The Daily Update: Mamedyarov Leads Dortmund and Rybka is Beating Stockfish, Plus Biel Starts Today

In Dortmund, Ruslan Ponomariov's time atop the leaderboard has come to an end, at least for the moment, as he was ground down by tournament rookie Le Quang Liem. Vladimir Kramnik held Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to a draw, but that still put the latter in clear first with 3/4, half a point ahead of Ponomariov. Le Quang Liem is in clear third at 50%, and the rest of the field is tied for last at -1.

In the unofficial Rybka 4 vs. Stockfish 1.8 match, Rybka has opened up a sizable lead. It's a 48-game match, and after 38 games Rybka leads 22.5-15.5.

Finally, the Biel Festival starts today (Monday), and the main event is imaginatively called "The Young Grandmasters Tournament". The participants are:

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2710)

Evgeny Tomashevsky (2708)

Fabiano Caruana (2675 - but unofficially he's over 2700 now)

Wesley So (2665)

Dmitry Andreikin (2643)

Anish Giri (2642)

Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (2642)

Parimarjan Negi (2636)

Maxim Rodshtein (2626)

David Howell (2620)

Looks entertaining!

Dortmund 2010, Round 3: Mamedyarov catches Ponomariov in the Lead

There were two draws today, and there probably should have been three, but a blunder by Le Quang Liem in a challenging but objectively equal position allowed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to catch Ruslan Ponomariov for the early lead. Ponomariov had to suffer for a long time against Arkadij Naiditsch on the Black side of the Berlin Wall, but managed to finally secure the draw in a rook vs. rook and bishop ending.

Finally, I'm not sure what was going on in Kramnik-Leko. Kramnik played the Catalan, and Leko chose a well-known gambit line that gives Black good light-squared compensation for the pawn. Indeed, Kramnik was unable to extinguish Black's counterplay, and on move 39 offered a rather desperate-looking sac that was his best chance. Fortunately for him, Leko either chickened out or was too short of time to think at all, and on move 40 he rather meekly allowed a perpetual when several reasonable (and non-brilliant) alternatives existed that would have allowed him to play for a win.

Standings After Round 3:

1-2. Ponomariov, Mamedyarov 2.5

3-6. Leko, Naiditsch, Kramnik, Le Quang Liem 1

The round 3 games, with my comments to the Mamedyarov and Kramnik games, are here.

Dortmund 2010, Rounds 1-2: A Mini-Update

I've been extremely busy with domestic duties, so I haven't been able to blog on the Dortmund tournament the way I'd like to. Hopefully I'll catch up soon, but for now, here are the results from rounds 1 and 2:

Round 1:

Ponomariov - Leko 1-0

Kramnik - Le Quang Liem 1/2-1/2

Naiditsch - Mamedyarov 0-1

Round 2:

Ponomariov - Kramnik 1-0

Le Quang Liem - Naditisch 1/2-1/2

Leko - Mamedyarov 1/2-1/2

Standings:

1. Ponomariov 2

2. Mamedyarov 1.5

3. Le Quang Liem 1

4-6. Leko, Kramnik, Naiditsch .5

This Week's ChessVideos Show: Breaking White's Pawn Wedge in the French

For this week's ChessVideos presentation I take a look at a classic game in the French, Reshevsky-Vaganian, Skopje 1976. Reshevsky played the Tarrasch Variation and set up an enormous pawn wedge - the "V" went b2-c3-d4-e5-f4. Space galore. (How much would you normally pay for this? But wait, there's more...) Further Reshevsky arranged things so that none of his minor pieces blocked each other. Now it sounds ideal, so you might reasonably wonder, what's the catch? If White is getting all this for free, then shouldn't he have a big advantage and be able to start squeezing Black into oblivion?

Well, not so fast. First, as many of us have learned from one side or the other in the French, White's space advantage is rarely all that fantastic in and of itself; indeed, Black's advantage in queenside space is generally equivalent or at least nearly so. The second point is the biggie for the game in question: White's king went up to g3. This need not have been fatal, but Reshevsky failed to take prophylactic measures at the right time, and as a result he went down in a spectacular blaze of glory. We might not reach the same position or be able to win as powerfully as Vaganian did, but French players can certainly learn from how he set up his attack and apply it to your own games. So in addition to the aesthetic component, it's a useful game to know, too.

The show can be viewed here and is available for free and on-demand for the next month or so (free registration required).

