World Blitz Championship, Day 1: Grischuk Leads

As you'd expect from a blitz event, even and especially the World Blitz Championship, there was lots of excitement, with a fair share of both high-level play and blunders. We'll note some of the best and worst of the play below, but first, a few words about the competition.

Sergey Karjakin won the rapid event that finished yesterday, and led most of today too, but losses in the last two rounds to Magnus Carlsen (he played that game as if intimidated, something he'll have to overcome if he wants to best his contemporary in the long run) and his former countryman Vassily Ivanchuk.

Magnus Carlsen is the favorite by rating, but it took him a very long time to get going. After four games he was -2, and was still -1 as late as round 11! In round 1 he was clobbered by Dmitry Andreikin, while in round 8 he lost to Nikolay Chadaev (who??) and the ridiculous gambit 1. e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nf3. (It must be bad, but in a way I approve. The Norwegian Defense strikes me as an "I can beat you with anything; you're not even worthy of a real opening" approach, so if you have the nerve to one-up your opponent and the ability to succeed once you do, then so much the better.) Finally he got on a little winning streak at the end of the day, winding up at +2.

The leader is Alexander Grischuk, who lost a couple of games (to Andreikin and to Peter Svidler) but won against many of his closest rivals, including Carlsen, Vassily Ivanchuk (who is also tied for second with Karjakin and - as you might have wondered by this point - Andreikin), Morozevich and Radjabov.

Other notable performances thus far: Chadaev is +1, having defeated not only Carlsen but (just counting the big names) Le Quang Liem, Veselin Topalov and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Notable, though not in an especially good way, is Boris Gelfand's -1 score. It's not that bad a performance, but it's not what one would expect of a "vice-champion", as FIDE often labels world championship runners-up. (Is the title-holder the "virtue champion"?)

Now to discuss some highlights, for those of you who might wish to look at the games, but not necessarily all 120 of them. First, some opening highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view). There was plenty of experimentation, as is to be expected in blitz. (This is both because it's easier to get away with nonsense there, and because it's prudent to hide one's best material for slower time controls.) Morozevich played the Albin Counter-Gambit a couple of times, and you've already read about Chadaev's goofy gambit. (He played some other minor oddities as well over the course of the event.) Carlsen played a King's Gambit in round 2, and after 2...exf4 he trotted out 3.Nc3. He drew, but it took a little work.

Carlsen's opening idea was pretty shaky there, but Karjakin trotted out a far worse opening with White against Gelfand. He showed too much respect for Gelfand's Najdorf and played a terrible anti-Sicilian line instead, was quickly worse, and lost the sort of clumsy game one would expect from a player of my level, not his. Carlsen played a better version of the same feeble line against Gelfand later on, and while it didn't cause any problems for Black at least White could (and did) draw without much worry. There's nothing wrong with the Dutch, of course - especially when your opponents play it - but it's rare to see this from Carlsen. Morozevich played a sideline and went on to win a really crazy game.

It's one thing for Carlsen to make questionable opening choices - he is #1, after all. But sometimes others made questionable choices against him. Teimour Radjabov, for instance, may not have deserved censure for taking the white side of a Hedgehog. But the way he played it, with 15.h3, 16.g4 and 17.f4 had the naive look of the 1970s to it. Back then those on the white side thought that with all that extra space they could expand and kill Black, and it was only after enough games where Black exploded the center and massacred White that players started taking the Hedgehog seriously. (Have a look at the fantastic game Polugaevsky-Ftacnik, Lucern Olympiad 1982 for an example.) Well, apparently some lessons must be learned anew, and when Carlsen played 18...e5! 19.Nde2 d5! the fertilizer hit the air circulation system.

In the technique department, there were plenty of good games. Andreikin's win over Carlsen in round 1 was a surprise entry, and he later won a nice rook ending against Gelfand and a great rook ending against Radjabov. Karjakin won a slew of fine endgames - against Chadaev, for instance, and then in a marathon queen ending vs. Mamedyarov as well.

