Pawns pawns pawns: Candidates 2016 - Round 3

"We have, therefore, come to realise that the main actors in the game of chess are the pawns. Were it not for the pawns, there would be no game. You and I would also have not played chess: without pawns, how can there be any strategy, and creative far-reaching plans, any defensive fortifications or mobile pawn ranks for offensive aims!" - David Bronstein

A day when an audacious pawn rushed to the seventh rank - where his counterpart stayed sometime back in the beginning - and stood majestically!

With all my naivety, I thought.....maybe not this far......especially when my primitive database stopped at move 15 stating "Mega Database 2014: no games found"!

suddenly realised how 'outdated' I am......in the sense of modern day preparations where every crap is accumulated....it is said that, these days, they let the computers indulge in homosexuality..... and we all know what it can produce....

......and they also have this thing called as "correspondence games database" - where two human beings sit afar.....only distanced geographically...to just justify the term 'correspondence'....but in spirit it has no correlation to what that term meant a couple of decades back.  These correspondence gurus sit in front of their computers and let 'them' play - a test of....not their minds, but the respective engine's capacity supported by high end computers....and "collect what they produce"....

Hikaru Nakamura - Peter Svidler, Candidates 2016




Wow!  A pawn on the seventh rank....so early.... and the White Queen at a kissing distance from the opponent's King!

With Nakamura pretending as if everything is being worked out over the board.....



Svidler was busy digging his files....in his mind's eye....!



and confessed in the post match analysis that...."this was all main line and 26.Qh7 was one of the two main lines in my 'file'....you know, after that I thought, you know...you are in a funny situation, which many of us landed....you know obviously it is not the best move in this position, but you have absolutely no idea "why"....so you need to start working out things..."

He further added that, "one of the main lines; Be2 leads to an incredibly long variation, which ends in a beautiful draw..." and all three had a laugh!




"....beautiful"....I would rather prefer to attach this adjective to something which is spontaneous...and not for things worked out in the backyard....for a game of Chess is not an assembly line...where parts are assembled and something beautiful and mobile is rolled out after finishing and fuelling it....


Then they started playing over-the-board and reached the following position...



.....and fought not so eventfully for another 10 moves before signing a peace treaty!


Vishy Anand - Fabiano Caruana, Candidates - 2016



Vishy vs Fabiano also ended in a draw after Vishy, though finding Caruana's pawn push 20....h5 amusing,  couldn't succeed in finding anything substantial......even after looking at the position from various angles...sides.....!

  




Veselin Topalov - Levon Aronian, Candidates - 2016


Aronian couldn't believe his eyes....



......when Topalov blundered his e4-pawn!

After which, Topalov could manage only to prolong his resignation as in return for his interesting sacrifice of c4 his pawn, earlier, marred by this blunder of e4-pawn, he did not even get some checks and instead it was Black who was attacking after digesting two pawns to good!


Anish Giri - Sergey Karjakin, Candidates - 2016



Karjakin after playing a mischievous ....h5, found nothing interesting to work out over the board...



Such was the state of round 3.....scarcely anyone tweeting....

.....and we have a rest day tomorrow....when....I shall deal with an outrageous game, played half a century back.....by a magician!


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