Tal Memorial 2012

[Cadaz]

Cant find it live anywhere?

Chessdom apparently isn't working..

[TexAg06]

Try the link that Noir_Desir posted on the prior page. The player names are in Russian, but the feed is great and includes video.

[John_Douglas]

For those who don't speak Russian, there is live coverage here: http://twiclive.com/silverlive.htm

[onus]

Video with English commentary at http://www.chesstv.com/

[ganstaman]

Is it too late to figure that Aronian will take this? Besides being rated 2nd right now and having won his first game against Nakamura, he did really well in the blitz. Moro and Carlsen tied for first in the blitz with a combined 3 losses -- 1 was Carlsen losing to Moro, and the other 2 were from Aronian beating each of them. Not to mention that he seemed to do well with his recent match against Kramnik.

Maybe he can even take the #1 spot and the the WC soon? He's also a really likeable guy who can play very exciting games, so it's hard to root against him.

[TexAg06]

I will only consider Aronian if he goes through the buzz saw named Boris Gelfand

[ganstaman]

Originally Posted by TexAg06

I will only consider Aronian if he goes through the buzz saw named Boris Gelfand

Here, done: Aronian-Gelfand 2010 Tal Memorial

Actually, it is quite interesting: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess...ither&eresult=

"Classical games: Levon Aronian beat Boris Gelfand 6 to 5, with 12 draws.
Including rapid/exhibition games: Levon Aronian tied Boris Gelfand 12 to 12, with 25 draws.
Only rapid/exhibition games: Boris Gelfand beat Levon Aronian 7 to 6, with 13 draws.
*The figures above are based only on games present in our database which may be incomplete."

[TexAg06]

That's pretty surprising. I wonder what a match between them would be like now. It seems like Aronian has gotten much stronger as of late.

[John_Douglas]

If you filter by games in the last 5 years, Aronian has a big plus score vs. Gelfand. But I don't see the point of the comparison. Gelfand qualified for the world championship fair and square by playing the qualification cycle and winning it. It's not like he got a free pass of some kind.

He is also a great chess player who has played many brilliant games throughout his career.

I don't understand all the hate.

[plastic]

I don't really think of it as hate so much as a lot of disappointed people being overly critical of him.

I think he is what he is - IMO a solid top 10 or maybe top 15 player and also extremely solid in style, but probably 60 points too weak to ever be any more than a big longshot to become a WC challenger. The format of the candidates suited his strengths and style and had pretty high variance given the 4 games then tie breaks structure.

Aronian didn't actually play Gelfand during the candidates and was knocked out by Grischuk but if he had, I think you'd have to make Aronian a decent favourite.

[Do it Right]

Kind of off topic but I wasn't nearly as critical of Gelfand as of the format for qualifying. I developed a simulator and discussed in the 'world championship' thread but the gist being that Kasparov versus a field of his aggregate opponents (in other words he has a really huge edge) in one of those 3-round 4-game knockout events would only come out on top ~58% of the time. In a standard 12-round tournament against those same opponents he would come out on top ~90% of the time.

The knockout format is just really dumb and is going to lead to more 'Gelfands'. A huge percentage of the time, a player who is not the strongest player will end up winning the event exclusively due to the variance and luck the knockouts introduce. That also, in turn, even waters down the title of world champion itself. It's pretty clear from the 'world championship' match and his previous results, that clearly were not him just 'saving it all up', that Anand's play (or motivation, will or whatever else) has deteriorated greatly. If he had faced anybody in the top 5 of the world - perhaps even top 10 - I think it's extremely likely we'd have a new world champion today. Instead he got Gelfand and was able to artificially extend his reign for another couple of years due, once again, solely to that terrible format.

Back to this event - it's nice to see some great chess being played again! Although Nakamura losing doesn't necessarily say much about Nakamura or Aronian. If he didn't go 0/2 or 0.5/3 at the beginning of the event, something would be very wrong with Nakamura. He seems to need to get warmed up. Even in the Wijk aan Zee 2011, which he won, he started out on 1.5/4. He then went 7.5/9 in the next 9 rounds to clinch sole first in the event.

[plastic]

^very interesting especially the part about the Karparov simulation. I wonder if FIDE have done anything similar.

Anyway, I'll try to go back to topic too this has a lot of discussion already.

Conversely to what you said about Nakamura, Aronian is notable for his good starts to tournaments. I can think of a heap of tournaments where he won his first or second game and often with black. The times he wins big events it's often with 1 or 2 wins in the first few rounds then he draws the top players and defeats or draws with the bottom half players. Obviously just a 0.5 lead over Carlsen is pretty meaningless this early though.

[John_Douglas]

What is Carlsen doing in this tournament? He has a virtually hopeless position after only 15 moves.

How could the number 1 player in the world go in for such a position right out of the opening?

[TexAg06]

What's the computer eval?

[plastic]

My houdini says 0.88