Oslo Esports Cup 2022

The Oslo Esports Cup is the opening event for the 2022 Meltwater Champions Tour, and as you'd expect from last year's Tour it's a very strong tournament. Magnus Carlsen leads the parade of stars, which also includes top-name players like Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Anish Giri, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. It's an eight player round robin, with each round a best-of-four game match with a 15'+10" time control.

Round 1 was on Friday, with these results: 

• Carlsen 2.5 - Duda .5
• Giri 2.5 - Eric Hansen 1.5
• Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (P.R.) 2.5 - Jorden Van Foreest .5
• Mamedyarov 2.5 - Le Quang Liem 1.5 

Many of these results were turned upside down in round 2, on Saturday: 

• Le 2.5 - Carlsen 1.5
• P.R. 2.5 - Mamedyarov .5
• Van Foreest 2.5 - Hansen 1.5
• Duda 4 - Giri 2 

Everyone is 1-1 except for Hansen, who lost twice, and Praggnanandhaa, who has not only won twice but crushed his opponents.

Tournament site here; games here.

Ukraine Defeats Norway in Friendly, Fundraising Match (Updated)

Ukraine won this Scheveningen-format match over Norway by a huge margin, 11-5, but the main purpose of the match was to show solidarity for Ukraine and to raise funds for various charitable organizations (more here). The Ukrainian side Vasyl Ivanchuk, Kirill Shevchenko, Yuriy Kuzubov, and Alexander Moiseenko; the Norwegian team consisted of Magnus Carlsen, Aryan Tari, Johan-Sebastian Christiansen, and Lars Oskar Hauge.

The games were played with a rapid time limit of 10'+10" - it had to be a fast time control, at least in part because Carlsen played four games in another rapid event today (with a 15'+10" control). He struggled on the day - in both events, as it turned out - defeating Ivanchuk in the prestige matchup and then Moiseenko in the next round before losing to Kuzubov and Shevchenko.

Video coverage of the event is here, and all the games (with comments to Carlsen-Shevchenko) are here.

**The update was the revised game file, with Carlsen-Shevchenko annotated.**

TCEC Season 22 Superfinal: Stockfish Wins Again

Convincingly, too: Stockfish triumphed 59.5-40.5 over Komodo, and didn't lose a single game-pair out of 50. (Every opening variation is played twice, with each engine getting a shot at it with White.) It is a great boon to chess fans everywhere that the program that is clearly the best is also available for free.

American Cup, Day 2: Aronian, Caruana, Dominguez, and Sevian(!) Win Their Opening Matches...

...but Levon Aronian has probably been eliminated from contention for the Candidates. He defeated Ray Robson in the first game - discussed yesterday - but mixed things up in the opening, allowing an obviously strong exchange sacrifice that gave Robson an enduring advantage. He fought for a long time, but eventually lost the game. That cost him 6.4 rating points, making the very unlikely hope of qualifying for the Candidates by rating a near-impossibility. Maybe if Ding Liren draws several more games or even loses one in his event Aronian will keep his very slim chances alive, but those chances are extremely poor.

The good news for Aronian is that he bounced back from the loss to win the playoff, remaining in the so-called Champions bracket. Robson will be in the elimination bracket in this double elimination event, so for now he's still alive.

The other day one winner, Sam Sevian, did not need a playoff to advance. He was never in trouble against Wesley So, and agreed to a draw from a position of strength.

The other two matches, however, did require a playoff after day one draws were followed up with draws today. Leinier Dominguez beat Sam Shankland in the second playoff game to stay in the Champions bracket, while it took Fabiano Caruana until the Armageddon game before he could eliminate Jeffery Xiong - barely. Xiong had Black and a completely won position and only needed to make his 60th move, after which there would be a two-second increment after every move. Xiong...lost on time making his 60th move.

Here's what happens next, on Friday. Aronian will play Dominguez and Sevian will play Caruana. They will play a single classical game, just as everyone did yesterday (Wednesday). In the Elimination bracket, however, we get something different: rapid matches that will finish in one day, between Robson and Shankland, and between So and Xiong. The losers of those matches will be done, while the winners of those matches will play the losers of Sevian-Caruana and Aronian-Dominguez, respectively.

No annotations today, but here are the games.

American Cup, Day 1

How do we know that the cup, as opposed to those who are competing for it, are American? And if it were made somewhere else, would the players really care? The tournament is about two things (or three): money (& prestige), and for Levon Aronian, the possibility on a miracle scenario of gaining enough points to leapfrog Ding Liren to qualify for the Candidates (assuming Sergey Karjakin's appeal is denied).

To that end, Aronian got off to a good start, defeating Ray Robson in game 1 of their match. (Which was rated, according to the 2700chess.com site.) Robson offered a pawn in a known line of the Reti that reaches a kind of reversed Benoni. He initially enjoyed sufficient compensation, but it evaporated. Aronian reached a winning heavy piece ending that turned into a winning rook ending, and he converted his advantage smoothly.

Lenier Dominguez and Sam Shankland split the point in the first game of their match, a lively theoretical battle that demonstrated that Shankland had done his homework. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to learn that the whole game was in both players' computers before the game; if not, it was impressive play at the board.

