Chess24 Wins Case Vs. Agon On Candidates Transmission

Agon (the match sponsor) seemed to me to be fighting a losing battle when they tried to prevent other chess websites from using their (Agon's) live broadcast to receive and then rebroadcast the moves in the Candidates tournament earlier this year. Agon threatened legal action against companies that violated their attempted ban, and then carried out their threat. Thus far one decision has been reached, and while it can be appealed the result was against Agon and for Chess24. (Other suits are still pending.) (More on this here.)

As I wrote on the matter at the time, I'm sympathetic to Agon's position. They are the match sponsors and want to receive a reasonable return on their investment. But games scores don't seem to be copyrightable - and this is a very good thing for chess. Instead, Agon should "win" by having the most entertaining and informative broadcast: the best commentators, behind the scenes video and interviews, special arrangements with the players and their teams, and so on. (The last two should be baked into the players' contracts.) That would be good for Agon and also for fans who are as interested in the match as a spectacle and a competition as they are in the nitty gritty of  the moves and analysis.

Svidler Interview

Here's an interview with Peter Svidler. It's not bad, but a good part of the fun is seeing the link to a 1989 video where you can see him and Kramnik as very young teenagers.

Carlsen Predicted A Karjakin Win!?

That's a bit too strong, as someone can have better chances than any other individual but not have better chances than the rest of the field combined. Still, even in the more modest sense Magnus Carlsen opined (in advance) that Sergey Karjakin was a slight favorite to win the Candidates in a very even field because of his defensive abilities, his resilience, and his strong preparation. He was right on the money!

Google translation here. (HT: Eyal)

Karjakin Defeats Caruana in the Final Round to Win the 2016 Candidates

While it's frankly a pity to have the tournament decided by tiebreaks (a perspective I'm guessing both Vladimir Kramnik and Fabiano Caruana share) it did make for an exciting final game between Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana. Provided that Viswanathan Anand didn't manage to defeat Peter Svidler with the black pieces (and he didn't, and didn't come close to doing so), Caruana would need to defeat Karjakin with Black to overcome the latter's favorable tiebreak score.

Winning to order with Black isn't easy, in part because White has many ways to dry up the game if he so desires. Caruana opted for the Classical Sicilian, and managed to get a complicated game with good chances. All three results were possible as the players grew closer to the time control, and the critical moment came on move 36. Had Caruana played 36...Be4 or 36...Bf3, anything would have been possible, but to his misfortune he spotted the tactical possibility 36...Re4, which apparently retains an extra pawn. Unfortunately for him, it lost to the nice rook sac 37.Rxd5 - an especially nice find by Karjakin under the circumstances. After that, Caruana was simply losing, and resigned a few moves later, when it was mate in three.

An excellent win for Sergey Karjakin, who deserves congratulations on winning the event - especially for bouncing back after losing to Anand in round 11. On now to the World Championship against Magnus Carlsen this fall in New York. In general Carlsen has a huge plus against Karjakin in faster games, but in Classical chess his plus score is a relatively moderate one: +3 -1 =14. Karjakin is a better theoretician and a better defender, while I'm inclined to give the other edges to Carlsen and rate him a clear but not overwhelming favorite.

That's many months away still. For now, here is the last round game, with my comments.

Candidates Update: Karjakin, Caruana Enter The Last Round Tied; Will Play in the Last Round with Karjakin Having Draw Odds...Almost

So it's come down to the last round, and the only two players who can win the event are facing off for the right to play Magnus Carlsen in the next World Championship match, to be held later this year. Sergey Karjakin and Fabiano Caruana are still at +2, half a point ahead of Viswanathan Anand, and while only the first two named have a shot at winning the event Anand can play the spoiler.

Here's the situation: Karjakin has White against Caruana in the last round, while Anand has Black against Peter Svidler. Karjakin wins the event unless one of two scenarios come to pass:

• (1) Caruana wins (obviously).
• (2) They draw and Anand wins.

If Karjakin-Caruana is a draw and they're the only two players tied for first, Karjakin takes first on tiebreaks. They will have split their head-to-head matchup, and the next tiebreaker (more wins) decides things in Karjakin's favor. If it winds up in a three-way tie, however, Caruana wins because he had the best score in the head-to-head-to-head: he went +1 against Anand while the other two mini-matches were even.

Both possibilities are attractive. If Karjakin wins, then the match the chess world has expected since 2003 or so will finally taken place, while Caruana has looked like Carlsen's likeliest rival since 2014. Both are also good from a publicity standpoint: Karjakin represents Russia while Caruana represents the U.S., which is especially good since the championship match is going to be held here.

