Are you guys Carlsen won because of opening novelties? I didn't see much of that. Looks like he went into several even middle games, played standard moves, waited for a mistake, and simply outplayed people. I only reason I would hold back on calling Carlsen the next King of Chess is that some of his opponents play looked so weak I wonder if they were taking this tourney seriously.

Sorry, but you have no clue about high level chess and you have proven this more than once already. If you can win a few games in the ICC pool doesn't mean that you got it all figured out. You have no idea about preparation, but your most obvious flaw is that you don't understand the meta-game.

Some years ago Naiditsch won Dortmund and even beat Kramnik in the process. How could that happen? How could a relatively unknown player become that strong? It is very simple: Everyone tried to beat him, because in order to win a tournament you have to score 100% against the weak players. They took risks against him and it backfired. Does this mean he is world class now? No, it just means that he was able to punish overambitious play. Kasimdzhanov - same story, only this time the unknown guy became "World Champion"! Remember Khalifman? He was already semi-retired when he pulled off a similar stunt.

Not every win is just a win, sometimes there is also a story away from the board.

When Carlsen plays Radjabov there is much more on the stake than just a game. There is the tournament situation that dictates if a draw is sufficient or not. There is reputation at stake also. Who is the biggest "child" prodigy? There is much more going on than just one guy playing a dubious novelity and other guy refuting it over the board. The standings with Carlsen at 3.5 and Radjabov at 2 points dictated that Radjabov had to take risks in order to preserve his chance for tournament victory, since the most likely outcome of their mini-match 1:1 was insufficient (Note: Carlsen had already beaten Topalov with white while Radja only managed to draw). If you look at the game then you see exactly that Radjabov was the one striving for early activity at the cost of neglecting his development. He was overambitious and got punished. Does this mean that Magnus can repeat this victory whenever he wants and catch Radja in the very same line again? No! This line will never occur again.

The assumption that Carlsen will dominate is ridiculous, because he cannot do better than playing perfect moves. For now this is equivalent to playing like Rybka. The catch is that all of them are using Rybka and because of trial & error they will all make "perfect" moves eventually. We already know one unbeatable opening: The Marshall Attack in the Ruy Lopez. The Semi-Slav is very close, as is the Sveshnikov. The smoke is about to clear up as computers are crunching openings on an incredibly high rate. The top Elo ratings are already very close together and they will be even more closer together as time goes on. Can Carlsen overcome this? I doubt it, because you can't be better than perfect. In a way this is an argument for Fischer Random.

When Leko and Bacrot came up, computers didn't play that much of a role. Leko got trained by Adorjan, Bacrot got trained by Dorfman, both worldclass coaches. Carlsen got trained by Agdestein (obviously much weaker), but his real trainers were Fritz and later on Rybka.

Btw, Reshevsky was a "Wunderkind" also, but Tarrasch noted that he played theoretical mainlines and those didn't come from nowhere. Even back then it was already a well established fact, that immediate success in chess was linked to opening erudition.

Tarrasch almost certainly envied that child. In fact the openings were always Reshevsky's weak point. In an interview he gave as very old man Reshevsky said that openings were the only things about chess he ever studied, but he was referring to his second chess career as part time professional adult player then.

lolwat

Kasimdzhanov and Khalifman won knockout tournaments, meaning they had to win 7 mini-matches against other strong GMs. No they weren't the best players in those events, but to say they won because stronger players were trying to beat them so they could score +3 instead of +2 and win a supertournament is absolutely absurd and incorrect.

Shandrax, with every post you make it comes closer and closer to sounding like you honestly believe the difference between strong player A and strong player B is just alot of preparation.

And so many of your posts are so ironic. You are quick to slam others for claiming they have it all figured out, while with every word you state you make it blatantly clear you feel you do.

And without taking a low blow, have you ever considered that some flaw in your thinking about chess may have contributed to your lack of results in the game? I guess you can just blaim everything on talent, but some people show great success in this game in a short period of time. Others play their whole lives and never break 1800. In my experience, the latter tend to value preparation and openings vastly more than the former.

It is not that I honestly believe it, I know it for a fact. There are exceptions of course, but for a general rule of thumb this is very close to the truth.

The reason why you have a problem with this statement is that you seem to vastly underestimate the strength of an "average" 2700+ GM. Every single one of them is a calculation monster with close to perfect technique.

The other reason why you may have a problem with this is that your understanding of preparation and mine are completely different. For me preparation isn't just finding a new move in a known position. It means complete knowledge of the secrets of a position or a certain variation. Good preparation goes much deeper and reaches a level that is very similar to clearvoyance. Better preparation is all this plus the attempt to find a spot where the evaluations start to blurr. Finding a forced win (or sometimes a forced draw) in such a subvariation is what Kasparov was known for. That was the ultimate form of preparation.

