Thursday
Jan272011
Another Important Event: Gibraltar
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 1:34AM
It's not as big a deal as Wijk aan Zee, but the annual open event in Gibraltar is always worth noting. This year's edition includes such stars as Vassily Ivanchuk, Mickey Adams, Fabiano Caruana and Nigel Short, but one shouldn't forget the great Viktor Korchnoi. Sure, he'll be 80 in a few months, but the old lion had enough teeth to crush Caruana, with Black, in round 2. (To be fair to Caruana, he had been 4-0 against Korchnoi before this, so his status as a 2700 shouldn't be questioned by this result!)
Certainly a tournament worth following, but I'll leave annotating its games to someone else!
tagged Gibraltar 2011
Reader Comments (12)
Also worth noting is the coverage. There is free webcam/live commentary, courtesy of English GM Simon Williams. Nigel Short has already been in a couple of times to go through his games, armed with his usual anecdotes and bottle of red wine.
Last evening was a treat too: Ivanchuk gave a lecture on his - match - game (white) v. Komarov, USSR 1984
The London Classic and Gibraltar coverage must surely impact on the way other tournaments are covered?
Viktor Lvovich shows that he still knows how to bite (and fight). Caruana - Korchnoi. 0-1.
[DM: Yes, if only I had mentioned the game in the post...]
Another game worthwhile mentioning is Gashimov-Korchnoi 0-1, Russian Team Championship 2008:
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1489390
At the time, Gashimov was "just a rising star" with Elo 2679, but he offered better resistance than Caruana. The game had 87 moves, fascinating from beginning to end (but I didn't even try to analyze it).
[DM: It was a very interesting game, but I'm not sure why it's worth mentioning. Or rather, if it is, we could fill up several pages of my blog mentioning and discussing Korchnoi's wins as a senior citizen against young talents!]
Seconding Graham's comment about the live coverage; Simon Williams' commentary is quite entertaining.
On chessgames.com, I couldn't find comparable games by Korchnoi ever since 2005: win with black against young players who were already considerably higher-rated at the time. Next would be his wins against Stellwagen and l'Ami (Rising Stars vs. Experience 2008) but the Dutch players didn't exactly reach the world top. Next, but already beyond my chosen time window, is Korchnoi(2601) - Carlsen(2581) 1-0, Drammen 2004.
So I think the game I mentioned is rather unique - I didn't ask for a page on your blog, just a footnote ,:) .
[DM: I'd agree that this is Korchnoi's biggest scalp in quite a while. My point is just that Korchnoi has been old - certainly old for a chess player - for a long time, so you can certainly go back before 2005 to find him beating up on young guys. Anyway, this was very nice to see, and hopefully an indication that he has at least one more bump to 2600 left in his future.]
Got to play through Caruana - Korchnoi and it was worth seeing. It was a closed Ruy Lopez variation that was from the early 20th century. Caruana seems to be doing fine when Korchnoi launches a kingside pawn storm around move 14 that ends 30 (!) moves later with whites king in a mating net. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion. Caruana never seemed to understand the seriousness of the attack until it was too late.
Frankly I would not mind at all you spending several blogs at Kortchnoi beating young talents.
Caruana (after beating Korchnoi in 2008): "Your powers are weak, old man..."
Viktor the Terrible: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
Somehow I doubt Caruana said anything like that, especially to a legend of chess. I'd like to see a citation to a source for that "quotation." If there's a joke in there somewhere, please let the rest of us in on it. Otherwise it's not fair to impute obnoxious whippersnapper behavior to Caruana where none exists. The only young GM I know of with a tendency to trash talk is Nakamura.
Er, sorry, that was a quote from the original Star Wars movie (Darth Vader vs Obi-Wan Kenobi).
No disrespect of either player meant.
No, my bad. I'm not up on my Star Wars. I should have googled the "quotes" to see what came up. Even a Nakamura wouldn't say something so outrageous to his face (but he might put in his blog!). I actually can imagine a Korchnoi retort along these lines. I remember a game where an up and coming young gun played the Benko Gambit against Vik and was told in the post-mortem that you shouldn't give away pawns in the opening to grandmasters! Slightly ridiculous comment about a major opening but what can you say to the old lion GM who just took your pawn and beat you?
I thought the joke was funny, but I suppose it's best to make sure everyone knows it is when you're using quotes for players who really didnt say it, to avoid any confusion.