Magnus Carlsen Invitational, Day 3: Prelims Finish

The action on day 3 of the Magnus Carlsen Invitational was far less interesting than it was for the first two days. Most of the stratification had already taken place, so players at the top were generally content to maintain their placement. Hikaru Nakamura in particular took this to extremes, playing five games that went 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.dxe5 Nxb5 7.a4 Nbd4 8.Nxd4 d5 9.exd6 Nxd4 10.Qxd4 Qxd6 11.Qe4+ Qe6 12.Qd4 Qd6 13.Qe4+ Qe6 14.Qd4 Qd6 1/2-1/2. This drawing line has been known for a long time, and Nakamura used it with White in rounds 5, 11, and 14 while being the recipient in rounds 8 and 13. Others caught on, using it once in round 13 and twice in round 15, but by that point Nakamura had "improved" with the help of Magnus Carlsen (the champion had White): 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 Ke7 3.Ke1 Ke8 4.Ke2 Ke7 5.Ke1 Ke8 6.Ke2 Ke7 1/2-1/2. There were other short draws as well, but there was some action too, particularly in rounds 11, 12, and 15.

Carlsen finished on top with 10.5/15, coming out half a point ahead of Anish Giri, who finally lost a game (in round 12 to Ian Nepomniachtchi) and drew his remaining games. Wesley So finished in clear third with 9.5, Berlin specialist Nakamura was clear fourth with 9, and three of the remaining four spots were occupied by players with 8.5 points apiece: Alireza Firouzja, Nepomniachtchi, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The last spot went to Sergey Karjakin on tiebreaks ahead of Levon Aronian, thanks to his win over Teimour Radjabov. (Had Radjabov won, he would have been part of the tie for the final spot; I'm not sure what his tiebreak score would have been compared to Aronian's.)

The remaining also-rans: Daniil Dubov (7.5), Radjabov (7), Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (6.5), Jordeen Van Foreest & Nils Grandelius (6 each), David Anton Guijarro (4), Alan Pichot (2.5).

On to stage two, with the following pairings: Carlsen - Aronian, Nakamura - Nepomniachtchi, Giri - Vachier-Lagrave, and So - Firouzja. By now most of us are familiar with the way these online rapid knockouts work: each match consists of a pair of 4-game matches each day. If a player wins the day's match, he gets a point and his opponent gets nothing; if the match ends 2-2 they get half a point apiece. If the score at the end of the second day's mini-match is 1-1 (i.e., if both matches were drawn, or one player won the first day's match and the second player won the second), then there's a two-game blitz playoff followed by an Armageddon game, if necessary. Finally, a day's match can end ahead of schedule if a player clinches victory before the fourth game (by scoring 2.5 or 3 points in the first three games), or if (on day 2) a player has already clinched overall match victory (e.g. if he won the first day's match and leads 2-0 on day 2, because even if he lost both remaining games he'd still split the second mini-match and finish with 1.5-.5 victory overall).

Let's look forward to exciting games, and no draws of the sort mentioned above.

London Chess "Classic", Days 4 and 5 (Days 1 & 2 of the Finals): Draw, Draw, Draw, Draw

Three of the four games weren't so bad, though none of them are likely to be particularly memorable. But the fourth one was pretty awful, as Levon Aronian reacted to a slight opening surprise by Fabiano Caruana by heading for a quick repetition to kill the game, self-confessedly happy to head for the rapid & blitz part of the match. It's a reasonable strategy, especially since Aronian slaughtered Caruana 20.5-6.5 in their online blitz and bullet match this past July. It may be a lousy state of affairs, but Caruana needs to dedicate himself in a major way the next couple of years to bringing his rapid and especially his blitz game up to snuff. There are just too many places where rapid and blitz play a role in "classical" events (or events with a classical component).

Just off the top of my head, there's the World Championship (with rapid and then blitz, as necessary), the World Cup (same procedure), the Grand Chess Tour (both the finals and the events in Leuven and Paris, plus blitz tournaments for pairings here and in other events), and the U.S. Championship (I think - in case of a tie for first). And of course rapid and blitz events are a commonplace, including the World Championships for both disciplines coming up between Christmas and the new year.

Getting up to speed - pun intended - has to be a major priority for Caruana. Can he do it? I hope so for his sake.

Regan & Lipton on "A Tiebreak Win and the Problem of Draws"

IM Ken Regan and his blog partner R.J. Lipton weigh in on the Carlsen-Caruana match and draw [yuk, yuk] their own conclusions. The ideas discussed there are interesting, but they surrender a pure classical world championship while not going over to an explicit all-around world championship, an option mooted in my previous post. But they are offering solutions to a different issue than I raised in the previous post, though there is some overlap. Their focus is on the problem of (too many) draws; mine is on dealing with drawn matches that purport to determine the world champion at classical chess.

Hopefully we'll have everything fixed soon, and FIDE will follow our suggestions to the letter. Sounds good and likely, right? Right?

Norway Chess 2019: Armaggedon After Every Draw!

While looking up links for the Hikaru Nakamura vs. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave match I spotted a couple of interesting stories on the Chess.com website. Here's the first: the 2019 Altibox Norway Chess tournament will try something different. Games will be worth two points each, and if a player wins they get two points and nothing for a loss. But a draw is not worth one point. It's worth half a point, and will be followed up by an Armageddon game with the same colors that gives an additional point to the winner (or to Black in case of a draw).

The time control for the Armageddon game isn't given (or at least I didn't see it), but the "normal" game will be faster than usual: game in two hours, with no delay, increment, or secondary time control. The Armageddon games apparently won't be FIDE rated, regardless of the time control.