In round 13 both Karjakin and Caruana played for more than 100 moves. Caruana was pushing in his game, trying to grind out a win against Svidler in a rook and bishop vs. rook ending (and near the end he briefly had a theoretically winning ending, though I'm not sure if he had enough moves to convert before the 50-move rule kicked in), while Karjakin had to grimly hang on in his game with Levon Aronian. Both players are young and fit (especially Caruana), but how much will they have left after a marathon game at the end of a long tournament?

In other round 13 action Hikaru Nakamura won again, at the expense of Veselin Topalov, who lost again. Nakamura thus made it back to 50%, while Topalov sunk to -5. Remarkably, Topalov is the only player in the field with a minus score. The other game saw Anish Giri get his 13th draw in 13 games, this one against Levon Aronian. Giri has played a lot of interesting, up and down games, and this was one of them. Somehow, they just end in draws, no matter what happens along the way there.

Last Round Pairings:

• Svidler (6.5) - Anand (7)
• Giri (6.5) - Topalov (4)
• Nakamura (6.5) - Aronian (6.5)
• Karjakin (7.5) - Caruana (7.5)

Candidates Update: Caruana & Karjakin Lead After 12 Rounds

The story was the same after 10 rounds, but when Viswanathan Anand defeated Sergey Karjakin they switched places. In round 12 Sergey Karjakin bounced back with an easy win over Veselin Topalov, who is having an atrocious tournament (-4 and fortunate that it's not even worse), while Viswanathan Anand's problems with the Black pieces continued, and he was crushed by Hikaru Nakamura.

In the other games, Peter Svidler and Anish Giri drew - Giri was better for the last 55 moves or so, but couldn't break through Svidler's defense - while Fabiano Caruana just managed to survive with the white pieces against Levon Aronian. (Games here, but without annotations, at least for now.)

Saturday was a rest day, and round 13 takes place on Easter Sunday. (It's sad that the most important day on the Christian calendar merits so little respect.) Here are the pairings:

• Caruana (7) - Svidler (6)
• Aronian (6) - Karjakin (7)
• Topalov (4) - Nakamura (5.5)
• Anand (6.5) - Giri (6)

Candidates Update: Getting Caught Up (Almost!), With Lots of Annotated Games

Round 12 (of 14) of the Candidates took place earlier today (yesterday for those of you across the pond), and it was a major round. We'll get to that later tonight or sometime tomorrow, but for now it's time to get caught up on preceding rounds' action. Here are some of the major story lines from rounds 7-11.

1. Caruana Awakens. Fabiano Caruana drew his first seven games, the entire first cycle, but since then he has won twice and shared the lead after 11 rounds. He defeated Hikaru Nakamura in round 8 (promptly killing the latter's chances after he defeated Veselin Topalov in round 7) and then knocked Viswanathan Anand out of a tie for first in round 10. Caruana could have been the sole leader, as he was clearly winning against Topalov in round 11, but a very big mistake on move 38 let his opponent escape.

2. Anand's Roller Coaster. Anand sometimes gets into drawing ruts, but not here. He won in round 1, lost to Sergey Karjakin in round 4, beat Peter Svidler in round 6, beat Levon Aronian in round 9, lost to Caruana in round 10 and then got revenge by defeating Karjakin in round 11. That made him the co-leader with Caruana, or almost so. Because he lost their mini-match he is in fact behind him - if they finish the event tied for first it's Caruana who qualifies for the title match with Magnus Carlsen.

3. Aronian's Sinking Feeling. Aronian often comes into Candidates' events as one of the favorites, and invariably and inexplicably, something bad happens and he's out of the running before the final rounds. Sadly, this is happening once again. He was tied for first after eight rounds with a +2 score, but starting in round 9 it all fell apart. First he lost to Anand, against whom he has a great score in games that don't matter and a very bad score in games that do. In round 10 he had a significant advantage against Topalov, but squandered it and was even on the verge of getting into trouble before making a draw. Finally, round 11 was a disaster. Once again he had a clear advantage, this time against Peter Svidler, and not only did he let Svidler off the hook, he even lost the game. That was Svidler's first and so far only win in the event, and for Aronian the death blow to his hopes of qualifying for the world championship.

As for other storylines, I'll leave them to you to decide on your own. Meantime, here are the games of rounds 7-11, most of them annotated.

Candidates Update: Anand, Karjakin Lead After 9 Rounds; Five Rounds Remain

A real report will have to wait, but some scattershot comments are in order at the moment.

