Candidates' Tournament, Round 12: Kramnik Beats Aronian, Ivanchuk Beats Carlsen; Kramnik Leads!
Friday, March 29, 2013 at 6:26PM What a round! Magnus Carlsen had been in first place at the Candidates', either shared or alone, from round 4, and he entered today's round with a half point lead over Vladimir Kramnik and a full point ahead of Levon Aronian. With White against the erratic, self-destructive Vassily Ivanchuk he seemed well situated to increase his lead, especially with Kramnik having the black pieces against Aronian.
Instead, another "miracle" happened - or two. Kramnik came up with a fascinating plan with 10...f5 in a typical IQP position, and it looked good enough to equalize. Practically, it was even better. Aronian's best choice at a certain moment early on was to force a draw by repetition (starting with 15.Bxb5 f4, as I recall), but in his tournament situation that would have been hard to do. So he played on and was worse, but soon the board exploded with tactics. Kramnik made an error that could have allowed Aronian to escape with a draw, but missed it. Instead of finding that move - 21.Ne5 - Aronian played 21.e4?, and Kramnik was very ready for that one. A very nice tactical sequence left Kramnik with a probably winning technical endgame...but again Kramnik slipped. Aronian had several ways to draw the resulting piece-down ending (all based on the wrong-colored bishop + rook pawn combination), but when he played 50.g6?? his last chance was gone. It's hard to know what was going on in Aronian's mind, but it looks as if he was trying to win. It's tough to balance fighting spirit and self-preservation, and in this case Aronian chose wrongly - especially as it was clear by this point that Carlsen would have to struggle to draw.
Turning to that game, Carlsen played the opening poorly with White and was slightly worse. After Ivanchuk's odd 18...a5, however, Carlsen equalized, but then by the end of the first time control Chuky, with Black, was again somewhat better. Still, it wasn't clear for a long time what the result should be, and not only due to the ever-present concern that Ivanchuk would do something completely insane. This time around, he didn't, and when Carlsen failed to maintain his usual insanely high level of technical prowess the Ukranian great managed to convert his material advantage. Overall, Ivanchuk played very well, while Carlsen immediately labeled his play "absolutely disgraceful."
Thanks to that loss, and Kramnik's remarkable run in the second cycle (4.5/5; three in a row) it is now Kramnik who leads by half a point, with Carlsen in second and Aronian a point and a half behind with two rounds to go. Tomorrow is the rest day, and then they finish up on Easter Sunday and Monday. Before giving the full standings and pairings for the last two rounds, a quick note about the other two games, games which could in fact prove very important.
Boris Gelfand and Peter Svidler drew a game without fireworks, but that looked like a model squeeze by Gelfand before the inaccurate 32.Qa7. According to Svidler, 32.Qb3, maintaining the squeeze, would have kept an enduring advantage based on the bishop pair and the possibility of b4-b5. Teimour Radjabov-Alexander Grischuk was also drawn, and as in the Gelfand-Svidler game White may have missed an opportunity for more. Nothing much happened until 40...h5, but that was a serious error allowing White to target Black's f-pawn after 41.h4. Maybe 43.Rxf5+ would have given Radjabov better winning chances than 43.Bxf5; as it was, Grischuk had to wriggle before reaching the theoretically drawn ending with a rook against a rook and f- and h-pawns.
Why were these games important? The answer is that the tournament regulations have a very unfortunate provision for settling a first-place tie: tiebreaks! This is the second-most important event in the chess calendar, behind only the world championship itself, and the geniuses at FIDE are going to allow the challenger's identity to be decided by which player won more games, or how the tailender does in the last round against the next-to-last placed finisher. This is just insane, especially as plenty of far less prestigious events run playoffs in case of a tie.
About the games: I managed to goof my back up (for the second straight year; let's hope this doesn't become a tradition!), so for now I can't sit long enough to work up an in-depth analysis of the games. If things improve I may try to make up for it tomorrow, during the rest day; otherwise, my apologies.
