Round 1: Norway Chess: 'Oh Boy....you only conquered the chess world....not time!'
Forget the forgetting of time control, the result, the shock, aahs and oofs.... the Fox which played 58....f4! in a lost position would claim its due...
The presence of queens on the board and the mate in 28 (!! who invented this engine!?) commencing with 60.Qg5 requires at the least... 28 seconds - playing at the "speed of engine"....alas the World Champion forgot that he has not transcended the time yet!
But "let the clock be not proud"...for Magnus Carlsen did cast his spell and let us revel in those moments....before the death of time!
Magnus Carlsen - Vaselin Topalov
13.b5!
He has an uncanny ability not only to make innocuous looking moves an irritant to the opponent, but also to get out of "book" as early as possible!
What confuses a human mind!? Is it a move, or a series of moves, or the stature of human mind sitting across the table? Whatever be it, it is this - the ability to confuse a fellow human mind - which makes and will make chess interesting and alive.
13....ab5; 14.ab5 Qd6; 15.OO Nb6; 16.Qb3!
The exclamation mark is not for this move but for the following Knight manoeuvre to gain control of certain squares in and around the center, which made Black take his first important decision....
16....Rb8; 17.Nd1 Bf5; 18.Nb2 Rfc8; 19.Nd3 Bd3
....forgoing the double bishop... when he also had the option to play Nd7 to cover those squares. If you shed the habit of looking at the 'assessment meter' on the side of the board in Chess24, you would allow yourself to look into such seemingly imperceptible changes that happen through a series of moves, over the board.
The meter may show a different reading, contrary to the result, contrary to how you perceive the position...but there lies the beauty of chess perception - the same position will appear differently for differently abled people at different times!
20.Qd3 c5; 21.dc5 Rc5; 22.h4!
Another important Petrosian move.....
22....Na4?!
.....and the same Petrosian playing black would not have winked his eyes to reply 22....h5!
Not that it is an error or even imperfection, but the move played is "trying" to do something rather than "being" and "remaining". Like it is said that the hallmark of a great speech is to punctuate it with meaningful pauses: so in chess one has to play 'silent moves'....just put the ball across the net into opponent's part of the court!
23.h5!? Rbc8?!; 24.Rc5 Nc5; 25.Qc2!
Now the other Knight starts jumping to the discomfort of Black and we shall end our delineation of this game here; not because it is won or superior or of any such conventional considerations; but because Black has already got swayed and continues to get swayed until the fate decreed the result in his favour....despite....
Sure even the young Norwegian Chess Monk would have got shaken a bit, but will emerge despite this!
Anish Giri - Alexander Grischuk
Landing in this position so early, the two pawns on c5 and e5 probably looked like Jackie Chan's Nunchuck and made Black to respond with a counter punch....rather a counterproductive punch!
14....d6? 15.cd6 ed6; 16.ed6
Only a novice can think that Grischuk missed this....probably having put his Knight in that unfortunate place, the intensity of his willingness to bring it to a decent square as soon as possible, may have suspended his sense of danger and indulge in grabbing something which is generally considered poisonous for her majesty!
Let us now fast-forward to the next pitstop!
16....Qb6; 17.Qh4 Nc5; 18.Be3 Qb2; 19.Nbd2 Nd7; 20.Rab1 Qa3; 21.Rb8 Nb8; 22.Bh6 Nd7; 23.Bg7 Kg7; 24.Qd4 Kg8; 25.Ne4
The 'trouble' with trouble is that it seldom comes 'uninvited'! Here Black invited it with....his next two moves!
25.....Re8?! 26.Kh2?! a5?
Forgets that with Kh2, White has construed a cunning plan which defused the threat which Re8 intended! The queen remained absent from the scene of activity for a considerable time and this was the last opportunity for her to come to the rescue of her husband, by moving to that square instead of the soldier!
27.Nfg5!
And this game effectively ends here.
