Chess

[Federberg]

Yep. So seems to be the latest in a long line of players under Carlsen who have a few breakout tournaments and then suddenly start struggling badly. It's happened to Caruana, Aronian, and MVL too. That MVL-Karjakin game in round 7 was something too!

yes agreed. It's not often one of those is so gripping!

In fairness to Levon, he was #2 for a lot longer than any of these guys. Now it looks like he's recovering his swagger. I still think that after Magnus he's probably still the most reliably strong guy out there. More so than Fabiano who still seems to lack the killa gene

 

[Federberg]

Magnus has got himself a nice position against Levon. There was a time where I would have put money on him to close it out. Not anymore!

 

[DarthFed]

One complicated game there! Wonder what the engines are saying? Clearly if Carlsen can hold off Aronian's attack he figures to win this. If this was blitz I'd bet on black breaking through and winning this. Give Carlsen or these other top guys a lot of time to think and they can play better defense

 

[Federberg]

One complicated game there! Wonder what the engines are saying? Clearly if Carlsen can hold off Aronian's attack he figures to win this. If this was blitz I'd bet on black breaking through and winning this. Give Carlsen or these other top guys a lot of time to think and they can play better defense

Engines had Magnus up between +2 and +3 most of the time. But at certain points he made very human moves that reduced his advantage (at least according to the engines). He carried it home very well though. I must say, despite MVL winning the whole thing, Magnus probably played the strongest chess. He was a bit unlucky in his game against MVL, although credit to Maxime for complicating the position. Not going to say Magnus is quite back yet, but this has to be his strongest performance in classical in about a year. Let's see what the next tournament (World Cup?) provides

 

[DarthFed]

Rapid tourney started yesterday, all 3 games were draws for Kasparov. He didn't get much out of the opening in any of the games and was in trouble vs. Naka but defended well. I'm interested to see him vs. Anand.

 

[Federberg]

Yes I watched yesterday. It's not so easy!

Still, not bad for a guy who's not really been in the wars recently

 

[Federberg]

Wow! That was an ugly loss by Garry to Navara. Ugly...

 

[DarthFed]

Yeah it seems to have gotten ugly for Gazza after a good game vs Aronian in round 4. The loss to Nepo was a good game though, losing in a tactical battle. The only other fairly sharp game was the one vs. Navarra and he choked that one badly from a won position.

The only positive if there was one is that there were 5 big fish in that tourney: Aronian, Caruana, Naka, Anand, and Karjakin. Kasparov faced 4 of 5 with black and drew them all until the last game with Caruana where he was slowly outplayed. Garry's main problem was getting stuck in dry positional games, he isn't beating the top guys of today in games like that in any time control.

 

[brokenshoelace]

He's clearly not as sharp as he used to be, and he's getting in time trouble in every game. I think his play in the first day was safe, which is understandable, but the problem is when he got into a tactical battle he clearly showed he's not that sharp (which is also understandable) and he paid the price. Granted, that was Nipo's type of game as well and as the younger, more active player, it favored him, but I wonder if Garry will go for similar positions against more favorable stylistic opponents.

 

[Federberg]

Yes agreed. His openings have been strong, but when it's a choice of a sharp continuation in the middle game or something positional he's going for positional. And these guys are too strong to lose those. Must be quite an eye opener for him

 

[Federberg]

Jeepers.. It's getting really ugly for Gary now. He could end up last. If that happens I predict he'll never do this again

 

[DarthFed]

What a difference a year makes. He did really well last year but that was just blitz. I expected Kasparov would fare pretty well in rapid this year and poorly in blitz as it is Day 4 and 5 of the event and it made sense that he would play worse as the event went on. He is no spring chicken and he is not used to playing these anymore.

Overall it's been a disaster. This is a more serious event with more players, games, and days than last year's blitz. I think that explains a lot of it, they aren't letting Gazza get dynamic positions out of the opening and even the few times he did it hasn't ended well.

 

[Federberg]

I think it's worse than that mate. There were occasions where he had the choice in the middle game to go for sharp positions or positional ones. Without fail he went for positional ones. You have to be a Magnus Carlsen or Karpov to do that in rapid play. These niggly edges can disappear in a flash if you aren't super accurate

 

[DarthFed]

Just looking over some of his last few blitz games he's been trying to open up the positions but he's getting caught playing some coffeehouse chess. It's not so easy to lure players into dynamic open positions out of the opening and he's struggling on time likely due to trying to find good ways to attack that simply aren't there.

When it rains it pours, one thing about classical chess is that you play once a day and it's easier to shake off a bad loss. For Kasparov he had the disaster vs. Navarra and it all went downhill after that. I'd be surprised if he has an equal score today, it only figures to get worse on the last day.

 

[DarthFed]

Thankfully I was wrong, Kasparov played much better today and finished with an even score in blitz overall (+2 today). Overall still not good especially since rapid is much more telling and he really stunk the last 5 rounds there. Will be interested if he does more after this. The great man can still play of course but he needs to play games on his terms as best as he can. I'm glad he's punked Naka again. Naka keeps talking trash and Garry finished with a + score against him in blitz for the 2nd straight year.

 

[Federberg]

This is pretty cool...

 

[Federberg]

This W/Cup is making me laugh. From the looks of it, Magnus is using it for practice and an easy way to grab rating points. Very risky strategy of course. Any loss to a sub-2750 will probably cost him a ton of points, even a draw will be expensive. So far he's tuning everyone

 

[DarthFed]

Does the winner get anything aside from money? Such as automatic entry to the tournament to decide the next WC challenger?

It is always fun to see the top guys go against "average" grandmasters. There usually are a few upsets here and there which isn't surprising since the lesser players know the top guys a lot better than vice versa. I see Anand is already knocked out.

 

[Federberg]

Does the winner get anything aside from money? Such as automatic entry to the tournament to decide the next WC challenger?

It is always fun to see the top guys go against "average" grandmasters. There usually are a few upsets here and there which isn't surprising since the lesser players know the top guys a lot better than vice versa. I see Anand is already knocked out.

I believe the winner and runners up automatically get spots in the FIDE w/c qualifiers

 

[Obsi]

This W/Cup is making me laugh.

You're making me laugh.