Chess: Observing the Mating Patterns of King, Queens and Bishops.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Spain is a relatively well known hub for chessplayers.

Topalov and Ponomariov are just two players that live there.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Vishy Anand used to live in Spain (not sure if he still does, but when he was more active for sure). He is quite fluent in Spanish from what I understand. In fact, when the University of Hyderabad tried to give him an honorary doctorate it was rejected because of 'confusion over his citizenship' (yes its weird, but also ... India)

[A Horse Named Stranger]

He moved back to India a while ago.

There was this story, how he ended up stranded in Germany during the early stage of corona (he played in the German Bundesliga), and he couldn't get back into India to his wife and son. However he is really good with languages. So in addition to Tamil, English and Spanish, he also speaks French and German.

[TheLastWolf]

Don't forget Hindi or the saffron army shall besiege you!

[Rorshach]

So, it seems there's a WC match on?

Also, Nepo is crushing Ding in game 2. How, I can't say. It's way beyond me, he's even impressed Anish.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

This is gonna be a long (or short) match for Ding. 

14 games are not exactly long.  So losses are extremely costly. Ding was flirting with disaster in game 1 and now he has lost his first game with the white pieces. Fortunately for him tomorrow is a rest day. I am not particularly impressed by team Ding's prep.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Back in the day World Chess Championships were played in some pretty serious geopolitical context, psychology was a big part of the preparation and the 'offense', and everyone kept things pretty close to their chest.

Any now Liren openly admitted he was feeling depressed (which I am sympathetic to) and 'weird' with the atmosphere. Not an indictment, but more a commentary of how things have changed.

[Rorshach]

And Ding responds. Didn't see that one coming, I'll admit.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Yep, the rest day worked wonders. 

He was much improved in game 3 and game 4 was a really nice game by him.

Now we have a match.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

I am really not sure what team Ding was doing in their preparation for this match.

 

First game he got surprised by a fairly obvious sideline in the Marshall. As Gusti put it, that's something your prep should really cover.

This time he discarded the Marshall to play a more traditional closed Spanish game, and got punished for it.

At the very elite level the classical closed spanish variations have become out of fashion as the game usually means black will suffer for most of the game. That means you will have to defend passively for an enternity and hope for a chance in the ending if white overreaches. That's the reason why those lines have fallen out of favor and black usually resorts to two systems.

1. The Marshall, which is the more active try, but in reality it's just checking opening prep. If black knows what they are doing the eval is 0.0. The players shake hands and that's that. That was the Carlsen approach during the last match.
2. The other system is the Berlin. Black also suffers a bit, but with the reduced material the suffering is significantly less, and usually you are headed for an endgame that black is never gonna lose.

Either of those options are way more appealing for black than what Ding chose to play today. Altho, it's certainly more pleasent for the spectators.

[Rorshach]

He really *should* know what he's doing.

Perhaps he's not really mentally ready for all the deep prep and has skipped some? No idea, really.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Just ranting, because I really can't get my head around how ill prepared he seems to be when facing the Ruy Lopez (Spanish opening).

It's mindboggling.

Like I said, Carlsen hired Gusti, which basically translated as, I am going to play the Marshall. 

The main benefit of those two systems is that White players have started to play rather tame systems the Anti-Marshalls and Anti-Berlins which are less ambitious closed Spanish, and make it much easier for black to equalize. 

Which brings me back to my ranting from yesterday, why would you then go on to play a closed Spanish instead. Why would you do that to yourself? It makes no sense.

[Plessiez]

When was the last time a world championship match had as many as four decisive results in the first six games?  Doesn't feel like that's happened for a very long time.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Plessiez said:

When was the last time a world championship match had as many as four decisive results in the first six games?  Doesn't feel like that's happened for a very long time.

 

Karpov-Korchnoi, 1981.

 

Kasparov only scored his fourth win against Short in game 7 in '93. So he came close.

Anand-Topalov had four decissive games after 8 games in 2010

Carlsen-Anand had 3 decissive games out of the first 6 games.

