Earlier today, I was playing over some games from the British Championship and came across the following position from Fernandez (2029)-GM Arkell (2433), 0-1.



In this position black played 18...Bd3 and the game continued 19. Rad1 Bxe2 20. Kxe2, followed by black going on to win the ensuing ending. Here's a link to the live games if anyone is curious about seeing how this one finished.

Anyway, I'm wondering about the reasoning behind Bd3 and Bxe2. To my untrained eye, I'd like to keep the LSB since it has no counterpart and the Ne2 doesn't look particularly threatening now, nor do I see a beautiful square/purpose for it later in the game. Perhaps he was just trying to simplify and go into a pawn-up endgame against a lower rated player? I probably would have played 18...Rfe8 in the diagrammed position and waited to see how white would continue.

What do y'all think about Arkell's move/idea?

Holy ****. FIDE started updating the rating lists monthly in 2012, I believe. Has anyone else at the 2650+ level had such a good period in that span?

He is currently first in the Politiken Cup with 8.5/9 and has a game with Richard Rapport coming up.

pretty sure ivanov had a couple months like that.

Format: (name / current rating / biggest increase Jul 2012 onward / biggest decrease Jul 2012 onward).

Top GAINERS:

Player		GAIN	PAIN
Navara, David	2716	31	-12
Dominguez Perez, Leinier	2760	30	-11
Motylev, Alexander	2698	29	-22
Rapport, Richard	2701	25	-17
Lysyj, Igor	2686	24	-11

Not-top GAINERS:

Player		GAIN	PAIN
Fressinet, Laurent	2708	8	-13
Leko, Peter	2737	9	-8
Jobava, Baadur	2713	10	-24
Le, Quang Liem	2710	10	-10
Vallejo Pons, Francisco	2698	11	-10

Top BURNERS:

Player		GAIN	PAIN
Radjabov, Teimour	2724	11	-48
Nakamura, Hikaru	2787	12	-31
Caruana, Fabiano	2789	22	-24
Morozevich, Alexander	2731	12	-24
Jobava, Baadur	2713	10	-24

Top not-BURNERS:

Player		GAIN	PAIN
Carlsen, Magnus	2877	13	-4
So, Wesley	2744	19	-7
Leko, Peter	2737	9	-8
Rublevsky, Sergei	2698	11	-8
Kryvoruchko, Yuriy	2707	19	-9

World Top 20:

Player		GAIN	PAIN
Carlsen, Magnus	2877	13	-4
Aronian, Levon	2805	14	-18
Grischuk, Alexander	2795	15	-9
Caruana, Fabiano	2789	22	-24
Nakamura, Hikaru	2787	12	-31
Karjakin, Sergey	2786	15	-19
Anand, Viswanathan	2785	15	-11
Kramnik, Vladimir	2777	15	-19
Topalov, Veselin	2772	22	-17
Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime	2766	20	-12
Dominguez Perez, Leinier	2760	30	-11
Gelfand, Boris	2753	18	-16
Svidler, Peter	2751	22	-13
Giri, Anish	2750	19	-17
Jakovenko, Dmitry	2747	11	-18
So, Wesley	2744	19	-7
Adams, Michael	2743	21	-10
Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	2743	19	-17
Vitiugov, Nikita	2742	18	-17
Leko, Peter	2737	9	-8

Cutoff was 2686 elo because that is when I got tired of doing this. Was surprisingly easy, what with Excel formulas (difference / MAX / MIN) and copy and pasting, but it was still a lot of copy and pasting.

Bu's +38 is the best. Magnus is a boss. Poor Teimour. Peter Drawko is the only player in two top lists.

that's insane if I understand it right. He hasn't once had a month more disappointing than a rounding error (expect to score 8.4, score 8, or similar).

I understood it as Magnus not having dropped more than 4 ELO points in a month since 2012, which is unreal!

yeah, same thing I think

So what ever happened to the anti-moscow gambit that was so popular about 7-10 years ago? Did that ever get busted for black?

R+Q ending with lots of instructive basic ideas: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1632954.

"If you are rated under 2300 and under 18, your K-factor is now 40."

Really FIDE? It's really becoming a ****ing joke.

In light of the new k-factor rules, I bring you a Prodigy Watch update: Awonder Liang gains 103 rating points in August!

His new published rating is 2327, at the ripe old age of 11 1/3 years old (so he'll stop benefiting from the higher k-factor now). Yikes. To be fair, though, he earned the first 40 of the points the old fashioned way, with a k-factor of 15 (for a tournament played in June). If his World Open performance had been rated with a k of 15 as well, his month would still be better than a 60 point gain.

That being said, I'm really not on board with a 33 point rating gain for ONE GAME (which is what he got for both his first and second round wins over GMs)

Edit: To my knowledge this gives him the record for youngest player to receive a published rating of 2300+, doing it two months younger than Karjakin did. Of course if his k-factor for the World Open had been 15 instead of 40, he'd be at 2288 right now, and not hold that record. One more "in his favor" caveat, though, is that at 2288 he WOULD still have set the record for highest published rating at or before the age of 11 and 4 months, as Karjakin's 2269 at the age of 11 even was the prior record holder for that age category.

BJJ, did you see this blurb on Akshat Chandra? I guess he's too old for the prodigy label (sad that a 15 year old IM is too old) but this is still pretty insane.

