The Chess Mind

That's the title of an article by Debra Littlejohn Shinder, a computer professional who happens to be the mother of Hikaru Nakamura's second, Kris Littlejohn. It's an interesting read (one factoid that caught my eye was Nakamura memorizing 500-1000 moves of opening prep before each game, which is a lot, although I suspect he already knew at least a fair amount of it), but I do have two quibbles/additions/clarifications.

First, the author mentions that ChessBase 10 runs 349 euros/almost $500 and that ChessBase Lite is free. Both statements are true, but the best deal by far is to download ChessBase 2009 and buy the activation key. Then, for well under $100, you have ChessBase 10, albeit without a database. As there are ways to buy databases for far, far, far less than $400, you still come out way ahead.

Second, she writes that once Nakamura knows the "colors" in the tournament, his second gets busy doing specific prep for the opponents, looking for novelties, etc. I suspect this is a slight misunderstanding on her part, as this information is only known the day before play starts, when the players draw for lots to receive their pairing numbers. Considering how far in advance she reports on their accumulating data on forthcoming opponents, I doubt they'd wait until the night before the first game to start looking for novelties.

Quibbles aside, it's a good read, and you'll get to see what hardware they use in their prep, too.

HT: Nate Criss

 

Here were the day's results at the World Team Championship:

India 2 - Armenia 2

Russia 3½ - Turkey ½

Egypt 1 - Azerbaijan 3

Israel 1½ - United States 2½

Brazil 1 - Greece 3

Taking the matches in order: The India-Armenia draw was a bit of a shocker. Akopian won with a nice finish against Harikrishna, but India equalized when Sasikiran beat Aronian in a rook vs. rook and pawn ending that should have been drawn. It wasn't trivial, but it wasn't out of Aronian's pay grade, either, and he had loads of time to work it out.

Russia's win was no surprise, and neither was Azerbaijan's. However, the latter's one blemish occurred when Gashimov lost his third straight game. (This is putting a real crimp in his plans for world domination, but he still has 721 days to go.)

The United States win was an upset, but well-earned. Robson worked to hold the draw on round 4, while Onischuk won on board 2 (the only one where the US had a [very slight] rating edge) and Hess lost on board 3 (to Sutovsky). The deciding game was also the first to finish, Nakamura's brilliant (or at least flashy) win against Gelfand on the Black side of a Classical King's Indian. This win probably didn't take as much mental labor as his spectacular win over Beliavsky in the same variation last September, but was if anything even showier.

Finally, Greece got back on the right foot, crushing Brazil despite being outrated by an average of 25 points per board.  Especially impressive - but strange - was Fier-Banikas. Fier managed to come up with two novelties in the second game, both of which came from the same position! The first was neutral and the second was bad, which just goes to show that newer doesn't mean better. The game featured some very nice geometry, and is worth seeing.

(And because it's worth seeing, I've included it with my notes, along with the two Armenia-India games mentioned above and Gelfand-Nakamura. Click here.)

Here are the overall standings:

1. Russia 8 (based on two points for a team win, one for a draw, zero for a loss), 13 (total individual points, which is the first tiebreaker)

2. USA 8, 12½

3. Armenia 7, 12

4. India 7, 11

5. Azerbaijan 6, 11½

6. Israel 6, 11

7. Greece 4, 10

8. Brazil 2, 8

9. Egypt 2, 7

10. Turkey 0, 4

It was an organizer's dream - except for the finish. The BNbank blitz tournament in Oslo, Norway, was set up for a final match between national hero Magnus Carlsen, the world's top-rated player and newly crowned world blitz champion, and Hikaru Nakamura, who has long been the world's best blitz player on the internet.

The first part of the event consisted of multiple round-robins, and both Carlsen and Nakamura won their sections. Carlsen gave up one draw, to Cmilyte, while Nakamura scored a clean 6-0. Then it was on to the quarterfinals, best-of-four matches that mirrored the round-robins: both won; Carlsen giving up one draw in defeating Jon Ludwig Hammer 2.5-.0.5 and Nakamura blanking Kjetil Lie 3-0. In the semis, they were equally unmerciful: Carlsen 3-0'd Emanuel Berg and Nakamura did the same to Peter Heine Nielsen.

On to the final. In the first game, Nakamura's 12-0 run came to an end, as Carlsen beat him with the black pieces. In game 2, Carlsen was winning, and it looked like Nakamura was in for a thumping. It didn't happen. Nakamura not only managed to hold on, but when Carlsen lost a seemingly unloseable position (a pawn up in a knight ending!) the match was tied. (The culprit was 62.Kf6??, losing when 62.f4 would have won.) After this, Carlsen might have lost a little confidence, and Nakamura won games 3 and 4 as well, winning the match 3-1 and scoring a hefty 15-1 overall. Carlsen finished second, of course, and Nielsen defeated Berg 2.5-1.5 in their final match to take third.

To see all of Nakamura's and Carlsen's games from the event (preliminaries and head-to-head), as long as the Nielsen-Berg games, go here (and close the pop-up). Next step, select BNb blitz 2009, and then expand each of the alphanumeric round links in turn (from the bottom up, if you want to go in chronological order) and then on the games within the links.

There's a strong invitational blitz (3' + 2") tournament this Saturday in Oslo, Norway, starring Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura. It should be a lot of fun, but I am slightly worried that if Nakamura is going to go from America to Norway to America to London (for the real tournament there starting December 7) he may not be 100% when it really matters. That's for him to worry about; for us, we get an extra little show.

More details here.

Looking through the games in this week's TWIC, I was shocked to find the following game from last week's USCL playoffs:

US Chess League, Internet Chess Club, 2009
White: Becerra, Julio (2557)
Black: Nakamura, Hikaru (2710)

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e5 Nd5 4.Nc3 e6 5.Nxd5 exd5 6.d4 Nc6 7.dxc5 Bxc5 8.Qxd5 d6 9.Bc4 Qe7 10.Bg5 f6 11.0-0-0 dxe5 12.Rhe1 1-0

(The game, with comments, can be replayed here.)

The next time you're miniatured, remember that it even happens to the best players in the world. Errare humanum est!