Hikaru Nakamura - Jon Ludvig Hammer
In this position, by playing.....
31.Bd4-e3?!
.....White made the life of Black a bit easy and by defending the g5-square by say ....h6, Black could have reinforced his control of e6 square - which ironically fell on the blindspot of Hikaru too, for the moment!
31.....Qe6; 32.Bf4
This Bishop was ideally placed on d4 than here!
32....a5
....and this move could have waited and gave way for .....h6!
33.Ng5! Qf5; 34.Bg4 Qg6; 35.Bh5 Qf5; 36.e6
This pawn may not yet be a sword but is a serious thorn! A game of Chess is not lost on a single move (leaving out the blunders, of course!). Curiously, the mind perceives the problems in isolation as happens in most of the cases!
36....Nf6; 37.Bf7 Kh8; 38.Rf1 Ne4
A perfectly human response when you are threatened with a discovered attack on your Queen. Will any sane human mind think of putting the Bishop in void on b3, suggested by houdini, and a very synthetic follow-up leading to 0.03,4.....god knows what!
It so happened that Black lost soon, not because of this move alone, but because he failed to apprehend that his e7-square was a potential weakness too, in the wake of the thorn remaining alive in his flesh and kicking...on e6, and the White's white-bishop covering e8 square, and his own Rooks ideally place for a pawn fork and not to forget of the age old nemesis - the back-rank!!
39.Ne4 Qe4; 40.Qe4 Be4; 41.Be3 ab4; 42.Bc5!!
Picturesque position!
Even capturing this Bishop with check does not help his cause!
Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime - Levon Aronian
Probably Levon walked straight into a prepared variation and that heavy pieces 'ending' looks lost over the board even if there was chance.... Straight from the opening it was White who played and Black only responded haplessly, it seemed.
Vishy Anand - Fabiano Caruana
Black Bishop on d3 would have been picture perfect!
I do not find anything interesting in this game....perhaps Vishy is yet to recover from that great loss that happened a few weeks back....
Looking forward to exciting games in the rounds to come - a writer's delight!
The presence of queens on the board and the mate in 28 (!! who invented this engine!?) commencing with 60.Qg5 requires at the least... 28 seconds - playing at the "speed of engine"....alas the World Champion forgot that he has not transcended the time yet!
But "let the clock be not proud"...for Magnus Carlsen did cast his spell and let us revel in those moments....before the death of time!
Magnus Carlsen - Vaselin Topalov
13.b5!
He has an uncanny ability not only to make innocuous looking moves an irritant to the opponent, but also to get out of "book" as early as possible!
What confuses a human mind!? Is it a move, or a series of moves, or the stature of human mind sitting across the table? Whatever be it, it is this - the ability to confuse a fellow human mind - which makes and will make chess interesting and alive.
13....ab5; 14.ab5 Qd6; 15.OO Nb6; 16.Qb3!
The exclamation mark is not for this move but for the following Knight manoeuvre to gain control of certain squares in and around the center, which made Black take his first important decision....
16....Rb8; 17.Nd1 Bf5; 18.Nb2 Rfc8; 19.Nd3 Bd3
....forgoing the double bishop... when he also had the option to play Nd7 to cover those squares. If you shed the habit of looking at the 'assessment meter' on the side of the board in Chess24, you would allow yourself to look into such seemingly imperceptible changes that happen through a series of moves, over the board.
The meter may show a different reading, contrary to the result, contrary to how you perceive the position...but there lies the beauty of chess perception - the same position will appear differently for differently abled people at different times!
20.Qd3 c5; 21.dc5 Rc5; 22.h4!
Another important Petrosian move.....
22....Na4?!
.....and the same Petrosian playing black would not have winked his eyes to reply 22....h5!
Not that it is an error or even imperfection, but the move played is "trying" to do something rather than "being" and "remaining". Like it is said that the hallmark of a great speech is to punctuate it with meaningful pauses: so in chess one has to play 'silent moves'....just put the ball across the net into opponent's part of the court!