Other interesting games: Gelfand vs. Viktor Bologan featured a slew of interesting exchange sacs, Svidler-Bologan was a nice positional massage, Karjakin won a terrific-looking game vs. Morozevich, while Morozevich-Bologan and Bologan-Chadaev are also both worth a look.

Finally, the blunders. There were lots of them! Here's what is surely just a partial list of games: Radjabov-Chadaev, Kotsur-Bologan (which had a nice finish), Gelfand-Ivanchuk, Bologan-Karjakin, Grischuk-Morozevich (49...Rg8 was the lemon; but maybe it shouldn't be called a blunder), Radjabov-Le Quang Liem, Kotsur-Topalov, Gelfand-Bologan, Andreikin-Svidler, Jumabayev-Bologan, Carlsen-Ivanchuk (and how!), Chadaev-Jumabayev, Topalov-Andreikin, Radjabov-Kotsur (27...Qg7??), Jumabayev-Grischuk, Mamedyarov-Le Quang Liem, Topalov-Ivanchuk (21.Rxd2??) and Grischuk-Mamedyarov (but this is so incredible I suspect a problem with the DGT board/relay system).

There are also some pseudo-errors caused as usual by the dumb DGT system in conjunction with poorly trained/forgetful/incompetent arbiters. All chess fans should know by now (even if arbiters don't - why can't the Turkish Chess Federation President ban them instead?) that if the last move given is Ke4/e5/d4/d5 by either side and it makes absolutely no sense at all, it's a DGT "move" and can be disregarded.

Let me conclude with a note about all the blunders. It's remarkable that these players do as well as they do in blitz - it's very difficult to play a blitz game against a strong opponent without making serious errors. As the players are surely a bit tired from the previous days' games and their travel to Kazakhstan, my suggestion would be to enjoy a little pleasure from their blunders - it reminds us that they're only human too - but to enjoy even more the very good chess they play the rest of the time.

Karjakin Wins World Rapid Championship

As most readers probably predicted, someone born in 1990 won the World Rapid Championship in Astana, Kazakhstan; as most readers probably failed to foresee, however, the identity of that individual was Sergey Karjakin, not Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen came into the last day of the tournament with a point and a half lead, and he kept that lead with a win in the first of the day's five rounds. In round 12, however, he lost to Vassily Ivanchuk, and then in round 13 he suffered a loss to Alexander Grischuk. Karjakin won in those two rounds to take a half-point lead, and won in round 14 as well while Carlsen drew with Radjabov. Karjakin coasted in with a last round draw to clinch first. Carlsen, meanwhile, nearly lost his third game of the day - should have, really, but Veselin Topalov missed a simple mate and only managed to draw.

Had Topalov won that game, he and Carlsen would have tied for second. As it was, Karjakin finished with 11.5/15, Carlsen 10.5 and both Topalov and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov came in with 9.5 points apiece. For Topalov, it was his second mini-tragedy of the day - he was winning against Vladislav Tkachiev some rounds earlier, and certainly had what one would normally consider an utterly unloseable position. But Topalov has been known to overpress, and he managed to achieve the seemingly impossible, losing an ending with a knight and four pawns against Tkachiev's knight and lone pawn.

Next on the list was Alexander Grischuk with 9, and then Boris Gelfand finished with 8. Sixth out of sixteen wasn't a fantastic placement, but it's not terrible either, especially with players like Svidler, Ivanchuk, Radjabov and Morozevich below him in the tournament table.

Tomorrow (today for most of us) most of these players will resume battle in the world blitz championship. Alas, Anand, Kramnik and Nakamura aren't present, but it should still be a lot of fun to watch. And judging by the rapid games, lovers of schadenfreude will enjoy a real feast!

Nezhmetdinov Video Biography

The pacing is a little slow, a bit more chess would be nice and at least a couple of the names and pictures are off. Nevertheless, this three-part video biography of the Tatar master Rashid Nezhmetdinov is well worth a look. (Part 1 is here [HT: Brian Karen], and you can follow the links to subsequent parts once you're there.)

For those of you unfamiliar with Nezhmetdinov, he never achieved the GM title (though he may well have been of GM strength by contemporary standards), but as an attacking player and tactician he had few equals in his day. Against Mikhail Tal, for instance, his record was 4-1, and he was even a bit unlucky in the game he lost. His chess may not have been terribly well-rounded, but what he did well, he did extremely well. Do a search for his best games online, and you'll be in for a real treat.

