Bazna, Last Round: Carlsen, Karjakin Draw, Tie for First
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 1:24PM In the battle of the 1990ers vs. the field, it was a rout. Magnus Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin, both born 11 years before the new millennium*, drew their game, tied for first, made progress on the rating list and left the rest of the field in their dust.
Their game was a fairly uneventful Rubinstein Nimzo-Indian. Karjakin equalized as Black without much trouble, and the game was drawn at move 30. Carlsen was declared the official first-place winner on tiebreaks, which seems silly to me, given that it was a double round-robin, but with only one first-place trophy it has to be decided one way or another. Their +3 scores gained them rating points, and now Carlsen is back atop the live ratings while Karjakin has moved into fourth place. They dominated the event, finishing two points clear of the field; in fact, no one else even managed a 50% score.
Hikaru Nakamura entered the round on 50%, and if he had been able to take advantage of Vassily Ivanchuk's bad form he could have finished on +1 and moved up to #5 on the rating list. Instead, Ivanchuk ground him down on the white side of an Exchange Slav, completing the odd bookends for both players. Ivanchuk won only his first and last games while Nakamura lost only in the first and last rounds. Nakamura finished at -1, Ivanchuk at -2.
Teimour Radjabov and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu also finished at -1 and -2, respectively, after their draw. Radjabov played a sideline in the Classical Caro-Kann that's considered harmless, and it was harmless today as well - at least against Nisipeanu's accurate, active play.
Final Standings:
1-2. Carlsen (first on tiebreak), Karjakin 6.5
3-4. Radjabov, Nakamura 4.5
5-6. Nisipeanu, Ivanchuk 4
Tournament site here, games (with my comments) here.
* Yes, I know I'll regret bringing this up. Someday I'll learn my lesson - maybe at the start of the next decade, on January 1, 2021?
Reader Comments (9)
I got Carlsen right at +3, indeed at 3-7-0, but Nakamura didn't come close to my forecast +2. Oh well, these other guys can play, too! Thanks for the notes. Many of the games were really interesting, as I've also read Jean Hébert saying.
If you're going to be pedantic about the definition of millennium, you should probably spell it correctly... (see, you were correct that you'd regret bringing it up!)
[DM: Rats! I'm a very good speller, but somehow that one has slipped through the cracks. I'll fix it in a moment.]
The puzzling thing to me was that Karjakin lost on tie break. He played against a stronger field (since he was lower rated than Carlsen) and the three wins he had were against slightly higher rated opponents, Ivanchuk twice and Nisipeanu once vs Ivanchuk, Nakamura, and Nisipeanu. I know I am missing something about the tie breaks.
[DM: Correct: ratings aren't generally used as a tiebreaker, especially in round-robins.]
And which decade would you be referring to? Surely not the '20s, which must begin on Jan 1, 2020.
[DM: I'm referring to the third decade of the third millennium. As the millennium started on January 1, 2001, the third decade naturally begins on the first of January, 2021.]
Yes, I know I'll regret bringing this up. Someday I'll learn my lesson - maybe at the start of the next decade, on January 1, 2021?
Never give up! Keep fighting the good fight! We may be in the minority, but our cause is JUST! Our cause is RIGHT! *
* And no, I am not mocking you. It's good to see that someone else gets it.
[DM: Yes! The truth has its friends! Thanks for the moral support and a very good laugh.]
Ah, I see! You must like to talk about the "Roaring Third Decade" and the tumultuous "Seventh Decade" instead of the Roaring '20s and the sixties.
And "the millennium started on January 1, 2001" ?! Again, it depends on which millennium you are talking about -- the aesthetically pleasing 2000s, which began when the clock hit 2000, or the awkward, clumsy, mythical "Third Millennium" with the arbitrary starting date of Jan. 1, 2001.
