Beginning today, the Candidates matches take place in Kazan, Russia.

Upper bracket:
1 Topalov (2775) - 8 Kamsky (2732)
4 Gelfand (2733) - 5 Mamedyarov (2772)

Lower bracket:
2 Kramnik (2785) - 7 Radjabov (2744)
3 Aronian (2808) - 6 Grischuk (2747)

Playing days are:
Quarter finals (4 rounds) - May 5th-8th, tie-break on 9th
Semi-finals (4 rounds) - May 12th-15th, tie-break on 16th
Final (6 rounds) - May 19th-21st, 23rd-25th, tie-break on 26th

Games start 3pm local time, which is 1pm CEDT and 7am ESDT.

Classical time control: 120/40 + 60/20, then 15 minutes + 30 seconds increment for the rest.

Official site: http://kazan2011.fide.com/
All the usual sites will probably transmit the games.


So the most important tournament of this year is about to begin. A lot of close matches in the first round. It's hard to make predictions especially with this ultra-short four-games-format. My feeling is that Aronian is a slight favourite overall. Topalov's last results were very bad (Nanjing, Olympiad) but that was almost six months ago. Hard to predict his form. I really like Gelfand, he might become a real surprise here. My support will go to Kramnik though, but his last performances in Monaco were bad, he might be out of form.

Dream final of course Topalov - Kramnik.

Prediction (with a grain of salt...):

Kamsky over Topalov
Gelfand over Mamedyarov
Kramnik over Radjabov
Aronian over Grischuk

Gelfand over Kamsky
Kramnik over Aronian

Kramnik over Gelfand

Anand over Kramnik

Going to be interesting.

Do you think that Topalov will uphold his threat not to play in Russia?

He said he will not play a Russian in Russia, not that he wouldn't play in Russia at all...

Interstingly enough, Kamsky's father is a Tatar, so Kamsky is basically the home guy.

"I recommend that Kamsky insist they play outside in a field and piss on a tree to avoid the old cables in the ceiling gambit. My other suggestion is for him to take Sebastien Feller as a second and watch Danailov's head explode."

Mig Greengard.

T-K 3:1
G-M G after 4 draws and tiebreaks

K-R 2,5:1,5 with 1 decided game
A-G 2,5:1,5 with 3 decided games. Might also be 3,5:0,5 after Grischuk blows up his winning position in time trouble but then they won't play game 4 i suppose.

imo.

Is hte icc stream not up yet? I cant get it to work..

the games start in about a half an hour from now

Yeah I thought there might be some "pre-game" stuff going on :P

Update after 35 minutes:

Grischuk obv prepared a pawn-down endgame at home, looks like he has enough to draw though. He probably wouldn't play like that against Kramnik.

We have a very strange sicilian (Kamsky-Topalov) and a very standard sicilian (Mamedyarov-Gelfand) between a d4-player and a petrov-expert.

And last but not least Radjabov has already agreed to a draw against Kramnik, although they're still playing of course. But this variation looks like a guaranteed draw with Kramnik on the black side...

Kamsky - Topalov went 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.a4 Nc6 7.a5. is a5 new? At least Topalov spent 10+ minutes before replying e6 which points to yes. What happens if Black captures? It's not at all obvious to me at least.

I'd like to see Mamedyarov do well, I think he should beat Gelfand although the markets had him as a slight dog as of yesterday (no action on it now).

Grischuk's game looks like one of the reasons not to play the Gruenfeld, half the time the theoretical lines go into these positions a pawn or two down with no obvious play and zero winning chances. Or about 80% of the time if you're Svidler.

I have no idea, but my instinct is that Black is doing well anyway. Hell of a place to bring out a novelty in the Najdorf on move 7.

7. ... Nxa5 8. Nd5 e5 9. Nxf6+ gxf6 10. Bd2 b6 11. b4 exd4 12. bxa5 b5 13. Bb4 d5 14. Bxf8 Rxf8 15. Qxd4 Bb7 16. exd5 Qxd5 17. O-O-O Qxd4 18. Rxd4 =

is what the engine at chessbomb.com suggests but that is definitely to be taken with a grain of salt...

OK, so it's one of them modern chess engine pawn sacs for a little this and that in compensation I guess

And why can`t black simply play Nc6 (instead of e5)

Maybe Nb5 is unpleasant for Black in some variations, a teammate of mine recently trashed someone along the lines of 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 b5?! 7. a4 b4 8. Nd5 Nxe4? 9. B (or N, i don't remember) b5 and it was game over, maybe similar ideas work here.

yeah I think Nxe4 would be a step too far, but Nc6 makes some sense. still it's two whole tempi, Nxf6+ and White probably has something for it.

Yeah a5 seems new. Will be interesting to see thoughts on it post game.

Plus the rook makes it difficult for black to play b5

doesn't look good for Radjabov imo, he doesn't win too many games with Black.

fyp

he beat Vishy and Garry with black though

Who am I to doubt Kramnik's decisions but i'm sure he would never accept a draw offer from Radjabov in the following position...

I'm 100% sure he would, if the match situation dictated it.

sry for being a noob but why isnt carlsen playing?

He withdrew because he said he didn't like the format. Something about it being lengthy and the champion getting a bye to the end.