London Chess Classic, Round 1: Three Decisive Games
The first round was a great one. Three of the four games had a winner, and the only draw was the longest game of the round.
The first game to finish was Michael Adams' win over David Howell, a fine attacking effort by the British #1. As mentioned in the preview post, Adams was one of the world's absolute best players for many years, not long ago, and should not be overlooked as a contender here.
Adams' win might have been the game of the round - certainly for British fans - except that the second game saw Luke McShane upset world #1 (maybe now ex-#1) Magnus Carlsen in impressive style, outplaying him on the white side of an English. This was a funny twist on last year's event, when Carlsen played the English against Vladimir Kramnik, winning the game and eventually the tournament. McShane was aware of this, but of course didn't choose his opening just for the sake of the joke.
Speaking of Kramnik, he won with Black against Nigel Short. As is his wont, Short found a very unusual opening idea for Kramnik: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.Qe2!? The game remained tensely balanced for a while, but when Short failed to realize that a turning point was coming, he lost the opportunity to cool off the play and came under a decisive attack. Ironically, the attack bore some resemblance to how things can go in a Sveshnikov Sicilian, an opening that used to be a Kramnik staple.
Finally, Viswanathan Anand pressed for a long time against Hikaru Nakamura's Berlin Wall, but he couldn't quite knock it over.
Standings After Round 1:
1-3. Kramnik, Adams, McShane 3 (They're using Bilbao 3-1-0 scoring.)
4-5. Nakamura, Anand 1
6-8. Carlsen, Howell, Short 0
Round 2 Pairings:
Kramnik - Nakamura
Howell - Anand
Carlsen - Adams
Short - McShane
Reader Comments (3)
"Kramnik ,,,, showed once again what he can do when he's not playing the Petroff."
More precisely, when he cannot play the Petroff because the opponent avoids it !? See also last year's win against McShane, in both cases Kramnik still played 2.-Nf6 ,:)
By comparison, Kramnik's results and positions when he played "something else" (Pirc) were rather mixed. Of course there are many choices in between Pirc (Alekhine, Scandinavian) and Petroff (Berlin Wall). [His last Sicilian at classical time control - neglecting the last desperation game in his match against Anand - is from 2005]
[DM: Believe it or not, I noticed that it was Short who steered away from the Petroff, not Kramnik. But thanks: it's always nice to be schoolmarm'd. What I had in mind was not so much that he becomes an unstoppable wrecking machine but that, forced to improvise, there was a pleasant freshness and dynamism to his play. That has appeared even in those up-and-down Pirc games he has trotted out the past year.]
I dont know if they'll be able to do it for each round, but they had the players coming to the commentators room right after their games yeterday, and that was aired live on the official web site - it's really amazing to hear them analyse and discuss, when they're still "in" it. (And with Nigel Short it can also be hilarious !)
Dennis,
What I had in mind wasn't to "schoolmarm" you, but to make two points:
1) Kramnik can play dynamic chess if the position asks for it - maybe also in his (5.Nc3) Petroff games at Tal Memorial (despite his 0.5/2 score which could have been worse).
2) Which opening against 1.e4 would be most suitable to get such positions? The Pirc may, after all, be a bit too dodgy - at least this seems to be your opinion as well as Kramnik's (in classical games he only played it against somewhat weaker opponents, e.g. Smeets and Naiditsch). The Sicilian may be too much work to keep up with theory - given that he hasn't played it much with either color recently. Most Ruy Lopez's also tend to be static rather than dynamic ("until the position explodes"), except maybe -Bc5 lines and the (again very theoretical) Zaitsev.
So - bearing in mind that neither of us is strong enough to be Kramnik's second - what could we recommend? ,:)