Google Celebrates the First International Chess Tournament

Well...sort of. If you go to their search page, you'll see a little background picture, commemorating the 160th anniversary of the first World's Fair. That event took place in London in 1851, and it's at that fair that the first international chess tournament - London 1851 - took place. It was organized by Howard Staunton, (probably the most overrated figure in 19th century chess) and won by Adolf Anderssen.

So thanks to Google - it's just too bad they didn't sneak any chess paraphernalia in the picture. (Click on it, and then hover over the image on the new page to magnify it.)

HT: Ken Regan

TCEC Season 3 is Underway

For fans of computer-computer matches, the third season of Martin Thoresen's TCEC (Thoresen Chess Engines Competition) is underway. Information on how this season's competition is arranged is here, while the live broadcast (and a list of the participating computers, their ratings and their scores) is here.

The Candidates Matches Start Next Thursday

They're almost here - less than a week away! Eight players will face off in a series of knockout matches in Kazan, Russia for the right to face world champion Viswanathan Anand for the title in early 2012. As there are eight players, there will be three rounds of matches: four-game quarter-finals, four-game semi-finals, and a six game final. Here's the "bracketology" (to borrow a neologism from US sports) - the winner of the first match plays the winner of the second, and so on:

• (1) Veselin Topalov (BUL, 2775)
• (8) Gata Kamsky (USA, 2732)

• (4) Boris Gelfand (ISR, 2733)
• (5) Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (AZE, 2772)

• (3) Levon Aronian (ARM, 2808)
• (6) Alexander Grischuk (RUS, 2747)

• (2) Vladimir Kramnik (RUS, 2785)
• (7) Teimour Radjabov (AZE, 2744)

As you can see, seedings have little to do with current ratings, so don't base your predictions on pairing numbers! Let's offer a little information about these pairings:

Topalov - Kamsky: You may recall that they played a short Candidates final a couple of years ago. Topalov qualified as the loser of the match with Kramnik, while Kamsky won the preceding World Cup. Topalov won the match 4.5-2.5, but it was in fact very close: Topalov won the last game, but was losing at one point, in which case the scores would have been equalized. Oddly, Kamsky seemed to have the better preparation in that match, while Topalov did a better job controlling his nerves, both factors going against type.

Overall, Topalov has a big plus: 7 wins against 1 loss, with 7 draws in their classical battles, not counting a blindfold win for Topalov and a rapid win for Kamsky from Monaco in 2009. Ratings and history suggest that Topalov is the favorite, but Topalov has not played especially well since 2009 while Kamsky had a very good 2010 and just won the US Championship (even hiding his prep). Still, I think Topalov must be the favorite here.

Gelfand - Mamedyarov: Seven of their first nine games were drawn, but since then they've gone at each other like cats and dogs with an incredible 13 of their last 14 games having a decisive result. In classical games, Gelfand has five wins to just one loss, with six draws; in rapid it's 1-0 for Gelfand to 1-0 for Mamedyarov in blindfold. Finally, in blitz, it's +4 -3 =2 in Mamedyarov's favor. As these Candidates matches may come down to rapid and then blitz tiebreaks, these stats may be relevant!

Picking a winner here is tough. Mamedyarov is younger and higher-rated, but Gelfand just keeps marching on, prepares extremely well, is a great fighter in events of this nature and has very good nerves. Gelfand has been in these battles many times before, and has consistently risen to the occasion, while this is new territory for Mamedyarov. I'll go with experience here and pick Gelfand.

Aronian - Grischuk: On paper this looks pretty easy to predict, with a sizable rating gap for Aronian, who keeps going up and up and up while Grischuk alternates excellent results with fair ones and time at the poker table. Still, Grischuk is tremendously talented too and seems to have been working pretty hard on his chess the last year or so.

In classical chess, Aronian leads their series pretty convincingly, +6 -2 =9. This includes a victory in their last classical game, played earlier this year in Wijk aan Zee. In blindfold, they're 1-1-1, and likewise in rapid. (Grischuk won the last game they played, a rapid in the final Amber tournament in March.) Finally, in blitz, Aronian leads by one: +2 -1 =4.

Anything's possible, but I can't see any good reason to pick against Aronian here.

Kramnik - Radjabov: Kramnik has everything on his side but youth and their last blitz game: rating, experience, superior preparation (to go by the past, anyway) and a plus score in their head-to-head battles. It's not quite as bad as it might at first seem, because while Kramnik is +2 =7 against Rajdabov in classical chess, he hasn't beaten him in a classical game in 8 years. In blindfold Kramnik leads 2-0, in rapid they drew their first four games before Kramnik beat him in the President's Cup last year, and in blitz they each won their white game in the last December's World Blitz Championship.