23.h5!? Rbc8?!; 24.Rc5 Nc5; 25.Qc2!
Now the other Knight starts jumping to the discomfort of Black and we shall end our delineation of this game here; not because it is won or superior or of any such conventional considerations; but because Black has already got swayed and continues to get swayed until the fate decreed the result in his favour....despite....
Sure even the young Norwegian Chess Monk would have got shaken a bit, but will emerge despite this!
Anish Giri - Alexander Grischuk
Landing in this position so early, the two pawns on c5 and e5 probably looked like Jackie Chan's Nunchuck and made Black to respond with a counter punch....rather a counterproductive punch!
14....d6? 15.cd6 ed6; 16.ed6
Only a novice can think that Grischuk missed this....probably having put his Knight in that unfortunate place, the intensity of his willingness to bring it to a decent square as soon as possible, may have suspended his sense of danger and indulge in grabbing something which is generally considered poisonous for her majesty!
Let us now fast-forward to the next pitstop!
16....Qb6; 17.Qh4 Nc5; 18.Be3 Qb2; 19.Nbd2 Nd7; 20.Rab1 Qa3; 21.Rb8 Nb8; 22.Bh6 Nd7; 23.Bg7 Kg7; 24.Qd4 Kg8; 25.Ne4
The 'trouble' with trouble is that it seldom comes 'uninvited'! Here Black invited it with....his next two moves!
25.....Re8?! 26.Kh2?! a5?
Forgets that with Kh2, White has construed a cunning plan which defused the threat which Re8 intended! The queen remained absent from the scene of activity for a considerable time and this was the last opportunity for her to come to the rescue of her husband, by moving to that square instead of the soldier!
27.Nfg5!
And this game effectively ends here.
Hikaru Nakamura - Jon Ludvig Hammer
In this position, by playing.....
31.Bd4-e3?!
.....White made the life of Black a bit easy and by defending the g5-square by say ....h6, Black could have reinforced his control of e6 square - which ironically fell on the blindspot of Hikaru too, for the moment!
31.....Qe6; 32.Bf4
This Bishop was ideally placed on d4 than here!
32....a5
....and this move could have waited and gave way for .....h6!
33.Ng5! Qf5; 34.Bg4 Qg6; 35.Bh5 Qf5; 36.e6
This pawn may not yet be a sword but is a serious thorn! A game of Chess is not lost on a single move (leaving out the blunders, of course!). Curiously, the mind perceives the problems in isolation as happens in most of the cases!
36....Nf6; 37.Bf7 Kh8; 38.Rf1 Ne4
A perfectly human response when you are threatened with a discovered attack on your Queen. Will any sane human mind think of putting the Bishop in void on b3, suggested by houdini, and a very synthetic follow-up leading to 0.03,4.....god knows what!
It so happened that Black lost soon, not because of this move alone, but because he failed to apprehend that his e7-square was a potential weakness too, in the wake of the thorn remaining alive in his flesh and kicking...on e6, and the White's white-bishop covering e8 square, and his own Rooks ideally place for a pawn fork and not to forget of the age old nemesis - the back-rank!!
39.Ne4 Qe4; 40.Qe4 Be4; 41.Be3 ab4; 42.Bc5!!
Picturesque position!
Even capturing this Bishop with check does not help his cause!
Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime - Levon Aronian
Probably Levon walked straight into a prepared variation and that heavy pieces 'ending' looks lost over the board even if there was chance.... Straight from the opening it was White who played and Black only responded haplessly, it seemed.
Vishy Anand - Fabiano Caruana
Black Bishop on d3 would have been picture perfect!
I do not find anything interesting in this game....perhaps Vishy is yet to recover from that great loss that happened a few weeks back....
Looking forward to exciting games in the rounds to come - a writer's delight!
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