Friday
Feb262010
Polgar Wins Game 4, Draws Match with Kaidanov
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 12:11AM
With her (convincing) win in game 4, Judit Polgar drew her Sicilian theme match with Gregory Kaidanov. All four games were entertaining and won by White, and they make the prospect of subsequent theme events attractive. (These kinds of events used to happen with some regularity in the early 20th century, but apart from correspondence chess very rarely nowadays.) Here's the final game of the match.
Reader Comments (4)
Being a theme match it was unrated. It would be interesting to have an unrated tournament where the players were encouraged to play for brilliancies. With no rating points on the line they could take risks they would ordinarily avoid.
In 1994, there was a Sicilian theme tournament in Buenos Aires - in honor of Polugaevsky, but Najdorf was probably also pleased. Participants were Anand, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Karpov, Ljubojevic, Judit Polgar, Salov and Shirov.
@Brian Karen: Such a tournament already exists, albeit rapid and blindfold: Amber, next edition in about two weeks.
Thomas, I knew about Buenos Aires 1994 (I even have the tournament book), and Brian knows about Amber. But how are players at the latter event positively "encouraged to play for brilliancies"? If anything, the blindfold games tend to promote ridiculous play that amuses the amateurs.
Regarding Buenos Aires, I considered it worthwhile mentioning - at least for readers in their teenage years or early twenties who might not know ... .
About Amber, I mostly meant the rapid games, even though the blindfold games aren't ALL bad either - some are blunderstruck, but others are of surprisingly high quality. Specifically I had in mind:
- Aronian playing all kind of weird openings (Bird, 1.Nc3, Sicilian with b3) at the 2006 edition and having great fun - though not a very great result at that occasion. Maybe this was also "ridiculous play that amuses the amateurs", or should we call it world-top coffehouse chess?
- Ivanchuk's spectacular queen sacrifice against Karjakin in 2008.
Anyway, what else, what more can be done to "encourage players to play for brilliancies" - than a relaxed luxury setting with no rating points at stake?