Standings After Round 12:
1. Kramnik 8
2. Carlsen 7.5
3. Aronian 6.5
4. Svidler 6
5-6. Grischuk, Gelfand 5.5
7. Ivanchuk 5
8. Radjabov 4
Round 13 Pairings (Sunday):
- Radjabov - Carlsen (Clearly a big opportunity for Carlsen to bounce right back.)
- Grischuk - Aronian (Will Aronian burn his bridges trying to stay alive, or just play "correct" chess?)
- Kramnik - Gelfand (Gelfand has traditionally matched up well with Kramnik, and rarely loses games to him at a classical time control.)
- Svidler - Ivanchuk
Round 14 Pairings (Monday):
- Carlsen - Svidler
- Ivanchuk - Kramnik (Will Ivanchuk rise to the occasion again, or (indirectly) harm Carlsen a second time?)
- Gelfand - Grischuk
- Aronian - Radjabov
Reader Comments (12)
What an exciting round! I think it's good that Carlsen hasn't run away with the tournament. It will keep it dramatic all the way to the end, and I'm sure will provoke some exciting chess in the last two rounds.
I hope your back feels better soon!
Note that if Carlsen goes 1.5/2 in the last two rounds while Kramnik draws both his games (probably the most likely scenario in which they end up tied for first), Carlsen will be ahead on the most-wins tiebreak before it even goes to Sonneborn-Berger.
I agree that the tiebreak criteria (other than head-to-head) are pretty silly.
Great day for the oldies!. I'm happy that Ivanchuk proved that his opening choices with black work after all the criticism he received. And happy for Anand, now he has a chance.
No need to apologize - I feel fortunate to have you put in so much effort. (For example the amount of work you put into the alternate lines after Kramnik's ...Kf5 against Grischuk - I don't believe I've seen anyone put as much effort into it as you did.)
Personally I'm loving this tournament. I can only remember three grandmaster draws, aka non-games, and they were all in rounds ten and eleven. Even most of the uneventful draws had actual content to them. I think this may be the best tournament I've ever seen or read about. It obviously has a very strong field, and while it isn't the strongest tournament of all time in terms of number of top players, it makes up for that with the importance of the event (let's face it, Linares was always just one tournament) and the overall fighting spirit of the competitors. And the one thing the tournamnet had lacked was a dramatic storyline, and Kramnik's second half surge has now added that. (Shades of the second Piatagorsky Cup!) Of course, I'm also not a conspiracy theorist....
Speaking of old tournaments, I thought of San Sebastian 1911 today, but that's probably just me. Incidentally, anyone still complaining that Ivanchuk shouldn't be there?
[DM: Maybe Carlsen?]
Still, I'm really looking forward to the New in Chess issue for this tournament, and I'm kind of hoping someone writes a book about this one.
...
Incidentally, Magnus still has good chances. Magnus beating Radjabov and drawing Svidler seems very plausible, as do two draws for Vlad. OTOH, Carlsen seemed exhausted the last two rounds while Kramnik has seemed like he has more in reserve. (Although if you watch the press conferences today you would have seen that Kramnik looked and sounded thrashed himself - he really didn't have the bearing of a man in the process of moving into clear first with two rounds to go.) Sonas is now giving Kramnik 65% chance of winning the tournament, and Carlsen 35%. Personally I think it's a bit more a pick 'em situation.
+1 to Icepick's comment---I'd say your prose did a pretty good job of analysis already. I did put a comment in at ChessVibes on where their recap of the Kramnik-Grischuk presser analysis loses for Black.
What's missing from Sonas' odds analysis is comparison runs of what his model would have projected with 2-3 rounds to go in other tournaments, and the actual outcomes. Does the distribution of the actual outcomes over, say, 100 (or, say, 500) such tournaments match the projections?
Carlsen did poorly against Ivanchuk & Radjabov in the first half - so am not sure whether he should press too much with black.
If Kramnik draws with Gelfand, as looks likely based on prior encounters, Carlsen can perhaps push very hard against Svidler with white. Kramnik will be caught in an unfortunate situation - should he go all out against Ivanchuk or bide his time based on how Svidler is doing, etc .
