Monday 21 November 2011

How ridiculous!

I suspect the day of the tournament book is coming to an end. While there have been a couple of very good exceptions to this rule (San Luis, From London to Elista), most players prefer instant coverage. Sometimes such coverage is provided by the organisers themselves, in other cases it is a third party doing the commentary.
Due to the late evening finish, I normally pick up the results from the Tal Memorial in the morning. The added advantage of this is that there is normally rudimentary commentary on how the game went. For example the round 3 game between Kramnik and Carlsen was described by one young GM as a 'ridiculous game'. Now I don't know how firmly his tongue was planted in his cheek when he typed that, but it certainly had an odd look about it. Another observer even commented that Carlsen was 'the reincarnation of Steinitz' as he had retreated his pieces back to their starting squares. But even the extra tempo and masses of space, Kramnik was unable to convert this into anything meaningful, as a draw was the final result.
Why this is so is still not clear to me, given the number of 'rules' that Carlsen broke. I might have to wait until someone writes a book on the tournament too find out!

Kramnik,Vladimir (2800) - Carlsen,Magnus (2826) [A20]
6th Tal Memorial Moscow RUS (3), 18.11.2011


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

According to Shipov, 20.Qg4 was winning:
20 ... Kf8 (Rh7, 21.Bxh6) 21.Qh5 f6 (otherwise white will play f6) 22.Nxf6 gxf6 (Qxf6 23.Nd5 Qf7 24.Qxf7 Kxf7 25.Nxc7) 23.Bxh6+ Rxh6 24.Qhxh6+ Kg8 25.Qxg6+ kh8 26.g4 and then g5 ...

Anonymous said...

In the final position Black is winning due to 41...Kb8 42.Nb6 Bc8 43.Qa8 Kc7 44.Qa7 Bb7, or 43.Nc8 Rc8 44.a4 b4 45.Qc4 Qc5 46.Qc5 Bc5.