As with the Aronian match, anything is possible, but I can't see any good reason to go against Kramnik here.

I'll look more carefully at the semis once the quarter-finals end, but just to fill out the bracket now for the sake of making false predictions, I'll go for Topalov to beat Gelfand, Aronian to beat Kramnik, and in the finals Aronian will beat Topalov.

Your turn!

Ivanchuk Interviews

Part 1 is here, part 2 (with a second interview) here. Kudos to Chess in Translation!

This Week's ChessVideos Show: The "Quick" Ruy Lopez, Part 2

Featuring the Schliemann Variation (3...f5, also and probably more appropriately known as the Jaenisch Variation). I don't quite make it all the way through the Schliemann, but most of the minor lines plus 4.d4 and 4.d3 are covered; 4.Nc3 will be the subject of next week's video.

You can watch the show here - it's free, as always (free registration required), and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.

Zatonskih Wins US Women's Championship

In keeping with what had gone on for most of the US Women's Championship, Anna Zatonskih won the title by drawing, with Black, in the Armaggedon game that put an end to a crazy tiebreak with Tatev Abrahamyan.

In the first game, like the Armaggedon battle, Zatonskih was Black in an Advance French. Things were running very smoothly for her until 24...g6? 25.Qe3 Qa2?!, when 26.d5 followed by 27.Nd6+ regained the exchange and made it a mess. Unfortunately for Abrahamyan, all her work was thrown away with 36.Rc2??, when 36...Bxg5 was crushing - or at least should have been. With the passive 40...Be7 followed by 41...a6 (time trouble rearing its ugly head, no doubt), most of Black's advantage was gone. (Instead, 40...Bd2 would have maintained a lethal advantage, e.g. 41.h3 Be1 42.Rb2 Bg3 puts White in a very unusual, instantly winning zugzwang.) After 41...a6, the win was very much in doubt until a final Abrahamyan blunder, 58.Ke2??, lost the h-pawn and the game; had she chosen 58.Kg2 instead she would have maintained serious drawing chances.

In game two, Zatonskih only needed a draw with White, but she couldn't get it. She was better for a long time, but in keeping with tournament tradition she said "no thanks" to success. 35.Qe2 would have kept her position safe and slightly better, but she chose an inopportune moment to centralize with 35.Qd5. This left f2 vulnerable after 35...Nf5, and then White had nothing better than to return her extra pawn with 36.b4. Soon Black won another pawn, leading to the final phase of the game with Abrahamyan having a queen, knight and four kingside pawns to Zatonskih's queen, bishop and three kingside pawns. Tired, stressed out and playing off the five second increments didn't help either player create a technical masterpiece, and when White failed to make blockading the passed e-pawn her chief priority, she lost.

So it came down to another Armaggedon game. As we've already seen, the procedure for determining the colors was a matter of bidding: both players secretly bid on how much time they would take to have Black and draw odds, and the low bidder (Zatonskih, taking just 20 minutes) gets her wish. They repeated the line from game 1, but this time Abrahamyan chose a better capture on move 16. That capture put her a pawn up, but Black's bishop pair - especially the "extra" bishop on the light squares, gave Zatonskih excellent compensation. By move 34 they reached a rook and opposite-colored bishop ending where White's extra pawn didn't mean very much. Abrahamyan tried for a long time and was able to make her opponent defend well, but Zatonskih was up to the task, drew the game, and won the title. (And, of course, $18 thousand bucks. Abrahamyan won $12k for second, while in the Championship Kamsky won $40 thousand for first and Shulman $30000 for second.)

So congrats to the Kamsky and Zatonskih, and now it's time for chess fans to look forward to next week and the start of the Candidates matches.

Kamsky US Champion; Women's Championship Undecided

In what must be a confidence-booster going into the Candidates matches, which start next week(!!), Gata Kamsky clinched the championship title with an easy draw against Yuri Shulman. Kamsky had the black pieces, but had no trouble at all, quickly obtaining a better position and a big advantage on the clock. I don't know if he could have pressed for more, but he didn't need to. Winning the first game gave him the luxury of de facto draw odds for the second game, and so Kamsky is the US chess champion for the second straight year, with Shulman once again the runner-up.

In third place was Sam Shankland, who won a one-game tiebreaker with White against Robert Hess in the night session. The third-place winner in the women's event was Irina Krush, as already reported in the previous post, but the identity of the first-place winner won't be decided for another day.

