Thursday
Nov032011
The European Team Championship is Underway
Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 11:45AM It's quite the event, too, as the participant list includes (in no particular order) Svidler, Grischuk, Morozevich, Nepomniachtchi, Ivanchuk, Eljanov, Radjabov, Caruana, Gashimov, Mamedyarov, Aronian, Movsesian, Leko, Bacrot, Vachier-Lagrave, Topalov, Adams, Short, Giri, Navara, Shirov and plenty of other 2700s and near-2700s. It started today and runs through next Friday, November 11; a nine-round event with 38 countries fighting it out for European honors in Porto Carras, Greece.
There will be plenty of great chess there, and it should to a marvelous job of tiding us over to the Tal Memorial (Carlsen, Anand, Aronian, Kramnik, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Nakamura, Gelfand, Svidler and Nepomniachtchi) on November 16.
Reader Comments (8)
Topalov is back! I cannot say I agree with his antics, or at least with the scandal in the Kramnik match, but he surely is an exciting player to watch.
[DM: No argument here!]
What the heck just happened in the Round 1 Morozevich game?
Did Black *really* play 76 ... Rb2-g2?? 77 Rg8xRg2 1-0 ????
http://chessbomb.com/o/2011-etcc/01-_Morozevich_Alexander-Svetushkin_Dmitry
[DM: Yes, I saw that too - unbelievable! It's amazing too that Russia so consistently underperforms in team events, but at least they were bailed out today.]
I know you only blog about things that interest you, but I think you should look at Shirov's game from round 1. Maybe it will interest you enough to annotate it, I thought it was very interesting.
Thanks for a great blog.
[DM: That raises an obvious question - do people generally blog about things that don't interest them? :) Anyway, I'm a fan of Shirov's chess (though it appears he lost), but before I can even consider annotating the game I'd have to find it. Where is it?? It's not on TWIC, nor do I see it on the games page of the official site.]
In addition to the half point they were gifted on board 3, it seems that Russia were also quite lucky to get a draw rather than a loss on board 1, Svidler-Bologan: 37...Kc7! (instead of 37...Kxe6?) should lead to a rather clear win - the best White can do is give up an exchange rather than a whole piece with 38.Rxd5 (if 38.Ne4 Black exchanges on g5 and wins a piece with Rg7) 38...Bxg5 39.Rxg5 (39.Rf5 Bh4, winning the knight on g3) 39...Rxg5.
Btw, Svidler in particular seems to be rather consistently weak in team events. Speaking of Russia underperforming, I remember that Karpov was asked about it in an interview following the 2008 Olympiad, and he opined that it has to do with a lack of leadership, of the kind they had during his - and later Kasparov's - time.
[DM: Could be - though in Kasparov's and Karpov's day, they also enjoyed a near stranglehold of the world's top ratings. It's easy to be the team leader when your four boards can be filled by the past 20 years' worth of world champions, previous world champions and a fair number of current candidates as well.]
During Karpov's time, it was the Soviet Union rather than Russia - which obviously meant that they didn't have to fear countries such as Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan (and Moldova).
[DM: Sure, that didn't hurt anything either, though whether those teams constituted much of a threat back then is unclear.]
http://www.skak.blog.is/blog/skak/entry/1202594/
Here is the Shirov loss from an Icelandic website.
Thanks
[DM: Nice sleuthing! Fun game, as you said, and if I can spend a little time tonight on it, I will. Thanks!]
Check out the move Bf8!! in today's Short game.
That raises an obvious question - do people generally blog about things that don't interest them? :)
Some people run sites dedicated to a topic and feel the need to cover all the major stuff whether it interests them or not. They do it for completeness sake. (I'm thinking of a few finance/economics blogs in particular.) So they might not do much of it, but they might do some just the same!