World Rapid Championship: Carlsen Leads After Day 2 of 3

For a while it was a two-horse race, but in the later rounds today Magnus Carlsen got some breathing space relative to his 1990-contemporary Sergey Karjakin. The two were tied after day one with 4.5/5 apiece, and after eight rounds Karjakin had even nosed into the lead with 7 points to Carlsen's 6.5. Unfortunately for Karjakin, he lost in round 9 to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov while Carlsen beat Vladislav Tkachiev, and then in round 10 Carlsen won their head-to-head matchup.

In that game and quite a few others I've seen, Carlsen has been able to play to his strength, grinding everyone down with his fantastic technique. Almost no "drawn" position is safe against him - even if the opponent is in the absolute elite. Will his peers and up-and-coming admirers learn from his example and spend a little less time on the opening and more time on technique? They should!

Meanwhile, back to the event. Carlsen leads the World Rapid Championship with 8.5, Karjakin and - surprisingly! - Veselin Topalov are tied for second with 7 points each. Mamedyarov has 6, Alexey Dreev, Alexander Grischuk and Teimour Radjabov has 5.5. Among the other top players, Peter Svidler has 5, Boris Gelfand and Vassily Ivanchuk have 4.5 (Ivanchuk's loss to round 10 against Radjabov was hideous - or a delight, if you like train wrecks) and Alexander Morozevich has 4.

The last five rounds are tomorrow, and then the blitz championship starts Monday. Meanwhile, you can find some short videos here, while if you go here it looks like you can replay the day's action. (You should drag the slider in a bit, though, as it's just the logo for the first 10+ minutes. It's better than nothing, but the camera people could take a few tips from their counterparts in Moscow.)

Nakamura Working on a Chess Autobiography

A while back I reported on a forthcoming book on American star Hikaru Nakamura; a book its subject found objectionable as a matter of principle (especially as a matter of principal). One commentator to the aforementioned post suggested that Nakamura write his own book, and that's just what he has decided to do. Most top players wait until they're either on the cusp of a world championship match or over the hill to "pen" ("What are pens, grandpa?") their chess memoirs, but whether to set the record straight or to undermine the other book's sales, his work is underway.

No doubt it'll be very interesting; hopefully it won't be too interesting, in a burn-your-bridges-while-crossing-them kind of way.

World Blitz & Rapid Championships: Pairings

All here, on this handy page on the TWIC website. The rapid event starts tomorrow (Friday) and runs through the weekend; the blitz tournament takes place Monday and Tuesday. (Here's the event website.)

Both events have 16 players, with the same top 11 in each:

1. Magnus Carlsen (2837)
2. Teimour Radjabov (2788)
3. Sergey Karjakin (2779)
4. Alexander Morozevich (2770)
5. Vassily Ivanchuk (2769)
6. Alexander Grischuk (2763)
7. Veselin Topalov (2752)
8. Peter Svidler (2749)
9. Boris Gelfand (2738)
10. Viktor Bologan (2732)
11. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2726)

Five other players qualified for each event. In the rapid, the happy qualifiers were Alexey Dreev (2677), Igor Kurnosov (2663), Vladislav Tkachiev (2644), Murtas Kazhgaleyev (2589) and Anuar Ismagambetov (2471). In the blitz, they were (and are) Dmitry Andreikin (2700), Le Quang Liem (2693), Nikolai Chadaev (2580), Pavel Kotsur (2548) and Rinat Jumabayev (2525).

A Radjabov Interview

Tal Memorial co-runner-up Teimour Radjabov, interviewed here. (HT: hylen)

A Magnus Carlsen Interview

Here (HT: Hylen). There's a surprising amount of content, including remarks on his own levels of motivation. Slightly pungent, though many would agree with it, was a remark en passant about Boris Gelfand: "Boris is of course a tremendous chess player, but… the current Gelfand isn’t a player of the class to have claims on the title!"

Seriously?

