To be fair to Topalov, GM Fabiano Caruana in his analysis at ChessBase considers 9. 0-0-0 a good and interesting novelty and blames the loss on 12. h4.
[DM: To be even fairer, I didn't blame the loss on 9.0-0-0 either. Not objectively. But practically speaking, I did and still do. Topalov prepared this move at home, giving him the advantages of surprise, preparation, confidence and clock time, and he still got destroyed. In time, perhaps players will understand 9.0-0-0 deeply enough to be able to handle those positions with White, despite the vulnerable king and the queen on a3, but it's the kind of position where it both sides are trying to figure things out, White is far more likely to get into deep trouble than Black.]
It remains to be seen whether anyone - including Topalov himself - will repeat the setup with 9.0-0-0. Caruana is right that the novelty is "very interesting", I am not as convinced that it deserves his exclamation mark (but who am I?). Mark Crowther on TWIC is equally right to call it "a very risky novelty".
In any case, something went wrong with Topalov's preparation. Were they (his seconds are the usual ones, Cheparinov and l'Ami) surprised by 10.-Bh6+ ? Or maybe they didn't analyze the line very deeply, just hoping and expecting that Kamsky would go wrong in the resulting non-standard dynamical positions.
Are there other high-level examples where an "interesting" novelty led to a quick and seemingly straightforward loss with white? The most recent one coming to my mind is game 8 of the Kramnik-Leko WCh match (Kramnik's incorrect queen sacrifice in a Ruy Lopez Marshall).
Reader Comments (3)
Thanks as always for the best analysis on the web.
That Topa queen-side castle is the kind of move I would have played which surely puts his performance into even more awful perspective.
To be fair to Topalov, GM Fabiano Caruana in his analysis at ChessBase considers 9. 0-0-0 a good and interesting novelty and blames the loss on 12. h4.
[DM: To be even fairer, I didn't blame the loss on 9.0-0-0 either. Not objectively. But practically speaking, I did and still do. Topalov prepared this move at home, giving him the advantages of surprise, preparation, confidence and clock time, and he still got destroyed. In time, perhaps players will understand 9.0-0-0 deeply enough to be able to handle those positions with White, despite the vulnerable king and the queen on a3, but it's the kind of position where it both sides are trying to figure things out, White is far more likely to get into deep trouble than Black.]
It remains to be seen whether anyone - including Topalov himself - will repeat the setup with 9.0-0-0. Caruana is right that the novelty is "very interesting", I am not as convinced that it deserves his exclamation mark (but who am I?). Mark Crowther on TWIC is equally right to call it "a very risky novelty".
In any case, something went wrong with Topalov's preparation. Were they (his seconds are the usual ones, Cheparinov and l'Ami) surprised by 10.-Bh6+ ? Or maybe they didn't analyze the line very deeply, just hoping and expecting that Kamsky would go wrong in the resulting non-standard dynamical positions.
Are there other high-level examples where an "interesting" novelty led to a quick and seemingly straightforward loss with white? The most recent one coming to my mind is game 8 of the Kramnik-Leko WCh match (Kramnik's incorrect queen sacrifice in a Ruy Lopez Marshall).