The match between Wesley So and Sam Sevian started with an upset. So, with the white pieces, enjoyed the advantage in a sharp position with the kings castled on opposite flanks. Sevian outplayed his higher-rated opponent and achieved a winning advantage, but a big mistake on move 31 gave So the chance to save the game. His first two moves were correct, but his third move was a blunder that lost almost immediately. Instead, he could have saved the game with a beautiful and precise tactical sequence, but - maybe due to time trouble? - he failed to find it.

Finally, Fabiano Caruana and Jeffery Xiong fought it out in a Petroff that first saw Caruana and then Xiong have great winning chances before the game finished in a draw.

These are mini-matches, so game 2 will see the same players fight it out tomorrow/today/Thursday, with colors reversed. Today's games are here, with my comments to the first three.

Yuri Averbakh, 1922-...Who Knows?

In the previous post I mentioned some sad news from back in February; it's time for some good news from that same month - ongoing good news. GM and former Candidate Yuri Averbakh reached a milestone on February 8, becoming the first GM centenarian (at least according to this article on Averbakh). Averbakh had a fine career as a player, qualifying for the Candidates in 1953 and almost doing so again for the 1959 event. He won a Soviet Championship, too, and in addition to his accomplishments as a player he is a noted endgame theorist and study composer, an author on various aspects of the game (including its history), and arbiter.

Happy birthday, GM Averbakh, and best wishes for many more.

Borislav Ivkov, 1933-2022

Borislav ("Bora") Ivkov passed away a couple of months ago, when the blog was down, or I would have blogged about it then. He was a Serbian grandmaster (those of you who remember him probably think of him as a Yugoslav player, and indeed, he won that national championship three times before the country disintegrated), a Candidate in 1965, and the first World Junior Champion back in 1951. He defeated five World Champions, and at one point had an undefeated 3-1 score against Bobby Fischer. (That ratio didn't last, to put it mildly, but that he had it at one point is impressive!)

There's a good summary of his career on his Wikipedia page, along with links to 15 notable wins, almost all of them against World Champions and other Candidates. The link to the Benko game isn't working, so I give the game here, along with both of his wins against Fischer. (Only one of the Fischer wins is linked in Wikipedia, so I've supplied the second as well. Coincidentally, in both games Ivkov is Black and has rook and knight vs. rook and bishop. Further, in both games Ivkov offers the swap of his rook and knight for Fischer's rook to promote a passed pawn. It would have been an extra-fun coincidence if the first game had gone one move longer or the second one move shorter [but not both], in which case they would have gone the same number of moves.)

Rest in peace.

Happy Easter! (Updated)

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

As always, some links for interested readers:

David French, "Easter is Everything"

R. R. Reno, "He is Risen!"

George Weigel, "Easter Changes Everything"

For those who might want to dig into some heavy-duty material, here's a PDF from philosophers Tim and Lydia McGrew, "A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth". (See also this video by Tim McGrew who is, among other things, a USCF master.)

Update: Here's one more McGrew link, this time from Bethel McGrew (one of Tim's and Lydia's daughters).

The Best Chess Movies (and TV Show)?

Here's one person's top ten list. (HT: Marginal Revolution.) (Disregard the author's wildly false title, "Every Chess Movie, Ranked".)

Ding Liren Nearing Qualification

As most if not all of you know by now, Sergey Karjakin is on the outs for the 2022 Candidates tournament (scheduled for Madrid, Spain, starting June 16). After his asinine statements in support of the despicable Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIDE banned from official FIDE-rated events for six months, a time frame that includes the Candidates. As disgusting as his comments were and are - and I was critical of his being a Putin fanboy years before Russia's latest act of aggression against Ukraine (no ban for Karjakin's overtly pro-Putin stance after the latter's earlier invasions of Ukraine and Georgia?) - I don't like this precedent. The history of chess is full of terrible politics and misdeeds by individuals who didn't receive bans; what makes Karjakin so special?

Karjakin has appealed the ban, but assuming it stands, the player with the best rating at the end of this month gets it - provided he has played in at least 30 classical games over the past year. Ding Liren has the rating with room to spare, with a 30 point lead over Levon Aronian, but because of China's COVID restrictions he has had far fewer opportunities to play than most of his rivals. That insulated his high rating from harm, but also meant that he needed to get in 26 games from the time of Karjakin's disqualification in March until the end of this month.

Needless to say, it has happened - or rather, has been happening, though it's not quite finished. First, there was a four player quadruple round-robin. He defeated all his rivals with 3.5-.5 scores, going 10.5/12 overall and picking up around 12 points for his trouble. Then there was a six-game match with Wei Yi. The first five games were drawn before Ding won the finale, losing just one rating point overall. That left eight games to go, and he'll get that with two games to spare in the last event, which is ongoing, a six player double-round robin. So far he's 2-1, down one rating point.

All told, as of this writing he's undefeated in 21 games and has gained around 10 points - a very impressive result, to put it mildly. He is and has been one of the world's best players for years, so it's not as if the result is beyond belief; nevertheless, the whole affair is ethically iffy. Granted, Ding's situation is unfortunate, but there are good reasons why FIDE does not accept events where all the players are from the same country (except for events like national championships) for round-robin norm tournaments, and forces Candidates from the same country to play each other in the first games of each cycle. Even if all the players are as honest as can be, the incentives lend themselves to fishy outcomes. (Read works on Soviet chess for endless examples of such chicanery.)

Anyway, here are a couple of Ding's recent games. The first is his win in the last game of the match with Wei Yi, and the second game - also against Wei Yi - is a draw from the ongoing event. Both are interesting, albeit in very different ways. Have a look.