Jump to content

Chess - the world in black and white


Rorshach

Recommended Posts

Going back to the Dubov match,I think Dubov's big advantage is his Blitz skill. He can basically Grischuk his way through the tournament against most opponents.

Now to the actual round and games.

Yes, Nisi winning against Naka was a shock, however more shocking was Naka's actual game. That was ludicrously poor for a player of his callibre.

Wei Yi - Anton was a very nice game with a surprising winner. Anton basically outplayed Wei there. I know that the Chinese has not exactly been on fire this year, but I did not expect him to lose with the White Pieces there. Looks like he will go out. :crying:

ALso a bit disappointed with Rustam. He was the underdog against Shak and all, however I hoped he had some opening surprise in store for him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wei Ji managed to win his must-win game and gets to live another day and to play in the tie breaks. Glad I was right with my prediction of the games in this match up being real treats. While Anton was playing a great positional game yesterday, Wei Ji managed to get into a messy position early on and got his attack going today.

Nisi has eliminated Nakamura, who just took the draw in a worse position and accepted his elimination.

Le has eliminated Korobov. Very nice technical game, especially how Le converted it. One of the reasons I like Le, so if you struggle with technically winning positions, Le is usually very logic and straight forward with his plans and excecution.

Huschi played a very interesting game against Vitiugov, it ended in a draw, but it was really fun to watch all the same.

Kasimdzhanov will kick himself for missing his chance to equalize against Shak.

Game of the round was however Firouzja against Dubov. That game was a real treat, and also very, very good on a technical level how he converted the Rook vs. Bishop ending. Super instructive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wei Yi won his play offs, Svidler also thru. So are Grischuk and Ding and Yu. Huschi is out (unsurprisingly). We lost Gelfand and Sarin (tough for him after he really blundered a piece away in a winning position yesterday).

Already some nice pairings and we finally start to see some of the heavy hitters getting paired together.

Wei Yi vs Yu Yangyi for instance, or Karjakin vs. Vitiugov. Also Artemiev vs Le Quang Liem (best pairing of the round imho). We also have Andreikin vs. Duda and MVL vs Jakovenko.

Ding vs Firouzja is also gonna be interesting.

Xu Xiangyu vs Grischuk has to be an annoying pairing for Sascha. Relatively unknown young Chinese player. Which usually translates as, player whose rating not caught up with his actual strength.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I reckon I'm closer to you in rating than Horsey, then. 

olemvik on chess.com

21 minutes ago, Mme Erzulie said:

Any of you guys on chess.com? I play there (albeit quite helplessly) and wouldn't mind some friendly competition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seems like Sascha could win out today. Well done, considering it could have been a tricky tie.

ETA: he could have lost as well. But the win available for Xu was perhaps tricky to find, particulary with little time left on the clock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Weird Xu missed it. Rxh7+ is the entire point of his attack, not really much else in there for him. But as always in life pick your spot, as it's all about the right timing. And I can see how he went astray with 25.Qc6? instead (probably thinking he was winning). It looked pretty good on a superficial level. it provided cover for the Knight on f6 and prepared the rook lift to h1. What more can you ask from a move? The drawback was of course that Grischuk actually calculated the lines following 25...Bxf5! which is the critical move and (rightly) concluded that white has coughed up too much material and that black is winning. I just assume Xu missed that or totally misjudged the arising positions for some reasons.

However I just took a quick look at the chessbomb computer line.

25.Rxh7+! Bxh7 26.Nxh7 Qxh7 27.Rh1 Bh2! 28.Qg2 Rg8 29.Ng3! Bxg3 30.Rxh7+ Kxh7 31.Qh3+! (to keep the pawn structure intact) Kg7 32.Qxg3+ while white is better and clearly pushing for the win due to black's lack of coordination, I don't think it's clearly won. If black finds the time to coordinate his pieces he will have two rooks for the queen and a pawn and there are not that many weaknesses (of course if he did anything stupid like 33...Kf8 thus dropping pawns on the queen side he would be dead lost, for the moment the pawn is protected thanks to Rc8). Of course this is just my humble patzer take on things and if the GM+ level say it's won, then it should be won.

If Xu had seen 25...Bxf5! before, I think he would have gone for 25.Ng4 which seems to draw and looks easier to calculate otb. Again this is chessbomb line, so to be taken with a grain of salt as it might be a wee bit shallow.

25.Ng4 Qh5 26.Rxg6 fxg6 27.Nxe7 Qxg4 28.Rh1 Rf6 (white threatens to crash in on g6) 29.Qxc7 Raf8 30.Nf5! And it's a forced draw thanks to black's weaknesses on the 7th (namely g7 and h7). 30...R6f7 Qe5+ 31.Rf6 Qc7 andsoon and so forth)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chess24 has the same line for a while (I think you left out 27 Qe4 Bd6, as the bishop on e7 won't be able to go to h2), but switches to 30 Qxh2 Rg7 31 Nh6 Rf8, and the queen is free to pick up on c7.