Although there were several strong ratings increases of 20 or 30 Elo (did we mention Hou Yifan?), there is one that is really beginning to stick out rather prominently: Akshat Chandra. This young 15-year-old IM from the US, not only gained 30 Elo in the last month, taking him to 2472 Elo, but has gained an astounding 200 Elo in the last year. A breakthrough you say? Try this: he was rated 1573 in March 2010 (he had just learned to play), 1905 in March 2011, 2130 in March 2012 (seeing a pattern here?), 2268 in June 2013, and now is 2472 in August 2014. Oh, and the 30 Elo this month comes from an open won by GM Rapport, where he came tied first-second with a 2650 performance.

http://en.chessbase.com/post/august-...-in-the-making

I did see the blurb, and Chandra is in my spreadsheet. At this time, his rating just isn't high enough relative to his age to be that noteworthy (yet). Of course if he continues improving at this pace, he may well overcome his (relatively) late start and put himself into to the prodigy discussion soon.

This almost certainly makes the ratings more accurate as predictors of future results, I remember a Jeff Sonas article claiming that would be true even with a k-factor of 40, even with top players.

lol I get to defend Fide again

It does devalue the FM and IM titles quite a lot, though. A 2300 player could reach 2400 with a single 2400 tournament performance in a 10-round event.

FYP

It is an interesting artifact of this rule that if two players are both rated 2299 going into a tournament, and both post 2400 performance ratings, but one is 19 years old while the other is 17, they'll end the event with drastically different ratings (the 17 year old will of course be rated much higher).

Or similarly if two 17 year olds are rated 2299 and 2301, and play the same set of opponents in the same event with the same results, the one that was previously rated two points lower will be rated way higher afterwards.

Ultimately I agree that this probably DOES make the ratings more accurate in terms of predicting future results. It has some weird effects though, and as you said it at least somewhat devalues the FM title in particularly, and the IM title to some extent as well (though the norm requirements aren't changed afaik, which helps a little there). It also really messes with attempts to compare young players today with players at similar ages in prior years (ie my Prodigy Watch).

Only if they both gain a lot of rating points! If they both underperform, the 2299 will lose more.

Also I see the k-factor is going to 20 for everyone who has never been > 2400, that's interesting and probably good.

Looks like the Politiken Cup counts for August, unfortunately. He is 2707 on the most recent list.

He might be a dog to take many of those surplus points into September, if fields like this are rating black holes for SGMs.

Oh yeah, I'm looking to get one more correspondence game going against a chess sub reg on chess.com. Acceptable playing strengths are anywhere from 0 to 2850 FIDE. (Not ready for Magnus yet.) PM me if interested.

how to I post a game?

I have the PGN but is doesn't seem to upload to the chess.tv replayer any help would be appreciated (I am going to start a thread I think for improvement)

thanks in advance

I found one but am tilited I can't get chess.tv to work so would appreciate help on that point

http://chess.tuxtown.net/game/

There seem to be a lot of lopsided matches in the Olympiad elo-wise, and the one big piece of database info I'm curious about is the avg. length of decisive games between 2600+ GMs and those in the 2000-2150 band, and how it compares to 2600+ vs. 2600+.

Seems like there are a lot more speedy implosions.

Not Olympiad, but pretty recent

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1763088

This is quite the interesting way to prepare for MillionaireChess.



(Comments have the explanation.)

Ok, Sherlock Holmses of this sub-forum, I need your help. This will seem completely random, but I had a lot of time on my hands and I couldn't figure this **** out by myself.

So I was following the Olympiad today and I saw a good friend of mine going completely nuts and dropping a queen in one move in a winning position:

http://www.chessbomb.com/arena/2014-...drigal_Mariano

I went on chess-results to check what is the rating of this Mariano Madrigal fella, and to my surprise I saw that he is an International Master, even though he is rated only 2156! I decided that he is probably some 90 year old guy who used to be above 2400 and just started dropping ELO like crazy. I still decide to go to his FIDE profile and I am surprised again - this guy is born in 1994!

http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=6100961

Now what really surprised me was the summary of his title, seen at the bottom of that page: "Title registered by President, IM, Event 71200". Hm.. Strange?

I have never seen anything like that. Usually the titles are confirmed in the Congress. We can take the same Kantans for example:

http://ratings.fide.com/card.phtml?event=11602945

IM title status approved by Fide Congress in Khanty Mansiysk in 2014. That's how it is for every other IM and GM that I know.

So, let's return to this Madrigal fella. I thought that the only chance for him to have an IM title IF it's not based on some shenanigans is to win one of the tournaments for which Fide gives out titles. I went on his history and found out that his IM title has appeared after he played this tournament:

http://ratings.fide.com/individual_c...2012-08-01&t=0

Oookay, so it is a sub-zonal tournament, which has specific FIDE rules. I hop on to Fide Handbook and check the requirements for IM title in a sub-zonal: a) 1st place (didn't happen) b) if 12 round tourney, 2450+ performance (didn't happen) c) if 9 round tourney, 66.66% (didn't happen, he only played 8 rounds).

So can someone please figure out why this guy has an IM title, which is approved single-handedly by the President?

Also, allow me to say that if I misinterpreted the rules and he actually gained his IM Title (not a norm, title!) from that tournament, where all he had to do was score 5.5/8 versus some underrated IM's, underrated FMs and 2200s, then I am moving the hell to central to America and expect me to be a GM after some sub-zonals.