1. The fallout from the Aronian - Nakamura touch-move game has been significant, with both players coming in for criticism. The source in Nakamura's case is obvious: for the rules violation. (He has had another problem that indirectly resulted from the first. Understandably upset about the game, he avoided the post-game press conference, and as a result will be docked 10% of his prize fund. Ouch.) As for Aronian, he has received a couple of criticisms. The first was from Nakamura, who said in an interview that Aronian had "made it personal" (or words to that effect) in the immediate aftermath of the situation. I have no idea what was said, but perhaps some lip reader can suss out the details from the video. The second criticism concerned Aronian's claim in the post-game press conference that he was winning. Emil Sutovsky (on Facebook) was particularly exercised about this, and while I think he's right on the substance - Aronian wasn't winning or even close to winning; if anything, it's a near-elementary draw - his reaction was severely overblown.

2. Anyone in the mood for Anand-Carlsen III? There were five matches between Karpov and Kasparov, back in the day, and all five had a great deal of excitement. (There were also three Botvinnik-Smyslov World Championship matches and - sort of - three World Championship matches between Karpov and Korchnoi.) Granted, the first A-C match was terrible, and the second one was better but still disappointing. But maybe the third time is the charm? If nothing else, it will mean that Anand will have automatic qualification to at least one more Candidates cycle, and I'm sure all his rivals are excited about that. Frankly, whatever one's feelings about Anand and seeing him play in his 25th consecutive world championship match (just kidding, it will "only" be his sixth if he makes it back), it's still an incredible accomplishment.

3. Will Giri (or Svidler) win a game in this event? They have had some enormous advantages, but somehow, something keeps happening to thwart them before the finish line.

Candidates Update: Karjakin and Aronian Lead with +2, Anand at +1 After 6 Rounds

After three more rounds of the Candidates - six overall, out of 14 - the players get another rest day, and it was well-earned. In round 4 there was only one decisive game, but it was a big one with one leader - Sergey Karjakin - beating another - Viswanathan Anand. That gave Karjakin sole ownership of first place, which he maintained after four draws in round 5.

In round 6 things livened up. First, Anand pole-axed Peter Svidler, winning with a nice sacrificial attacking game that constituted a serious improvement over a 2004 game between Alexei Shirov and Alexander Onischuk. Svidler's 18...Nb3 was a good move when Onischuk played it, but the seemingly slight difference between the two games made all the difference in the world, and Anand crushed him in good style.

That brought Anand within half a point of the lead by round's end, and Karjakin was fortunate to remain in first (shared first by round's end) as he was in some serious trouble against Fabiano Caruana. Fortunately for Karjakin his opponent preferred 30.g5 to 30.Bf3, after which he saved the game with a couple of spectacular moves.

The third game to finish was a draw between Veselin Topalov and Anish Giri. Giri came close to a win, outplaying his opponent step by step, but Topalov made a last desperate stand and held the game a pawn down.

The fourth and final game was an oddity. Levon Aronian was pushing with White throughout against Hikaru Nakamura, but the rook endgame that arose after White's 52nd move should have been drawn. Nakamura promptly made a serious error, which Aronian in turn failed to take advantage of. Another 22 moves go by with Aronian still pressing and Nakamura still probably drawing. Unfortunately for Nakamura, he hastily grabbed his king with the obvious intention of moving it, only to realize that it was a huge error. At that moment he tried to turn it into a "j'adoube", which is pretty amazing. Of course Aronian would have none of that, and the arbiter came quickly to help resolve the situation. Nakamura gave up the claim, moved the king, and soon had to resign the game. Here's the video of the critical moments (HT to Ross Hytnen):

The games of the last three rounds are here, and I've analyzed three of the four games from round 6, either in whole or in part. Here are the pairings for round 7, on Saturday:

• Svidler (2.5) - Caruana (3)
• Karjakin (4) - Aronian (4)
• Nakamura (2) - Topalov (2)
• Giri (3) - Anand (3.5)

Jorasch & Capobianco on the Candidates, Post-Round 3

Round 4 is in the books now (Karjakin beat Anand; all other games drawn), but here at least, courtesy of James Jorasch himself, are his win probabilities after round 3:

	Pre-tournament	Including Round 1	Including Round 2	Including Round 3	Point Standings
Anand	6.7%	13.0%	15.2%	13.1%	2.0
Aronian	14.5%	16.3%	14.5%	27.8%	2.0
Caruana	19.1%	20.0%	19.2%	17.9%	1.5
Giri	16.7%	14.9%	16.3%	12.4%	1.5
Karjakin	6.7%	6.1%	12.7%	13.4%	2.0
Nakamura	17.2%	16.1%	8.8%	7.0%	1.0
Svidler	5.9%	6.2%	5.8%	5.9%	1.5
Topalov	13.2%	7.4%	7.6%	2.3%	0.5

Those interested in more data on a round-by-round basis can email him at james[at symbol]sciencehouse[dot com] with the subject line "subscribe candidates tournament."