-

Edited April 16, 2023 by A Horse Named Stranger

[Rorshach]

This match feels more and more like a coin toss.

[Knight Of Winter]

Great game 6 from Ding Liren. Masterful combining of accumulating small positional advantages and final tactics waving mating net around Black king. With such unpredictable game results so far, it's anyone's guess how games 7 to 12 will turn out.

With such an entertaining match so far, it pains me to say that there will probably always be some speck of dount with regards to "legitimacy" of new champion, whether Ding or Nepo. That is to say, whoever wins the much will be viewed "only" as a world champion, but not as the world's best player - for it's very likely Carlsen would have beaten either of them in a match.

Which is really unfair to both of them. With Carlsen withdrawing, they were logical choices for new contenders, seeing how they won first and second place in Candidates tournament. Ratings-wise, they are in second and third place in the world. They regularly compete and perform well in top-tier tournaments. It's just that Carlsen's supremacy over the last decade or so has been so pronounced that nobody would have been used as a "true" world champion unless they beat Carlsen in a match.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

And Ding has decided he has seen enough calamity in the Spanish and opted for the French defense. I must admit, that was a proper surprise, since it's been literally over a decade since he played it. When was the last time the French was used in a WCC match?  If I were to take a guess, I'd say probably in one of the Kasparov-Karpov matches. I think the French was heavily discussed in (one of) the Karpov-Korchnoi matches.

 

Edit: I was wrong.

Last time the French featured in WCC match was in the First Karpov-Korchnoi match (1978). And heavily discussed is overselling it. Korchnoi played it in 2 games. Both games were drawn.

Edited April 18, 2023 by A Horse Named Stranger

[Knight Of Winter]

Sad and anticlimactic finish to otherwise great game 7. Ding sacrificed the exchange for pressure on White king. Ding played bravely. Ding played confidently. Ding played creatively. And just as this kind of play was about to pay off, Ding psychologically broke. With only 5:39 on the clock, he spent 5 minutes on move 32, and soon blundered due to impossible zeitnot he found himself in, and resigned soon afterwards. People who watched the game in real time said Ding's nerves got the better of him and the he physically froze at move 32, unable to make a move until it was too late.

Really a pity, for this game did not deserve to finish like this. No matter the outcome of this championship, I really hope Ding recovers so we can witness more great games in this quite entertaining fight for the title.

Here's a game for those who are interested.

[Mowgli]

I really enjoyed this 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Sad and anticlimactic finish to otherwise great game 7. Ding sacrificed the exchange for pressure on White king. Ding played bravely. Ding played confidently. Ding played creatively. And just as this kind of play was about to pay off, Ding psychologically broke. With only 5:39 on the clock, he spent 5 minutes on move 32, and soon blundered due to impossible zeitnot he found himself in, and resigned soon afterwards. People who watched the game in real time said Ding's nerves got the better of him and the he physically froze at move 32, unable to make a move until it was too late.

Really a pity, for this game did not deserve to finish like this. No matter the outcome of this championship, I really hope Ding recovers so we can witness more great games in this quite entertaining fight for the title.

Here's a game for those who are interested.

Saw the end of the game. Last 30 minutes or so (when Ding played Qb6-c7). Finish was weird.

He (correctly) pushed h4 with 5 minutes on the clock, Nepo captured on h4 pretty much a tempo (not best according to the silicon brains) and then Ding just burned the remaining time on his clock. It looked like the capture didn't cross his mind and he didn't know what to do. His best response would have been to return his bishop to the h2-a7 diagonal and go Bf4. Instead he went for a sub-optimal move which was sill okayish, but he had no hope for an advantage after his move (Rd2 I think) and then simply missed that his idea had the slight problem that it was hanging his c5-pawn. Tbf, I had myself trouble realizing that Qxc5 was a move and I was not sitting at the board with the clock ticking. And once that pawn was gone, his positon was just resignable. I think he played two more moves, but it was clearly gone at that moment.