In Praise of Kieseritzky: A Follow-Up/Ad

I don't generally mention my videos for ChessLecture.com, but as my show this week was motivated by this post a few days ago it seemed a good time for an exception.

One of the most famous victims, at least to those of us of a certain generation, was the French master Amedee Gibaud. He achieved negative fame for losing the following tournament game to Frederic Lazard in Paris in 1924: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nd2 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.h3?? Ne3 0-1; the only problem is that it didn't really happen. It might not have been him, the victim lost in five moves rather than four, it wasn't in 1922 and it was an offhand game. (Other than that, the story is 100% accurate.) So he's a special sort of Kieseritzky: his fame rests on a negative achievement, but in this case the "achievement" is a fiction. (For more details, read this.)

To help rehabilitate Gibaud's reputation, I decided to present another one of his game, one where he plays far more strongly. Ironically, it's still another game against Lazard, and more ironically still he loses this one too. But it's just one mistake that costs him the game, which is very nice, and it was a very easy and unobvious error to make.

So those of you who are members of ChessLecture.com might want to check it out; those of you who aren't might consider it - not only for my videos, of course, but because there's an impressive set of presenters with new videos almost daily.

Dortmund Starts Today (Thursday)

Here are the first round pairings for Germany's annual contribution to the world of super-GM chess:

Ponomariov - Leko

Kramnik - Le Quang

Naiditsch - Mamedyarov

The games start at 3 p.m. CET (= 9 a.m. ET); tournament website here.

Predictions? Kramnik's a pretty easy favorite for this one, as the highest-rated player with a fantastic track record in Dortmund (he has won or tied for first nine times in the past 15 years), but they play the games for a reason!

The "Swiss" Championship?

Something Chess Today is calling the Swiss Championship is underway, and after 6 rounds Korchnoi and Gallagher - both Swiss - are tied for second with 4/6, half a point behind Pelletier - also Swiss - and Kosteniuk. Huh? (What's the old joke - visit Russia, before Russia visits you?) Kosteniuk is a Russian citizen: she plays there all the time, represents them in team events and is a member of their federation. So a Russian championship, sure. She can't play in the U.S. Championship - rightly - but it would at least make some sense if she did: she lives with her American husband in Miami, Florida. But what could possibly justify her playing in the Swiss Championship? Maybe a French or German-speaking reader can go to the tournament site and explain what's happening. If this really is the Swiss Championship, I know I'd be pretty upset if I had been the qualifier for the 10th spot, only to have it given away to someone who doesn't even live in my country.

Anyway, let's turn to the chess. The end of the fourth round game Korchnoi-Kurmann makes for an interesting little exercise.

White has just played 49.Be3-b6, and Black resigned. But why? If the players had light-squared bishops, or if everything was moved in a file, there would be nothing to think about. But remember the problem of the wrong-colored bishop and pawn combination; if Black can give up his bishop for the b-pawn, it's a draw. There are stalemate tricks, too. On the previous move, 49.Kxc7 would be stalemate, and there are other stalemate constructions too (e.g. White's bishop on the diagonal somewhere from h2 to a7, and then Black plays ...Bb6, when Kxb6 would be an instant draw).

Of course, it is a win, but see if you can figure out how White finishes the job against feisty defense from Black. I managed to work it out for myself against a chess engine, but it took several minutes before I was able to overcome the ring-around-the-rosies problem and put Black out of his misery.

A solution is here.

Russian Translation Site

This is great for those of us who don't read Russian.

HT: Brian Karen

Greek Team Championship Ends, Ivanchuk Goes 6/7

A great performance! I hope the Live Top List comes back from vacation or whatever he's doing soon, so we can see Ivanchuk's (unofficial) rating.

Rybka 4 vs. Stockfish 1.8

For fans of computer chess matches, here's an email from Martin Thoresen:

I'm currently hosting a high-level, long time control computer match between the newest incarnation of Rybka and one of its closest rivals, Stockfish.

All information about hardware etc. can be seen on the website:

The broadcast is updated each 3 minutes and the engines are playing from 24 fixed positions with the most normal GM openings. They play each position as black and white, so a total of 48 games.

I was the one hosting the tournament where GM Kavalek annotated the game between Stockfish 1.7.1 and Rybka 4 as seen here:

Unfortunately I was unsuccessful of contacting him to say thanks.

Best Regards,

Martin Thoresen