Carlsen and Kramnik lose, tie for first, Carlsen advances

This Candidates tourney has been a real doozy. If you haven't been following it, here's a little recap. After seven rounds, the halfway point in the double round robin tournament, Carlsen and Aronian were dominating the field, each with three wins and four draws. Former World Champion Kramnik had drawn all seven games and trailed both leaders by 1.5 points. Then Kramnik went on an incredible tear, scoring 4.5 points in the next five games, to vault into the lead! He beat Aronian in the last of those games after Aronian blundered away an easy draw. That was Aronian's second consecutive loss, leaving him 1.5 points behind Kramnik. Meanwhile, Carlsen was unrecognizable as White against Ivanchuk, who had an incredibly erratic tournament. Carlsen played badly throughout the game and lost after missing a possible draw in the rook ending. So after 12 rounds, the standings were Kramnik 8/12, Carlsen 7.5/12, Aronian 6.5/12, with just two rounds to go. Then in round 13 Carlsen eked out an endgame win as Black against Radjabov, while Kramnik was unable to convert his advantage against Gelfand. Aronian drew against Grischuk, falling out of contention.

This set the stage for an incredibly dramatic last round. Carlsen and Kramnik led with 8.5 points. Carlsen had White against Svidler, while Kramnik was Black against Ivanchuk. Ivanchuk, as mentioned, had been extremely erratic, losing five games on time before move 40. (By comparison, Fischer lost twice on time in his entire career.) Carlsen was leading on tiebreaks, since the first tiebreak was number of wins and he had won five games to Kramnik's four. So Kramnik had to hope Carlsen did not win in the final round, and if so had to outscore him: if Carlsen drew, Kramnik had to win, while if Carlsen lost, Kramnik would have to win or draw. Kramnik must have figured that Carlsen would at least draw as White, so he (Kramnik) would have to win. Carlsen, on his part, must have feared that Ivanchuk would get in his usual time pressure and flag, in which case he (Carlsen) would have to win.

The upshot was that both of the leaders played badly. Carlsen got nothing out of the opening, got extremely low on time (he had something like two minutes for his last 12 moves in a complicated position), and barely made the time control, only to find himself in a hopeless ending. Kramnik, meanwhile, played the opening dubiously, trying to keep the game complicated and hope that Chukky would flag as usual. Chukky was having none of it. He handled the complications deftly and made time control with a minute to spare, with a completely winning position. Both Carlsen and Kramnik lost, leaving them tied for first with 8.5 points. So Carlsen, despite losing as White for the second time in three games, backed into a tie for first and a win on tiebreak. He will face Anand for the World Championship in November. An unbelievable finish.

Aronian meanwhile won nicely against Radjabov. He and Svidler tied for third with 8 points. Gelfand (Anand's challenger last time) and Grischuk tied for fifth with 6.5, Ivanchuk was seventh with 6 points, and Radjabov was last with 4.

Amazing day at Candidates Tournament

Kramnik leads!

Kramnik 1½ - Aronian 1½

Sergei Shipov annotates Kramnik's win in Game 3 for ChessVibes.

Kramnik-Radjabov press conference

As you may have read on ChessBase, at one point in the Kramnik-Radjabov tiebreaks, there was a moment when Radjabov was literally seconds away from winning the Candidates quarterfinal match: all he had to do was draw a tricky (but objectively drawn) rook plus opposite-color bishop ending.  After move sixty, there was a clock malfunction, and the arbiters took thirteen minutes (!!) to restart the blitz game.  Kramnik managed to win and force yet another two-game blitz tiebreaker, which he also won, and with it, the match.

Interview here: congratulations to Teimour Radjabov for acting in such a sporting fashion after such a heartbreaking turn of events.

Incidentally, interest in the match was so high (and English-language real-time coverage so wanting) that The Week in Chess crashed: the TWIC live site is still offline.

Candidates quarterfinals complete

Grischuk upsets top seed Aronian, and Kramnik somehow survives against Radjabov.  English-language coverage is spotty at best: I'll add links later today.  In the meantime, here's an English translation of Shipov's commentary on yesterday's Topalov-Kamsky game.

