Riveting Kramnik game as always, although we can't really blame him for it this time..

Kamsky trying to press against "scrunchy-face" Gelfand (see live video)

of course one candidates event is not much, but i suspect it might be the start of a fashion pendulum swing back to 1. e4. There are signs that black is not entirely comfortable in the Petroff, and white is not getting far in the QGD and the catalan.

Pretty much agree with this.. Radja must be pissed.

if there's one thing we learned it's how tough these guys are. Great defensive efforts by Grischuk and Kamsky. After Grischuk's Rxa4 the engines went crazy for white for some seconds but he had seen farther, and he played that move instantly!

I'm pretty disappointed that we've seen 22 draws in 24 games so far in Kazan. Yeah, a few of the drawn games have been exciting well-fought chess, but there's been a lot of boring chess being played as well. Not what I was hoping to see as a fan, overall.

yeah standard

Four-game matches are terrible for generating fighting chess--there's a huge incentive not to take risks. Despite that, most of the semi-final games were pretty interesting (definitely better than the ones in the first round I looked at) and despite all being drawn, it wasn't as if they were so peaceful.

Yes, no surprise.

First of all, a draw is simply the most likely outcome if you put two equally strong players against each other.

And (much) more importantly, the match format with just four games makes losing a game an absolute disaster that basically ends the match (especially when you lose with White). That makes it a necessity to not take any risks at all, as far as that is possible.
I think it says a lot that the two players that risked the most by playing extremely sharp lines with White have been eliminated without tie-breaks (Topalov with his 0-0-0 and Mamedyarov with his pawn sacrifices in the Sicilian).

Also, you can't really blame the players as all the draws were played out (with the exception of Grischuk-Aronian 4th game).

I don't buy the argument that losing being a disaster in short matches leads to less incentive to try and win as long as only 2 players are involved. If taking risks is -EV in short matches it's as -EV in longer ones.

The EV is equal in long and short matches but the variance is bigger...

Thus, not losing is more important than winning imho. Offense wins games, defense wins championships. Or in chess terms: Playing for two results is preferable to playing for three.

"Thus, not losing is more important than winning imho."

Only if you're better at rapid than your opponent.

wow, a gross blunder by kamsky in g2 of the rapids goes unpunished by gelfand

Which cannot be said of Gelfand's gross blunder in g3:



White to play and lose.

Rooting for Grischuk in these games is bad for my health, with the positions he gets and always on his 10-sec increment one continously thinks: OK he just got away 10 times, he won't this time...and he gets away again. It's like watching someone walking a tightrope without safety net.

Now i know why this guy is good at poker.

kamsky out would have been through if he didn't miss a 1 move tactic Bxf7 in the 4th rapid game.

damn

really hope grischuk wins the final

a3?? queen is tarped after c4.

what's the right move/idea in game 2? after white plays exf5? it's black to move.



[spoil] is it .. Bxd5. 20. cxd5 Qxc1 21. Rxc1 Rxc1+. 22. Ne1 (Ba5) ?

Pity to see Kramnik eliminated. But basically his own fault. Why did he give away the advantage of the Black pieces in the rapids by drawing in 14 und 8 moves?

I don't know who I should support now... On the one hand, I like Grischuk, and he beat the toughest opponents to reach the final. But I am not sure that he stands a chance against Anand. I think Anand-Grischuk might be the most one-sided World Championship match since Kasparov-Short.

Gelfand on the other hand has been around forever. He's been a Super-GM for 20 years. In fact, he published a book with his best games six years ago (which is excellent btw). Kortschnoj waited till he was 70 to do that. I think Gelfand deserves a match for the title. Though that would probably be a match that's hard to find sponsors for.

Interesting stats from my database (only real games, no rapid, blitz, blind games):
Gelfand vs. Grischuk: 20 games, 4 wins Gelfand, 12 draws, 4 wins Grischuk
Gelfand vs. Anand: 35 games (first in 1989!), 5 wins Gelfand (last in 1993!), 24 draws, 6 wins Anand
Grischuk vs. Anand: 7 games, 0 wins Grischuk (!), 6 draws, 1 win Anand

It's going to be an interesting six games. I suspect Grischuk might change his match strategy. It's harder to draw six games than four in order to reach the safe haven of the rapids...

Even Chessbase's hatred of Kramnik couldn't quite overcome the fact that he was the only one playing for a win. But it does look like Grischuk's strategy (draw with White, hope Kramnik over-presses) prevailed. I was rooting for Kramnik-Anand II myself, but I agree that Anand-Gelfand is likely to be a lot more interesting than Anand-Grischuk.

A strange system, these short matches, especially when comparing the results and play of Radjabov and Grischuk.

I know Grischuk's match strategy wasn't the most attractive, but you still have to admire him for the way he held Kramnik from worse endgames with almost no time. I'm sure Kramnik expected to convert at least half of them against super-GM competition.

No.

Grischuk played without much heart, got lucky and won in the tiebreaks.

That's just dumb. In the first game of the rapids, Kramnik was slightly worse with white after 15 moves and just played for a draw from there. So in the rapids it's really 1:1 on who played for a win. Same story in the classical, in game 4 Grischuk was pressing for long stretches of the game. There Kramnik used a very drawish line that only got spiced up when Grischuk deviated with a sharp move Qa5.

If you're a 1. d4 player and have ideas how to shake Kramnik's Lasker defence, go ahead. Radjabov got nowhere, and what happened to Topalov who tried against Anand twice is quite well known. I can't fault Grischuk for going for sharp lines with Black. To go into Blitz was a purely rational decision and you saw how much better at Blitz he was than Kramnik. Had a draw in g2 not been sufficient he would have crushed him twice.

Yeah, I mean, it worked so it can't have been that bad a strategy. But I was left with the impression that Kramnik wins a longer match 80% of the time. Mostly it makes me think this format is not a great way to select a challenger.

I disagree with that. Maybe 60%, but considering their respective stamina and nerves even that is not a given. Grischuk might have played differently in a longer match too.

I think Grischuk nailed it in the press conference:
"And I’d say in general. It’s very fashionable to criticise the qualifying system – but if you go back to the origins of competitions, the Olympics in Ancient Greece, and so on. They started off in order to identify the strongest person. But now people pick out the strongest at the beginning, for example Aronian, and then if, god forbid, he doesn’t win, the system’s considered bad."

source: Chess In Translantion.