2013 World Cup: Round 6, Day 3: Kramnik & Andreikin Reach Finals; Andreikin & Karjakin Qualify for Candidates
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 9:07PM Today's tiebreak session at the World Cup was a short one, as two 25-minute games were enough to determine the match winners. In the first session Evgeny Tomashevsky and Dmitry Andreikin had a fairly quick draw, but theirs was the marathon of the round. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave played like he had lost his mind in his white game against Kramnik, and had to resign after just 22 moves. After 16 moves of that game the position was level and sharp, and here Vachier-Lagrave's decision to bring the rook into play with 17.Re4 quickly backfired. After 20...Bf5 White was already in some trouble and the c-pawn looked likely to fall after a subsequent ...Bd3. That would have been a dream scenario for the Frenchman compared to what actually happened. After 21.Rh4?? Bc2 White's best would have been to surrender an exchange for less than nothing with 22.Qe2 Bd3 23.Qd1. Instead, he uncorked the even more disastrous 22.Qxc2??, hoping for 22...Qxc2 23.Be4. That also loses to 23...Qxd2+ 24.Bxh7+ Kh8 25.Bc2+ Qh6, which will leave Black a rook up, but Kramnik's 22...Nxf3+ was even simpler, winning the house.
In the rematch Kramnik was a little slack, and his whole plan to swap everything with 13.d5, 14.Ne1 and 15.Nxd5 gave Vachier-Lagrave a little pull, but when Black played the premature 23...b5 the game started to tip back in Kramnik's favor. By the end Kramnik was close to winning, but took the opportunity to draw by repetition. That won him the match and a trip to the finals, but it didn't win him a ticket to next year's Candidates' tournament. That's because he had already qualified. What it did do was switch his ticket. Rather than qualifying by rating he qualifies as a World Cup finalist, and that means that the player who was the #3 finisher (and thus non-qualifier) on rating has now qualified: Sergey Karjakin.
Today was an interesting day for Kramnik, and it's not clear that he really benefited. There's the prestige of making it to the finals of the World Cup, and even more if he wins it. There's the added payday, too. On the other hand, his score against Karjakin isn't fantastic, to put it mildly. Since 2010, taking all time controls into account, the score is 7-1 for Karjakin, not counting five draws. Even just taking classical games into account it isn't good news for Kramnik: 2-0 for Karjakin, plus four draws.
Meanwhile, the other semi-final was also bad news for Kramnik. Kramnik did lose a blitz game to Tomashevsky last year, but their classical record shows that Kramnik has won both of their games: one in 2004 and one in 2012. As for Andreikin, Kramnik has lost both games they've played, both in the last couple of months.
So who advanced? Andreikin, of course. Tomashevsky was doing pretty well with Black into the middlegame, but it all went downhill after 28...Re1? He apparently missed 30.Qd2 after the trade of rooks, and after that Andreikin whipped up an initiative that quickly decided the game. Tomashevsky should have traded queens with 28...Qxd3 and after 29.Rxd3 played 29...Re6 so as to defend the f-pawn if necessary. The position would have remained equal and the match unclear.
Tomorrow is the one and only absolute day off in the entire event, and then the best-of-four game final begins on Friday.
Reader Comments (3)
Kramnik is able to overcome longlasting problems against certain payers, as he showed against Shirov and Adams. So I think this final is a great and perfect opportunity, just in time before the canditates.
Andreikin has managed to get to the finals almost entirely on the strength of his rapid play. Many commentators have pointed out that he has even lost rating points because of his classical chess performance. As someone relatively new to the world of professional chess, and admittedly a very weak player, I don't know whether this is a flaw with the knock-out format, as Vladimir Kramnik seems to think, or with the game in general when it's played under longer time controls. The draw margin is so wide, and opening theory so mapped out, that it seems to me surprisingly easy for an unambitious player to "sterilize" a game, if not outright draw, if he wants to. Especially if he has white.
Nigel Short has been on something of a crusade against the stalemate rule, because "it makes a drawish game even more drawish," and I think this is an interesting suggestion. This tournament has produced some of its most exciting games when one player absolutely had to win and showed up to fight. I'm thinking in particular of Aronian-Tomashevsky, Giri-Granda, and the Morozevich-Tomashevsky tiebreak, which I was fortunate to see live. Sadly, such an intense and prolonged last stand was not possible for Jon Ludvig Hammer, who, down one game to Gata Kamsky, found himself on the receiving end of a Scotch Four Knights, or for MVL in the second rapid game, where Vladimir Kramnik had no difficulty getting rid of all the pieces, vacuum-cleaner style. A change to the rules might make simplification much more dangerous, produce more decisive results, and thereby encourage more fighting chess. Or so it seems to this amateur, anyway.