Gelfand had to win ten matches in a row to get his shot at the title, and against Anand - who Carlsen explicitly considers a "real" world champion - Gelfand lost by the narrowest of margins.

Starting with the 2009 World Cup, Gelfand won two-game mini-matches against the relatively unknown GMs Obdochuk and Amonatov before defeating Judit Polgar, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Dmitry Jakovenko, Sergey Karjakin and Ruslan Ponomariov. Then, in the Candidates in 2011 he beat Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Gata Kamsky and Alexander Grischuk to make it to a title match with Viswanathan Anand. Prior to Anand, he won eight straight matches vs. 2700s (okay, seven of eight - Polgar, who is often over 2700, had slipped to 2680 at that point) to get his shot.

Levon Aronian tried but didn't make it, and Vladimir Kramnik likewise tried but failed. Carlsen? He didn't even try. That's his prerogative, but until he earns a world championship match it might be more appropriate not to make remarks about the level of a player who gets there.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt

A Review of Lysyj and Ovetchkin's The Berlin Defence

Igor Lysyj and Roman Ovetchkin, The Berlin Defence (Chess Stars, 2012). 276 pp.

Garry Kasparov may have been more popular than Vladimir Kramnik and the Najdorf more popular than the Berlin, but at the moment Kramnik's approach has carried the day. Many top GMs include the Berlin as a regular part of their repertoire, and while it has been a while since I've seen a new Najdorf book, I can think of at least five recent works that focus on the Berlin either exclusively or at least in large part.

The work under review is co-authored by a pair of Russian GMs: Roman Ovetchkin (2501), who works primarily as a trainer nowadays; and Igor Lysyj (2632), who is still fairly young (24 or 25) and trying to make his way in competitive chess. They have offered a very helpful book that to my mind strikes a good balance between detail and usability. Make a book encyclopedic and only professionals and addicts will get their money's worth; too simple and it won't be of much use against anyone but the weak and those who avoid all research.

As is customary with Chess Stars' opening works, each chapters comprises three parts: a "Quick Repertoire" section outlining the main paths and offering some general explanations, a "Step by Step" section that fills in the important details, and then "Complete Games". In some Chess Stars book the latter can also be used to fill in more theoretical details, but for Lysyj and Ovetchkin the games' function is clearly illustration.

At 276 smallish pages, there's enough material for the reader, but it's too short to be some sort of encyclopedia on the Berlin. Thus in the 95 or so pages devoted to the Berlin Ending (i.e. the one arising after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8) Black has many plans to choose from.

One fundamental question is what to do with the king: there are plans where Black plays ...Bd7 and ...Kc8, hoping later to play ...b6 and ...Kb7; and there are plans where the king goes to e8, often intending to connect the rooks after a later ....Ke7 (say, after White plays Bg5 and meets ...Be7 with an exchange).

Another question is what Black will do with the h-pawn. Sometimes it goes to h6, keeping both White's knights and bishop off of g5. (A bishop on g5 covers d8, preventing Black from achieving his common ambition of swapping off at least one pair of rooks, while a knight on g5 can harass or exchange Black's best minor piece, the light-squared bishop, when it comes to e6.) If the pawn is on h5, however, it restricts White's inevitable kingside expansion and clears h6 for a Black rook (or h5 in case the pawn continues to h4). This is useful and logical - if Black's king sits on e8 the queen's rook can often make it to d8 easily enough, but the king's rook can't get across to the open file if Black's king can't make it to e7.

There are other "parameters" as well, and since it's a repertoire book rather than an exhaustive survey the authors had to choose. The plan they recommend has for its tabiya the position resulting from the further moves 9.Nc3 Ke8 10.h3 h5. For those who remember my review of Leonid Kritz's ChessBase DVD/download on the Berlin, his main line for Black was 9.Nc3 Ke8 10.h3 and then 10...Be7, keeping White's bishop off of g5 and preparing to swap knights with ...Nh4. A drawback of sorts with that line is that after 11.g4 Nh4 12.Nxh4 Bxh4 Black can't realistically hope for more than a draw. Kritz feels comfortable enough about the ease with which Black can obtain that draw, but that isn't ideal for those who aren't in a situation where a draw is a fully satisfactory result. The Lysyj and Ovetchkin approach avoids the problem with 10...h5, in that 11.g4 is premature here: 11...hxg4 12.hxg4 Nh6 forces White into one awkward concession or another. (To wit: sac the pawn for inadequate compensation, give up the second bishop, or play the horribly anti-positional 13.g5.)