Yeah, yeah, I know there was no year 0. But neither was there a year 1. Or 2, or 3 or...all the way up to 525, when a rather monkish monk decided to number the years since Christ's birth. He inexplicably named the first year "1" instead of "0" -- babies don't turn one until they complete their first year, their year "0", i.e. clocks start at zero, not one. Big deal.
We could decide to make clocks start at one instead. We could then run a race: would the clock start at one second or 0.1 second or one millisecond? Nah. Let's just start at the natural 0 instead.
[DM: You're right of course that we *could* have started at 0, and also right that the year 1 wasn't labeled as 1. But given that we have, entirely as a matter of convention, done so, it follows that the first millennium went from 1 to 1000, the second from 1001 to 2000, and the third began in 2001. Which convention got set was arbitrary, but once the convention has been set the results aren't.
You're also right that I'm assuming that *the* millennium refers to the one from Christ's almost surely misnumbered birth year. Does anyone really mean to refer to another one except when they're in a friendly argument with a 1-10'er?
Finally, I don't refer to the "roaring third decade of the 20th century", but maybe I should. (Kidding.) It's a matter of context, naturally: if one is using the millennium as the basis or referring to the nth decade of a century, one should be a 1-10'er, but there are plenty of contexts where one can and should be a 0'er.]
But the convention really is to start counting at zero. Big celebrations worldwide and lots of "century in review" and "millennium in review" magazine articles and TV specials for Jan. 1, 2000 but not for Jan. 1, 2001.
Insisting on bucking convention and convenience and common sense to start the clock at 1 instead of 0 because 1500 years ago some guy didn't think it through very clearly is odd, don't you think? ;-)
[DM: Yes, the founders of the calendar were foolish not to base their decisions on what marketing experts in the media would come up with centuries later. At any rate, the *relevant* convention, when describing the current century and decade using ordinals, is the one that actually exists for our calendar. Feel free to start your own and label the current year "2012".
P.S. Thanks, Ken, for reminding me that this is a chess blog!]
Dennis,
Maybe with the millennium debate (which you provoked yourself) you distracted attention from your other "controversial" statement on the silliness of tiebreaks - note the scare quotes as I fully agree with you. But Chessvibes has several comments stating that
- Carlsen's edge on tiebreak reflects his superior skills, or
- (at least between the lines) Carlsen would have successfully played for a win against Karjakin if this was needed to win the event.
Though obvious, it may be worthwhile pointing out that prize money was split evenly between Carlsen and Karjakin (info from the Chessvibes report), Carlsen merely got the bigger trophy - as it's impossible to split trophies evenly.
P.S.: By "millennium logic" (here I also agree with you, but frankly couldn't care less) should magic Elo boundaries also be 2701/2801 rather than 2700/2800? Then Sutovsky, Morozevich [he's back, both have 2700.1] and Movsesian (2700.0) shouldn't be on the live rating list.
[DM: On the last part, it wouldn't come into play unless the theoretical minimum rating was 0 rather than 1 and people were in the habit of speaking of the 28th "century" or something like that.
On the (relatively, slightly) more important matter of tiebreaks, it is fair to note that Carlsen might have pressed a little more had the tiebreaks been against him, though with no money or qualification at stake I doubt it would have made a difference unless the trophy was extremely valuable. However, I should note (as no one seems to have done on ChessVibes when referring to my comment about tiebreaks being "silly" in a double round-robin) that I acknowledged that an appeal to tiebreaks is nonetheless necessary when there's a trophy involved - they're not going to saw it in half.]
radjabovs analysis....
I cant stop laughing at radjabovs analysis postmortem videos from this tourney...
he talks like a machine gun... it makes me nautious and dizzy how quickly he talks... and with no emotion in a monotonous voice...
[DM: There is some inflection, but you're right: he rattles out the variations as if he might forget something if he waits too long to recite them. I kind of like it myself, in that he's bursting with these interesting and attractive ideas he wants to share with the spectators. That's more entertaining and valuable than what these guys usually offer, which is only a comment on the most obvious, game-changing moment.]