This strikes me as a solution in need of a problem (check out the link above for discussion and reaction), but hey, it's all about bread and circuses.

2017 London Chess Classic, Round 3: The Perfect Tournament Continues; UPDATED: Games Included

The desperate battle for a universally shared last place finish wages on, and so far, so good. Five more draws are on the books, making it a glorious 15 for 15. Who needs checkers ("draughts" for those of you across the pond)?--we chess players know how to draw.

There were some wobbles: Viswanathan Anand had an advantage with Black against Magnus Carlsen, Mickey Adams had to struggle a little (but not too much) in a pawn-down rook ending against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Levon Aronian got into genuine trouble (like Carlsen and Adams, he too had White) against Sergey Karjakin. Fortunately, Aronian accompanied a losing mistake with a draw offer, and short of time Karjakin was unable to find the winning idea and split the point. (Games later tonight.)

Congratulations to the players on a job well done. Tomorrow's drawing opportunities look like this: 

• Nakamura - Nepomniachtchi
• So - Adams
• Vachier-Lagrave - Carlsen
• Anand - Aronian
• Karjakin - Caruana

UPDATE: The games, with my brief comments to three of them, are here.

Then There's That Other World Championship

We've been peeking in at the 29th World Correspondence Championship every so often, and I'm pleased to report that with 89 games finished out of 136, the winning percentage is a very impressive 3.37%: three decisive games! It is fortunate that this sort of hyper-accurate, hyper-resilient play is only possible in man + machine events at a super-slow time control.

A Win in the Correspondence World Championship

It only took 54 games, but at last, someone has won a game in the 29th World Correspondence Championship. Congratulations to Senior International Master Jacek Oskulski.

Got Draws?

Curious about the latest correspondence world championships, I took a gander at the ICCF website and came across this crosstable of the ongoing 29th championship final. 44 of the 136 games are finished, and every single one of them has been drawn.

This isn't quite as bad as it sounds. In correspondence chess a quick loss should be a near-impossibility at the world championship level, so the first games to finish ought to be drawn. 44 in a row seems a bit much, though. The 28th championship is almost finished; there are just two games remaining and Croatian correspondence GM Ing. Leonardo Ljubicic has clinched clear first. Of the 134 games that have finished, 18 were decisive - six of which came at the tailender's expense.

The draw death isn't much of an issue for OTB (over-the-board) grandmasters (if at all), and for the rest of us it's a complete non-issue. But is correspondence chess on its last legs? (And if it is, can it be fixed?)

This Week's World Chess Column: The Unloved Draw

My column this week takes a look at the scourge of chess: the draw. After looking at some examples of the kinds of draws we all hate (at least most of the time), and a pair of amusing examples, it's easy to forget that it is possible for a draw to be not only (at least) as well-played as a won game, but every bit as hard fought and exciting, too. To remind us that such games are possible, the column concludes with a look at one of the famous draws of all time (at least in the pre-internet era), the so-called Immortal Draw between Alexander Alekhine and Richard Reti. Draws like that are worth more to chess history than many a tournament's worth of wins.

Book Notice: Leonid Verkhovsky's Draw! The Art of the Half-Point in Chess

Leonid Verkhovsky, Draw! The Art of the Half-Point in Chess (Russell Enterprises, 2014). 132 pp. $14.95.

We'll get to the content of this book shortly, but first I must note a few oddities. Mikhail Tal wrote a foreword to the book that is dated to 1972, and the book's back jacket also suggests that the book was written in the early '70s. No problem. Russell Enterprises (RE) often releases new printings of older works, which frankly is a very good thing, as there are some treasures of chess literature that deserve a second lease on life.

So I start to work my way through the book: Capablanca-Fine, Amsterdam 1938; Capablanca-Nimzovitsch [sic], Kissingen [sic] 1928; O'Kelly-Penrose, Varna 1962; Kramnik-Kasparov, World Championship London (6) 2000...wait, what?

I started to look around for an explanation. The author's introduction is dated 2014, but there's nothing in there that indicates any modernization. (There's a brief reference to Profile of a Prodigy, dated 1973, but that's the only thing that suggests anything later than Tal's foreword.) There's nothing on the back jacket, no publisher's introduction, nothing. The majority of the book looks like it was written when it was said to be written, but there are a lot of post-1972 examples, some even from the 2000s. Is this a translation of a revised edition, or is this itself the revised edition? It's a surprisingly ahistorical presentation from RE, especially given their usual care about and love for chess history.

Anyway, let's turn to the book. There are 291 games and game fragments in the ten chapters (plus the introduction), and then the book concludes with 32 exercises and their solutions. The chapters investigate all sorts of draws both actual and merely possible: those achieved with a material disadvantage, draws that could have been had if a player hadn't resigned, draws that were taken when a win was available, counterattacking draws, traps, draws arising from mutual errors, paradoxical drawing ideas, draws (actual or missed) involving zwischenzugs, stalemates, and grandmaster draws in the real, full-blooded sense.

This slim volume is primarily a pleasure book, though of course one can benefit by trying to solve the positions beforehand. (Sometimes this is impossible, however, as the critical moment often arises after the diagrammed position.) The analysis is generally pretty light, and at least the parts I examined seemed to have been computer-checked, albeit imperfectly.

I enjoyed books like this a lot when I was a kid, and they were great for growing my enthusiasm for the game. I would recommend the book as a gift for kids whose ratings are north of 1000 or as a semi-gag, semi-serious gift for friends with an inordinate disdain for draws.