Anna Zatonskih had White and pressed against Tatev Abrahamyan for a long time, but then went too far. 57.Ng2 was a mistake, winning the pesky e-pawn at a great cost, as it allowed Abrahamyan's king to go raiding White's queenside. In the end it was Zatonskih who drew by the skin of her teeth, thanks to variations like 66...Bf6 (instead of 66...Kxb3) 67.Ne3 Kxb3 68.Nd5 followed by 69.Nxb4 and Ke4-f3-g2-h1 with an elementary textbook draw, and 67...Kc3 (rather than 67...Ka2) 68.Nf5 b3 69.Ne3!, when the knight can deal with the b-pawn on its own while the king handles the h-pawn.

So they'll have their playoff tomorrow, and as today it will start a bit early, at 1 p.m. ET (= 12 noon St. Louis time, 6 p.m. CET). They'll play a pair of G/25s (with five second increment) followed, if necessary, by an Armaggedon game.

US Championships: Early Results

The classical games in the 3rd-4th places matches are over, and both were drawn. Hess-Shankland was drawn quickly, and it's possible that Shankland never even got out of his preparation in Alekhine's Gambit in the Panov/Botvinnik Attack against the Caro-Kann. That means they'll being moving on to playoffs tonight, at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. St. Louis time.

Krush-Baginskaite was a bit more conventional, a 4.Qc2 Nimzo-Indian where Krush played very solidly. Near the end Krush sacrificed a pawn to activate her pieces and access Black's weakened kingside, and a timely draw offer put an end to the game and the match, won by Krush 1.5-.5.

In the final matches, Shulman (0) - Kamsky (1) and Zatonskih (.5) - Abrahamyan (.5) are underway, and nothing too dramatic has happened yet with both games are in the transitional stage between the opening and the middlegame.

Programming Alert: US Championship 3rd-4th Place Games Are Underway

So as not to have the sideshow become the main event, the organizers of the US Championships have staggered the second games of the concluding matches. The final matches (Kamsky-Shulman and Zatonskih-Abrahamyan) will go on as scheduled at their regular time (3 p.m. ET), but the matches for third place (Shankland-Hess, Krush-Baginskaite) started a couple of hours early (at 1 p.m. ET), and if tiebreaks are needed in those latter matches they will take place at 8 p.m. ET.

Of course, it's still possible that the finalists will finish their matches first, but it at least reduces the chance of its happening, and by having the 3rd-place matches finish tonight, no matter what, there won't be the odd circumstance of their going a full day later than the championship contest. As for the championship matches, they will have tiebreaks, if necessary, tomorrow.

So, chess fans: if you are ready, willing and able to watch them play, do so now; they're underway. (Apologies for the rhyme!)

US Championships, Finals, Day 1

It seems the good folks at the St. Louis Chess Club are determined to keep their audience entertained, so we have not just two matches - the finals for the championship and the women's championship - but four, as the semi-final losers in each bracket face off to settle the third and fourth places.

In the match that really counts, Gata Kamsky ended Yuri Shulman's long undefeated streak, pulling out an ending with the aid of the old psychological axiom "Do not hurry". In positions where your opponent is worse and unable to do much (if anything) in a positive direction, it's often a good idea to meander a bit, to tack back and forth, to repeat moves and engage in other temporizing activities. This policy often bears fruit, quite often by giving the opponent the chance to self-destruct.

In this game, the moment-of-suicide was 44...Be3. It wasn't at all obvious how Kamsky would make progress after 44...Rg2 (45.Kd2 Rg3), but Shulman thought he would really fix his problems with 44...Be3. Unfortunately, this was a big error: Kamsky switched the rook around to d3, forcing an exchange of rooks. After that Kamsky's extra pawn was enough for an easy win in the bishop ending. Shulman must therefore win tomorrow to stay in the match.

In the women's championship, gambit-lover Tatev Abrahamyan went for a modern version of the Milner-Barry Gambit against Anna Zatonskih's French (with 9.Nbd2 rather than the old-fashioned 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3 and so on). I'm not sure she got much out of it, but when Black played 17...Bb5 (rather than, say, 17...Rc8) it looked like White could have obtained a pleasant initiative after 18.Bxb5 Qxb5 with 19.Nd4 followed by 20.Rac1. Instead, Abrahamyan chose 19.Qf4, and this didn't seem as effective. Zatonskih kept her extra pawn and may have had some chances to consolidate it later. If so, she failed to take advantage, and by keeping as active as possible Abrahamyan managed to scrape out a draw.

In the 3rd-4th match games, Shankland-Hess was drawn in a Catalan that seemed a bit easier for Hess, while Krush won fairly easily against Baginskaite, despite having Black. Baginskaite's opening was rather odd, and the weaknesses created in the early middlegame came home to roost later on, as Krush finished her off with a nice flurry of tactics.