This game is an example for that and you can be sure that Kasparov had the final position on his analysis board before.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1274526

These are two sister games played in consecutive rounds. So one could say that Dorfman knew what was coming. Note that they were played 1981 when the computer era was far away.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1069914
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1069915

If you like the Botvinnik-System, here is another one by another great opening specialist Polugaevsky, who claimed that he had it on his analysis board almost to the final move:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1041460

One more by Kramnik, this time with black:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1143855

Kind of shocked that not only do you believe this but you admit to believing it.

So since you believe opening preparation is all that separates one 2700+ from another, you clearly believe if a bunch of 2700+ players all played a bunch of 100 round tournaments of chess 960, the winner would be completely random every single tournament.

Or if given 500 random unknown and unclear positions, Nakamura would be expected to score 50% against Kasparov.

I'm not going to try to convince you that you're wrong, but you are.

I don't get the Naka-Kasparov comparison, because they definitely do not belong in the same cathegory.

960 is a different story. Chess is mostly pattern recognition and many 960 positions do not fit common patterns. I couldn't place a bet on any side in a match between two random 2700 or some of these guys against Kasparov. It is like betting on two kickboxers doing a boxing match or two PLO specialists playing Omaha 8/b. It wouldn't surprise me if some Elo 2600 player could become 960 world champion either.

Shandrax, you're wrong

This is getting ridiculous. You are basically claiming every move a player makes reflects his true strength, but this is obviously wrong. Even weak players can look up a theoretical line and play at the Elo 4000 level for 7-8 moves. Once they are on their own their strength usually drops by 2500 points until they reach an endgame position where their vague book knowledge kicks in again.

Preparation means close to perfect play that got checked with a computer beforehand. The guy who is out of book earlier has to think earlier and is much more likely to go wrong. This is so obvious and has been proven in practice for many years. If you don't know it, it is not my problem.

My 2 cents, please don't flame or namecall...

I think he knows that, but he's saying that it's only *part* of what makes someone better/play better. and I agree with him.

For instance, there are occasions where one player is very booked up and faces someone like Anand who has to face the novelty over the board and handles the novelty well or even refutes the novelty over the board. So "superior" preparation is not a magical wand. Computers aren't perfect in analysis either and can miss things over the horizon (I know this is quite obv. but worth pointing out here).

You guys really aren't meeting eye to eye and arguing about things that aren't coinciding.

It is clear that Tal produced different moves than Karpov. Still both were very strong and both were World Champion. The problem is that neither one of those styles is viable today. Tal would have a tough time to create his type of positions against computer prepared players and Karpov simply ends up in inferior positions without any counterplay on a regular basis.

There is only one style left and this is the style that can be described with active-positional with an element of constant pressing, very similar to Fischer. Every top player of today has adopted this exact style. That is why they are all so close together. If you don't believe it, then make a database consisting of 1.e4 games won by Anand, Leko and Svidler (you may also toss in Adams if you wish) between 1996 and 2005 and try to guess who played it. Good luck!

Btw, there is a shortcut solution to this:


The way they get the advantage is almost identical. The difference is the number of strong novelities, the percentage of successful conversions and the risk level of their openings with black. Anand won a lot more games with black, Leko was a drawing machine and Svidler simply lost too many Gruenfelds. Now what does this tell us about the quality of their chess? Not much. They can all spot winning combinations easily, they just don't get equal chances to do so.

In order to win with black you got to put yourself in a position to win and Anand does it much more often than Leko, because his preparation is better. On the other hand, if you give them a classical tabiya (not some crazy random position) to play out, they will produce very similar moves.

I am not claiming that Leko is as strong as Anand nor that their style identical. I am claiming that you can't tell the difference.

The funny thing happend when it turned out about 2 years ago that Rybka was better than Fritz. That led to a few changes in the world rankings (namely Morozevich). Stuff like that has an impact on high class chess. Other than that it became more and more difficult to produce results, because the field is so narrow these days. Topalov found a way, he simply got signs from his coach during games....so we see, Poker and Chess can indeed have something in common.

LOL on that.
Im not even sure Fritz has ever been the best program at any time since they started to publish these computer rating lists...

Fritz is the most widely recognized program but that is thanks to the long running contract with chessbase.
Fritz is about 140Elo points lower rated than Rybka... Its like thinking wow, it turned out that Anand is a better player than Illia Smirin

In any case, there is a book called "Revolution in the 70's" by Kasparov and it contains a survey where world class players and trainers had a say and virtually all of them confirm my opinion on the value of preparation and the impact of computers.