Chess - the world in black and white

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Today's game was wild. 

Carlsen surprised Nepo in the Catalan, he then essentially blundered an exchange, but Nepo failed to take full advantage of Carlsen's gift and allowed the World Champion to enough counter play, that Nepo was almost on the verge of defeat. In the end it was a very entertaining draw. Nepo might feel a bit sorer about it.

[Plessiez]

Yesterday's game was a lot of fun, yes, even if it was a bit sad not to see a Grunfeld.  (Though not exactly surprising, of course.)

[IheartIheartTesla]

Finally some excitement where both champion and challenger had winning chances, but now it looks almost even post 40-move time control.

One of the algorithms I was thinking about had P=1pt, K, B = 3 pts, R=4 pts, and Q=9 pts, so with Nepo's Q against Carlsen's 2 Rs, you'd think Nepo would be up except for his doubled pawn on the f file. I use this algorithm myself to evaluate mathematically how many pawns to sac for a bishop, or whether B+P is enough compensation for an R etc.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Ian is in trouble.

The position is far from easy to win, that Queen has a lot of perpetual and double attack potential (if Magnus slips after more than 6 hours of play), but clearly it's Magnus torturing and grinding in this position. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Ok, we are in table base territory now. 

Tablebase apparently says draw. But playing this as a human (or a horse  ) is distinctively less fun for black. 

Tablebase for those who are not familar with the term.

Chess is a solvable game, if you have computer with sufficient horsepower that is. Currently there's  none which could solve it from the start (too many pieces, too many moves, just too many positions to calculate). However, for positions with distinctively less material, it is possible to calculate it all with brute force to the bitter end or logical conclusion. 

Maximum number of pieces (including kings and pawns) on the board for tablebase is right now 8 I think (I think that's the absolute maximum, but not sure). We are down to 7 pieces, which definitely exists. 

Edit: Like I said, Ian is not a living tablebase.

Magnus has managed to grind out a winning position. Game Over.

[Knight Of Winter]

The final endgame is just pure pain for Black. Playing with K+Q vs K+R+N+2P against Carlsen, who is famous for tenaciously grinding equal-but-imbalanced positions to victory, has to be one of least enjoyable experiences, even for player of Nepo's caliber. Computer would have drawn this endgame for Black, but I doubt that many humans would.

For the record, tablebase says that 130...Qe6 was the losing move, suggesting 130...Qb1 or 130...Qc2 instead, both of which hold the draw. Not that I understand why or how.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Two points, I think there was some significant time pressure going on there, and of course, Carlsen had more pieces (even though materially they were somewhat equal, its easier to have combinations and be more dynamic when you are moving a rook, knight and those extra pawns rather than endlessly move a queen and a pawn, back when he had it)

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Blunders come in pairs.

There's kinda relief in seeing it happen at the big guy level, too. Makes kinda feel less bad about some blunder fests I produced over the years.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Had to wait 9 games for an English opening.

[Knight Of Winter]

21 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Had to wait 9 games for an English opening.

Yeah, I'm watching an official live stream and commentators and praising Nepo for his opening choice. Much better, they say, to go for complex and a tad unbalanced English opening than for slow grinder of Ruy Lopez which suits Carlsen's style.

From my perspective, this game is already (11 moves in) shaping to be more interesting game than any previous one where Nepo had white pieces.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Only just took a brief look at the postion.

Nepo's position almost looks good. Almost being the the key word here.

How's he supposed the evacuate his Bishop from b7. That thing looks kinda dead to me. (Move 28 White to move).

If it wasn't for that tiny problem I could buy into white's position.

English, so I will have to look at the game a bit more carefully later on.

 

And it's gone.

Gonna be 3-0 and curtains.

I feel sorry for Ian. It sucks when you are on a bad run on tournament, and just have to keep on playing. Been there, done that (much much lower level obviously). 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

So Nepo has accepted the fact, that he will not win  the match, and went out to just stop the bleeding instead of going down guns blazing.

So he went for the Petroff again. But this time didn't play anything crazy. Stuff got exchanged, then more stuff got exchanged and it was an easy draw with black. As it is supposed to be.

[Plessiez]

Well, the second half of this match was certainly something.  Hard not to feel sorry for Nepo (especially with some of the press conference questions he's been asked).

Assuming game 11 is yet another Carlsen win, which is looking pretty inevitable some thirty-odd moves in, this match is going to be over with three games to spare.  Somewhat ironic that, after FIDE changed the regulations to make this match potentially longer than the last few, it's actually going to be the shortest world championship since the Carlsen-Anand rematch in 2014.  (I hope that doesn't persuade FIDE to change back to 12 games in the future though.)

[A Horse Named Stranger]

And Ian heading for another defeat. This is painful

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

That was the most one-sided match since Kasparov-Short.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Interesting Magnus has revealed who was on his team working in the background during the title defense.

Peter Heine Nielsen and Laurent Fressinet are known to be his seconds. No surprises there.

Daniil Dubov was working with him again. Kinda made sense. Jorden van Foreest was new to me.

Gusti was kinda surprising. I know he was/is hiighly regarded as a second due to his good opening knowledge, and I was wondering why he was not commentating on chess24. But makes sense, that he wasn't commentating on his own work. But still kinda surprising he did submit himself to that rather hard work as a second. He doesn't really need the money, and has really given up on active tournament play (apart from a few Bundesliga games each year).

Dubov could get tricky, if he manages to qualify for a match.

Now I am kinda curious to know, who worked Ian.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Its kinda sad too, since after having those 'most accurate' 5 initial games (or was it 6), the next game saw that marathon where mistakes were made approaching the time control, but the first one was actually by Carlsen. In hindsight we can say the entire championship battle hinged around Nepo not finding the right move in that game, and after that a lot of it appears to be psychological.

(not to say that Carlsen could not have equalized if Nepo won that game, mind. The former seems to have a more 'equilibrated' approach post-losses)