Semifinals pairings: Kamsky (USA) vs. Gelfand (Israel), and Kramnik (Russia) vs. Grischuk (Russia).  Play begins this Thursday.  The survivor will challenge Vishy Anand for the world title next year.

I, Robot

Hat tip to Daniel Parmet, who found this on Natalia Pogonina's blogNat:



Magnus Carlsen is one of the spectators.

Nakamura may have missed a win against Kramnik today....

@GMHikaruHikaru Nakamura

Insane game against Kramnik today. Gotta love how we both didn't know what was going on and Rybka is like, "haha, you stupid idiots!"

7 hours ago via web Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

A cute trap...

...as highlighted by Yasser Seirawan in his wonderful online commentary at the Internet Chess Club.

Aronian-Kramnik

Tal Memorial, Round 1

White to play and win

Only one move wins: everything else appears to lose!

Post-Bilbao interview with Kramnik

From Chess in Translation.

Bilbao round 2: Anand beats Carlsen

The World Champion should now be is now over 2800 and #1 on the live rating list.  He's had Black in his first two games!  Carlsen tried hard to squeeze Anand, but overplayed a slightly better position.

Kramnik (who had White in rounds 1 & 2) leads the tournament after pounding Shirov.

Magnus Carlsen: crisis of form?

Kramnik beats Carlsen in round 1 at the Bilbao Grand Slam final (Shipov's round one notes are here).  Neither of the preceding links are permalinks: they'll go stale shortly.

Anand (having obviously worked on opposite-color bishop endings after Sofia) drew Shirov fairly easily.

Here are the top six players in the world per the Live Ratings list.  The world champ Anand could easily reclaim the top spot by the end of this event.

	Player		Rating	Change	Games	Events	Birth Yr
01	Carlsen		2805,1	-20,9	9	2	1990
02	Anand		2799,3	-0,7	1	1	1969
03	Aronian		2793,8	+10,8	16	2	1982
04	Topalov		2785,5	-17,5	9	1	1975
05	Kramnik		2785,2	+5,2	16	3	1975
06	Ivanchuk		2771,9	+17,9	10	1	1969

Shipov annotates Dortmund live

GM Sergei Shipov

Wonderful stuff at Chess in Translation.

The live game (Friday, it's Ponomariov-Kramnik: not a permalink) is here.

Yesterday's Kramnik-Le Quang Liem is here.

human cluster

Another Anand interview on ChessBase.

Kramnik beats Carlsen in their blindfold game

Carlsen's idea is interesting: I have no idea why the promising attack fizzled so quickly.

Carlsen-Kramnik

After 9...O-O: White to move

Is the attack worth a pawn?

 

Karsten Müller annotates Shirov-Kramnik

Shirov-Kramnik, Corus 2010

White to play

You can read and play through GM Müller's explanations at ChessBase.  Shirov may only have taken second place, but he played the most spectacular chess at Wijk aan Zee.  Don't try to understand all the moves: just enjoy the fireworks!

Oh yes, this is supposedly a Chicago chess blog....

Genius Vishy

Anand has been playing a brilliant game against Kramnik, going on right now.

UPDATE:  Anand won in style.

Post-mortem comments by the modest genius

GM Rogers - live analysis

I have to miss the end of Shirov-Kramnik.  You don't. 

Kramnik as standup comedian

Oh yes, Corus. (I do have to work for a living.)

“At the start of the game Magnus just sat there with his eyes closed to the point where I wondered whether he’d fallen asleep and I should wake him up,” Kramnik told reporters afterwards. “But, seriously, my guess is that Gary (Kasparov) called him beforehand and told him he should try 1. e4. In the end he came up with 1. d4, which was the wrong choice, I think. He should have avoided the Catalan, a line I have a great score with, no matter whether I play white or black.”

Too bad there isn't a live ratings list for trash-talking.   But Kramnik backing up his words: he's now clear #3 in the world, only one win away from (re-)breaking the 2800 barrier.  Here's his win with Black against Carlsen.

Would Kramnik-Carlsen be a more interesting match than Topalov-Anand?

Classic Kramnik

Another austerely beautiful endgame combination (Rybka sees it immediately):

Kramnik-Van Wely, Corus 2010
White to move

In the final position, Black can underpromote to a Knight, but it's not enough. (I'm at the office and only have time to gape in awe: possibly I'm missing something?)