17.f3

Aronian-Anand, Mexico City 2007 (Round 2)

17....c5!

B. In 2008 Vladimir Kramnik will play the winner of Mexico City unless he wins the event himself. Veselin Topalov as the loser of the last match in Elista will play the winner of the World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk which takes place at the end of the year. The winners of those matches will play for the title in 2009. However if Kramnik wins the WCCh tournament in Mexico City 2007, a match between Kramnik and Topalov, the current and the previous world champions, will take place in 2008. In that case, the winner of the Kramnik- Topalov match will play against the winner of the 2007 World Cup.

I think I can just about handle A - but could anybody explain B to me?

I've Started So I'll Finish

Over in Mexico it's a rest day. I wonder who's happiest so far. Perhaps not Kramnik even though he's in lead - he's already used up 3 of his 7 Whites so would probably have wanted to be more than +1 by now. On the other hand he did get a draw with Black against his main rival.

Any thoughts on how things have been progressing?


In other news:-

"Correspondence Chess IM Jerry Asquith has reached the televised part of the BBC quiz Mastermind. His specialist subject will be Alexander Alekhine so tune in tonight at 7.30 on BBC2"

I got that from Speedy Malc's Daily Telegraph column so perhaps I should be a little less rude about him in future.

ToiletGate: Mission Impossible

The World Championship tournament in Mexico will, hopefully, help to erase memories of Elista 06 and all that khazi related embarrassment.

Not that computer assisted cheating at chess events is a new thing. Mission Impossible were there forty years ago.





PS: Mystic Speedy Malc is up to his old tricks again. In today's Sunday Telegraph he confidently predicts the UK - China Chess Summit "will be a tough slog" for the home side. That's the UK - China Chess Summit that ended a week ago in a 28-20 victory for the visitors in case you're not living in whatever Time Zone Malc calls home.


Let's end with a sneek preview of the opening credits of a brand new episode of Mission Impossible. Details of the plot are not yet available but the programme is believed to revolve around the likelihood of a poor down trodden chess journalist getting a column published in timely fashion.

Blast from the past

1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 d5 4.d4 c6 5.Bg5 Nbd7 6.e3 Qa5 7.cxd5 exd5 8.Bd3 Ne4 9.O-O Ndf6 10.Bxf6 Nxf6 11.Ne5 Bd6 12.f4 h5 13.Rc1 Bg4

When I played for my school team, about a quarter of a century ago, I had more triumphs than disasters. Unusually, for me at any rate, I remember the triumphs rather better than the disasters: beating St Paul's (Julian Hodgson on top board) when they'd won the National Schools Championships five years in a row was certainly the best of these, but there were others.

More than enough to make up, for instance, for a disaster in the same competition a few years later, when my Hertfordshire school went all the way to Wymondham in Norfolk. Needing just a draw, in the last game standing, to make the next round, our player, a safe piece up, forgot about the clock and lost on time. Having had several minutes to make his last move before the time control.

In those days going anywhere in Norfolk was a long, long journey: coming all the way back in the school minibus wasn't just a long journey but an almost silent one. I can, in fact, remember our scapegoat, after a very long a period of accusing silence, bursting out with "I didn't do it deliberately!". I remember his name - I just looked it up on the ECF grading database. There's no-one of his name currently playing. Perhaps the trauma made him give it up. I wouldn't blame him.

I never had a trauma quite that bad, but I do remember one game which left me going home holding my head and swearing never to play again, fully able to grasp the full extent of my own stupidity but quite unable to cope with it. Perhaps I realised that if I could play like that at the age of sixteen, I could play like that forever: that this nightmare was going to keep happening. If so, I was right.

It was October 1981 and I was graded 151. My opponent was only 105 and playing for a visiting school from, I think, Bristol. I won the exchange quite early on with the Benko Gambit that I favoured then and was in a position that should have been impossible to lose. That, indeed, I should have won against any player who was ever born and any machine that will ever be made. It was Black to make his twenty-ninth move:


Of course 29...Rd3 wins trivially, as do a number of moves in the position, but, to prevent a check from the rook, I unwisely played 29...Kf8 first. This wasn't fatal by any manner of means but my opponent, seeing - as I did not - the one tactical opportunity that remained to him, pushed his f-pawn one square forward.

I then played the rook to d3, surely winning the bishop since he could no longer play the zwischenzug with the rook. Indeed he could not - but he could and did produce the winning move instead. And filled with anger and embarassment, I went home, not for the last time in my chess life, screaming at myself.

I never forgot that one. In more than twenty-five years I've not forgotten it. Although, these days, I'm lucky if I can remember the moves of a just-finished game, I could remember almost the exact details of that long-gone disaster. I looked up the game this evening, as I have retained my old scorebooks, through crises, house moves, even emigration. I thought I was an exchange and two pawns up, but as it turns out, it was an exchange and only one. Close enough: it doesn't matter. And I remembered the name of my opponent, too. As one remembers a curse.

It is the nature of curses that they do not die until their work is done. I still recalled, of course, the game and the opponent, but I never thought to come across the name again. But a few days ago, I was reading up on some theory, specifically in the fourth volume of Khalifman's series Opening for White according to Kramnik. I was specifically interested in the Cambridge Springs Variation and found myself looking at the line which at the start of this piece, which, by a variety of possible move-orders, leads to the diagram immediately below it, a position in which Khalifman recommends that White continue 14.Qc2 with a slight advantage to White "owing to the stong position of the knight on the e5-square".