I hope your back gets better soon, I know it can be painful - speaking from my own experience (every now and then ever since I turned 30 which is now 15 years ago).
On your preview for the remaining rounds: Why would black against Radjabov be a "big opportunity" for Carlsen? He might have thought the same about white against Ivanchuk, and white against Radjabov in the first half of the event doesn't give him reasons to be optimistic (same story for his black game against Ivanchuk).
Kramnik-Gelfand: There are surprisingly few _recent_ classical games between them. I found only four where Kramnik had white:
2007 Mexico WCh - a spectacular draw in the anti-Moscow variation (33.- 0-0-0 !!? from Gelfand). Such games can go either way, but I don't expect anything similar tomorrow (and not just because the variation seems to have lost popularity).
2007 Dortmund - Kramnik won a nice positional game
2008 Corus, 2013 Zurich - two "correct" draws which seemed even throughout (not sure what to make of the Zurich game, 1.Nf3 c5 2.b3 from Kramnik, and event).
Maybe your impression is a bit blurred because, for some reason, Gelfand had many more whites against Kramnik (Tal Memorial 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 AND 2011). These games were all drawn but weren't all boring.
I may be biased, but I would say Kramnik's chances to beat Gelfand with white are as good as Carlsen's to win with black against Radjabov.
Like all others I think your coverage of this tournament is awesome. I am looking forward to your comments, because when playing through the two decisive games they didn't make much sense to me.
It's like the 80's again when II rushed for the morning papers during the K-K matches. Last time that happened was during San Luis 2005.
Good luck with your back Dennis! We have been spoilt with your analysis. As mentioned already, apologies are not necessary. We don't apologize for being too ill for work (especially when we get paid).
About the tournament, I felt that Carlsen might have gotten tired for the first time in a serious way (impression gotten from TWIC reports). The attitude of playing out games may be catching up with him in this tournament. I think Carlsen still has good chances - but a lot will depend on his handling of his (presumed) tiredness. Its good to see Kramnik leading though - I am a fan of his.
I did feel Carlsen's white win over Gelfand was impressive. It was interesting to note that Ivanchuk's lack of playing Carlsen's predicted moves was important for Carlsen. Maybe he is used to predicting a high percentage of moves? In this case, it would perhaps tire him (apart from the extra time usage).
I find it interesting that this candidates event and the previous one have both produced the exact problems that people had raised before the events started. This tournament has the "randomness" of players such as Ivanchuk playing at different levels in different games, the potential for fairly ridiculous tiebreakers picking the winner, and at least the optics of possible collusion. The last one had Grischuk drawing to reach rapids, and the short matches producing several upsets.
I still think (longer) candidates matches are the best way to go, but maybe another good option would be to play a tournament like the current one, but where the top 2 finishers play a match to determine the title challenger. The player who finished first in the tournament could have draw odds for the match.
[DM: IMHO, we should stop repeating others' "big lie". There's absolutely no evidence of collusion, and to throw out allegations of that sort is simply slander. (I'm not accusing you of that, only suggesting that that theory not get repeated when there's no evidence whatsoever.) In fact, today's game Kramnik-Gelfand is good evidence against the theory, as Gelfand has been on very, very good terms with Kramnik for more than two decades. If anyone would have taken a dive for Kramnik, it would have been - and he didn't. That may not stop dedicated Kramnik-haters and Carlsen fanboy trolls, but life's too short to try to oonvince such people. (Nothing wrong with being a Carlsen fan, of course; that's not what I'm referring to in the last sentence!)]
"What's missing from Sonas' odds analysis is comparison runs of what his model would have projected with 2-3 rounds to go in other tournaments, and the actual outcomes."
In other words, are the final rounds of tournaments different from earlier rounds for the leaders? Great question. I would guess that they are.
To be clear, I absolutely do not believe any collusion has taken place. I only meant to bring up the theoretical possibility, and I it seems that since the possibility exists, some people will always convince themselves that it has occurred. The idea of collusion is really a subset of a larger issue with this format, which is the variability of the players' level of play. A match-based format avoids this.