Naturally, this doesn't mean that everything is perfect for Black after 10...h5: it's a matter of picking one's preferences at the buffet rather than finding a needle in a haystack. Still, we can ask how the proposed repertoire fares nowadays and how it holds up against the challenges of other recent products on the market today.

As a representative example, let's have a look at Vassilios Kotronias' excellent, advanced work The Grandmaster Battle Manual (Quality Chess, 2011). It isn't primarily a book on opening theory, but the Greek GM does delve deeply from time to time. In the chapter "Beating the Wall-Y Structures" he investigates the Berlin from White's point of view (deeply - 42 pages' worth!), and from the tabiya after 10...h5 recommends 11.Rd1 Be7 12.Bg5. Lysyj and Ovetchkin don't examine 12.Bg5, but do look at 11.Bg5 Be6 12.Rfd1 Be7, which transposes to Kotronias' line after 12...Be6 in the latter's move order. At this point Kotronias considers three moves: 13.b3 (he thinks it's good for a slight edge), 13.g3 (allows Black to equalize), and his preference of 13.Rd2 (which he naturally thinks offers White an advantage). (Curiously, he doesn't so much as mention 13.Rd3, which he played against Mastrovasilis in a tournament in 2010.)

Turning to Lysyj and Ovetchkin, they cover those three moves, plus 13.a3, 13.Ne2, 13.Ne4 and 13.Rd3. In the case of 13.b3, their line doesn't quite match up with Kotronias's, but I think their suggestion is close enough at one key point and the approach they take is more sensible for Black than Kotronias's offer. 13.g3 isn't really a threat as far as Kotronias's analysis was concerned, but given its high pedigree (Grischuk, Svidler and Anand are among the players who have tried it) Lysyj and Ovetchkin give it a lot of attention. Their analysis immediately diverges from Kotronias's, but they likewise conclude that Black keeps equal chances.

Finally, 13.Rd2. Kotronias claims that 13...Rd8 is "box", i.e., forced, but Mssrs. L & O obviously disagree, as they offer the untested 13...Rc8!? as an improvement. They examine 13...Rd8 as well and agree that White obtains an edge, though on move 16 they offer a different route to that end. About 13...Rc8, they write this: "It is a nice prophylactic, since he protects in advance his c7-pawn and thus neutralizes the effect of White's doubling of his rooks on the d-file." (This slightly awkward prose is typical of Chess Stars - a little amusing but rarely an impediment to understanding.) There's about a page and a half of analysis; I'll offer only their main line, with their punctuation: 14.Rad1 f6 15.Bf4 Kf7 16.Ne4 Bd5! 17.Re1 b5! 18.Rde2 Bb4 19.c3 Ba5, with counterplay.

I noted above that of the book's 276 pages only 95 are devoted to the Berlin ending, leaving 181 on everything else. Happily, while I've seen other books cop out and avoid discussing 4.Nc3, Lysyj and Ovetchkin don't - it's covered here. There are 85 pages on the increasingly popular 4.d3, as ever more players with White prefer to avoid all the finesses of the ending and prefer to reach a "normal" Ruy position. The authors take the principled approach here, recommending 4...Bc5, but I'll leave further details to interested readers.

All in all, it's a very competent effort, and I can warmly recommend The Berlin Defence to those who play the Berlin or are interested in doing so, and many who face it could benefit as well. I think players around 1800 and up could use it profitably; for players below that point, there's probably too little forest and too many trees. As usual, Chess Stars has done a good job!

World Blitz & Rapid Championship

The event runs from July 2-10 in Astana, Kazakhstan, with preliminary qualifying events running from the 2nd-4th, the rapid finals go from the 6th through the 8th, and then the blitz finals take place on the 9th and 10th.

More info here, event website here.