There are a lot of game fragments quotated in the five volumes of Khalifman's work, and one comes to expect citations, if not from Kramnik himself (since it is basically Kramnik's repertoire that we are learning) then from grandmaster games. Normally, that's what we get. Big names. But not this time.

Though I wish we did: not for the quality of the play, but because the name attached to Black's side of the board leapt out at me, far larger than that of any expert. Any grandmaster, any champion of the world. The game was Easton-Nendick, Bristol 1990.

Bristol. Nendick. NENDICK. That was the name. Nendick. I have remembered that name for over half my life and yet never expected to see it again. Nendick. I saw the name Nendick, like a curse, and I was cursed to remember, once again, how I felt, as a messed-up teenager, two and a half decades before, when I lost impossibly and stupidly, and shook, and went home in a funk, and swore that that I would give up chess.

World Championship puzzler!

Here's a nice easy one for a Friday.

What did not happen - on the board - in the 2006 Kramnik-Topalov match that happened in every previous world championship match?



[you might like to guess before looking in the Comments box....]

Mexico 70 - Mexico 07

Mexico 70. Banks' save. Pele almost scoring from the halfway line. England wilting in the sun when 2-0 up against West Germany. Brazil's destruction of Italy in the final. I was only two at the time so can't claim any direct experience but still these memories have seeped into my consciousness as I've absorbed the received wisdom of the world cup tournament of 37 years ago as football's Best Ever.

I wonder if Mexico 07, which starts today, will be just as memorable. In any event you can follow it on the official site. In the meantime chessbase has lots of pictures in a report on the countdown to the first move and even Speedy Malc is on time today - this thing must be important.

Up until now, of course, the chess world equivalent of Mexico 70 is Reykjavik 72. We've already blogged Fischer being awarded the title and an excerpts from a pre-match interview. To get us in the mood for Anand, Kramnik, Morozevich, Leko, Aronian, Svidler, Gelfand and Grischuk let's return to Iceland with a montage of Bobby and Boris (keep an eye out for 2:54).






PS: I found this clip on YouTube but EJH points out it was blogged a year ago elsewhere.

World Championship predictions

BIGGEST WHINGER - Boris Gelfand

WHINGER MOST LIKELY TO BE SYMPATHETICALLY INTERVIEWED ON CHESSBASE - Boris Gelfand

LOUDEST MOUTHS ON COMMENTARY - Yasser Seirawan, Nigel Short

INDIVIDUALS MOST LIKELY TO DEPLORE CONSTANT CHANGES IN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CYCLE - Garry Kasparov, Nigel Short

PHRASE MOST LIKELY TO BE SPOKEN BY YOUR WORKMATES - "is Kasparov still the champion?" (Or "is Bobby Fischer still playing?")

MEDIA OUTLETS UNLIKELY TO COVER TOURNAMENT UNTIL LAST DAY - BBC Online, British television news

MEDIA OUTLETS LIKELY TO PROVIDE EXTENSIVE COVERAGE - most major European newspapers

PEOPLE LIKELY TO BE BLAMED FOR THIS ON INTERNET - English Chess Federation

SUBJECT OF LARGEST NUMBER OF GAGS INACCURATELY CONSIDERED ORIGINAL AND FUNNY BY THEIR AUTHORS - toilet visits of Kramnik and other players

NORMAL TIME FOR LIVE GAMES TO BECOME UNAVAILABLE ON INTERNET DUE TO SERVER OVERLOAD - ten minutes before time control

MOST TIRESOME FEATURE OF CHAT ROOMS - people telling you that their computer says Aronian has an advantage of 0.17 as if it meant something

OPENING VARIATION LEAST LIKELY TO BE ON DISPLAY - Haldane Hack

MOST POPULAR WINNER IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT - Alexander Morozevich

MOST UNPOPULAR WINNER IN THE NOT UNLIKELY EVENT - Peter Leko

PLAYER PRESENT WRITER INCLINED TO SUPPORT ANYWAY - Peter Leko

COMPULSORY SUBJECTS IN ALL PROFILES OF PETER SVIDLER - cricket, Bob Dylan

AVERAGE CHESS WRITER'S KNOWLEDGE OF CRICKET, BOB DYLAN - absolutely stuff all

PRESENT WRITER'S KNOWLEDGE OF CRICKET, BOB DYLAN - rather greater than stuff all

CHANCE OF PRESENT WRITER WATCHING CLIMAX TO GAMES, GIVEN TIME DIFFERENCE - absolutely stuff all

CHANCE OF PRESENT WRITER LIGHTENING UP AND ADOPTING MORE CHEERFUL ATTITUDE TO LIFE IN GENERAL - absolutely stuff all. What do you think attracts me to chess?

The things Garry says

My New In Chess arrived this morning and naturally I turned straight to Garry Kasparov's column to see how he would get on my nerves. It took him a while but he got there in the end, complaining about the controversial* acceptance of Veselin Topalov into the forthcoming world championship tournament in Mexico, to which acceptance the objection can be raised that it was specifically written into the contracts of the Topalov-Kramnik match that the loser should not take part in Mexico. So far, so reasonable, but he then goes on to strike a moral pose about this sort of thing:

Such flagrant favouritism has long been the hallmark of FIDE

Well, maybe, maybe not. But can anybody remind me: during the decade when qualification for world championship matches was in the personal gift of the champion, who was it who invited Vladimir Kramnik to play a match for the World Championship seven years ago when that gentleman had already lost an eliminator to Alexei Shirov?

[* (late edit some days after) and apparently non-existent. I admit to becoming throughly confused as to what's going on. Was he let back in or not? He's not playing, but in that case what's Kasparov on about?]