As I was watching it live (partly) at work, I know Xu had about 40 seconds left after 25 Qc6, and he still had 15 moves to find. Might have found the lines too complicated, and, as you say, Qc6 looks superficially good. Sascha had 5 minutes left, so more time to calculate (and, this being Sascha, an eternity compared to his regular time trouble).

Ng4 looks better - and less complicated, yes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Upset of this round was Karjakin going home - personally I am not sad about his departure. And also we lost Giri as the second big one heading home. Didn't think Xiong would pull it off.

Wei Yi going home was always a possibility against Yu Yangyi.

Anyway pairing for the next round.

Duda-Xiong (Duda will win)

The battle of the Azeris Shak vs Radja (tough one to predict as Radja is in great form)

Le Quang Liem - Aronian (also not easy to predict).

MVL - Svidler (MVL has to be favorite).

Vitiugov - So (oh Nikita you robbed us of the most exciting of all match ups Karjakin vs So. So is the favorite, once this goes to the tie breaks).

Nepo - Yu Yangyi (another coinflip for me and arugably one of the match ups to watch).

Grischuk vs. Leinier (Sascha should win this)

And finally Ding Liren vs. Alekseenko (form + class = Ding will advance).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

On 9/16/2019 at 12:29 PM, redriver said:

benzodiac on chess.com 12-1400 range.

 

On 9/16/2019 at 2:09 PM, Rorshach said:

Seems like Sascha could win out today. Well done, considering it could have been a tricky tie.

ETA: he could have lost as well. But the win available for Xu was perhaps tricky to find, particulary with little time left on the clock.

Have requested both of ye's. 

I was gifted a diamond membership by my brother for my birthday last year, and I've completed all the intermediate and advanced lessons, and my understanding of chess has definitely improved vastly.

The one point where I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement is openings. I don't find the opening explorer very intuitive or educational, and I often feel like I end up at a disadvantage after the opening when playing games. I also struggle to remember openings, various gambits etc. It's the one area of my game where I feel like I haven't made significant progress.

Any tips for videos, exercises, articles or other resources? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Mme Erzulie said:

 

 

Have requested both of ye's. 

I was gifted a diamond membership by my brother for my birthday last year, and I've completed all the intermediate and advanced lessons, and my understanding of chess has definitely improved vastly.

The one point where I feel like there's a lot of room for improvement is openings. I don't find the opening explorer very intuitive or educational, and I often feel like I end up at a disadvantage after the opening when playing games. I also struggle to remember openings, various gambits etc. It's the one area of my game where I feel like I haven't made significant progress.

Any tips for videos, exercises, articles or other resources? 

I remember a few openings from when I was a kid. My dad had Øystein Brekke's Spill sjakk 1 and Spill sjakk 2, where the latter had a very shallow look at a few opening lines, IIRC.

What I've done since then is choose some unusual openings, that relatively few players use, and that I feel comfortable in (meaning I feel comfortable with most positions out of the opening), and have learnt most opening variations used on my level through trial and error.

The analysis tool on chess.com also works well, as it shows the best ways to proceed from where you erred (and it also tells you where you erred). If you analyze your games, you have both the computer analysis, a possiblilty of self analysis and a "show lines"-button, which (for me) gives three optional lines to follow.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 decissive results thus far, with the third one imminent.

MVL won against Svidler and Duda won against Xiong and Vitiugov is clearly winning against So. And Sascha is pushing against Leinier.

Leinier's b-pawn will drop sooner or later, then the important thing for Sascha is to keep the a-pawn alive. As in an ending where all pawns are on one side of the board is one of the things he clearly has to avoid, the other thing is of course all the rooks disappearing from the board leaving him with an opposite coloured bishop ending. Not sure if this enough to win for Sascha overall, but it's clearly just playing for two results at this point and a lot of suffering Leinier. As I was writing this Sascha exchanged is a-pawn for blacks b-pawn. I don't think this is enough to win now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's almost funny how Grischuk went straight for everything I said he should avoid.

Dead draw now.

I should give upon live commentary. Leinier just blundered horribly with 76...c2??

77.f6+ should win now.

That sort of oversight can really only be explained with fatigue.

of course 77.Bxc2 would've been a dead draw. But now white is winning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You could get a Magnus quote:

"If I didn't know better, I would think you knew what you were talking about" - said to Torstein Bae when the latter was commentating on a Norwegian championship or something like that.

Anyways, Xiong has a nice position against Duda, and Svidler has the same against MVL. But I don't trust Svidler to keep the pressure - he holds often, but he struggles to beat the very top players these days.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Russian-Chinese encounters look interesting. Alekseev-Ding Liren in particular. The engine seems to favour Alekseev, but the position looks like a total mess to me. I have no idea what's going on there.

Meanwhile Nepo looks to be just much better in his game against Yu Yangyi. This must be very close to winning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...