What do you think, Dennis? Do you like Nigel's suggestion or others like it? Or do you disagree that the kind of thing I just mentioned is even a problem to begin with? I'm aware that my level is far too low to understand and appreciate what's going on in a lot of these games. It may be that there is a lot of fight and even beauty in many of these purportedly "dull" draws. However, having seen the game played at its most complicated and intense, I can't help but think that there's something wrong with classical chess right now, when players like Andreikin can so easily defer the struggle to the rapid play and when merely reaching dynamic and complex positions is considered a challenge. Thoughts?
[DM: I don't take Short's provocation about stalemate seriously. It's a drum he beats from time to time in the commentary booth, but more on the grounds of chess "justice" than as a fix-it against the threat of dull draws. My opinion is that the dull draw really isn't a serious problem, and to the degree it is it's a psychological problem rather than one having to do with the rules of the game. Look at computer-computer battles and you will see plenty of decisive games and "fight", and it's generally true of professional players as well.
As for the justice argument, there are plenty of injustices in chess, not to mention a generally high level of irrealism. Let's say both players are attacking on opposite wings. One player finds a brilliant sacrificial combination and gives mate one move before the opponent, despite being down a queen, a couple of rooks and a couple of pieces. In a real battle, the second side would just continue and kill the enemy king, win the war with their superior firepower and appoint a new leader. How "realistic" is en passant or castling, or pawn promotion, or the knight move, or...etc.? There's nothing inherently wrong with changing the stalemate rule (although I doubt that would do much to dissuade short draws; it would just create a pain in the neck by changing a bunch of endgame theory), and at different times in the past stalemate counted as either a win or as the superior fraction of a draw. But it's neither necessary nor sufficient to fix the alleged problems of the game.
One other comment. The stalemate rule is supposed to be a matter of justice. Short was unhappy that a player with a large material advantage (e.g. king plus wrong bishop and rook pawn vs. king is a draw if the defender's king reaches the corner) must at times settle for a draw. Look at all the extra material one side has, and see that they can't win - isn't that unjust? Suppose it is, but is the injustice the extra material's impotence? If so, consider that the side that is down in material can sometimes administer the stalemate to the strong side! (A simple example: W: Kh8, ph7. B: Kf7.)
Chess is a game with arbitrary rules, and wherever there are arbitrary rules there will eventually be inelegancies and problems. The question is whether those problems outweigh the benefits, and it doesn't seem to me in this case that they do. Others may disagree and they're of course welcome to do so.]
Wow, thank you for the reply! A lot of good points there; you've completely convinced me on the stalemate rule. I wonder, however, why the alleged problem of the uneventful draw, which is motivating a lot of these suggestions about rule changes, is not a concern for you. I know this is a tired subject and I don't want to take up too much of your time, but could you briefly elaborate? Or maybe point me to a post/article of yours on the subject?
To me the issue isn't so much the lack of decisive results as the increasing difficulty of even reaching, let alone winning, fight-filled positions with realistic winning prospects. Opening theory and computer analysis seem the principal culprits here, but perhaps minor modifications to the rules could help stem the tide. I did some googling on chess rule changes and found this very idea expressed some years ago by Vladimir Kramnik, who was making tentative suggestions about changing the castling or en passant rules.
He said, in part, "But, of course, theory is coming on in leaps and bounds. In general, it’s becoming harder and harder for White to get a fight. It’s not simply difficult to get an edge, but to get any kind of fight, for it not to be an empty draw or a totally even position. It’s becoming harder and harder just to get some minimal amount of pressure. And you can already forget about getting some sort of great advantage. So the tendency is clear... Despite the inexhaustibility of chess it’s becoming harder and harder, and as the years go by the tendency’s becoming more and more pronounced, particularly at the top level where everyone’s well prepared. So perhaps it’d make sense to make such minor changes." (link here: http://www.chessintranslation.com/2011/05/kramnik-i-thought-of-banning-castling-before-the-10th-move/)
As I said, I'm not far removed from being a chess beginner, so I make no pretense to knowing what's best for the game at the highest levels. Yet I do enjoy chess immensely and am even beginning to enjoy competitive chess, and worry, for the reasons Kramnik mentioned, whether the game as is has staying power. This is the main reason I'd like to know whether you see any merit in any changes of this kind.
[DM: Maybe you can do a web search or scan my tag cloud. I've addressed the subject many times in the past and would prefer not to do so again. The briefest answer is that there are very few short draws in round-robins, and even here there weren't so many. Most of the cures are worse than the disease (modified Sofia rules aren't so bad, e.g. no draws before move 30 in round robins), and my own preferred solution is for organizers to simply stop inviting players who don't put in a real effort. Incidentally, talk about the "draw death" goes back to at least Capablanca in the 1920s. Eventually they'll be right, unless the end of the world comes first.]