Hello everybody,

today the huge Chess Classic Festival kicks off in Mainz, Germany. It features a Chess960 as well as conventional rapid chess open (both 11 rounds Swiss system).

The main events are two world class rapid chess tournaments - in the Chess960 tournament we'll see Levon Aronian, Victor Bologan, Hikaru Nakamura and Sergei Movsesian and the conventional one features Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Arkadij Naiditsch (nobody needs him, but well, he's German...)

I'm going to play in both opens. The Chess960 takes place on Thursday and Friday, followed by the conventional tournament on Saturday and Sunday.

I'm not really intending to use scoresheets for my games but I hope that I'll be able to write interesting stuff anyway, game fragments, anecdotes and whatnot (-;

In case somebody from this forum will be there as well (I understand there are also some Europeans around here ) just send me a PM and we could have a drink or something like that.

Cheers

Good luck, Viika! I'm not gonna lie, your tournament blogs are starting to make me pretty jealous of you European chess players

Good luck! I wasn't aware of the 960 part. I can't wait to see Nakamura's 960 games, mostly since I have no idea what to expect from them.

The first 3 rounds of the Chess960 tournament have been played by now and Aronian leads with 3/3 while Nakamura, Bologan and Movsesian have 1/3 each. Nakamura won against Bologan and lost to Movsesian and Bologan won against Movsesian.

Today they're going into the rematches. The first and the second will proceed to play a final match of 4 games tomorrow. It's a safe bet that Aronian will push through but it's completely open who will be the poor devil to play him in the finals.

A report can be found here, as well as the games, which can also be viewed online. I want to draw your attention to the game Nakamura-Aronian, where Aronian sacrifices his queen for two rooks at move 8 and proceeds to outplay his opponent positionally afterwards - although I don't really see a reason why Nakamura should sacrifice the pawn b2 with 10.Qg1. The only justification would, in my opinion, be the prevention of Be3, but as White could always play Nc2 and challenge the bishop, I don't think that this should be a major concern.

Nakamura - Aronian



1.g3 c6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 f5 4.d3 e5 5.f4 exf4 6.Bc5 Rf7 7.Rxf4 Bg5 8.Bd4



Aronian now doesn't play the obvious 8...Bf6 but rather sacrifices his queen for two rooks.

8...Bxf4 9.Bxh8 Bxc1 10.Qg1 Bxb2 11.Nb3 b6 12.Qe3+ Re7 13.Qg5 Nc7 14.Bf6 Rf7 15.Kd2 Ne6 16.Qh4 d6 17.e4 Nd7 18.Bh8 Bxc3+ 19.Kxc3 fxe4 20.Qxe4 Re7 21.Qh4 g5 22.Bh5+ Kd8 23.Qg4 Kc7 24.Nd4 Nxd4



Black is doing well here anyway, but I consider White's next to be just a huge blunder. I'm wondering whether he didn't see 25...Re5 - but on the other hand, who am I to judge two world class players...

25.Qxg5? Re5 26.Bxe5 dxe5 27.Bg4 Be6 28.Bxe6 Nxe6 29.Qe7 Nd4 30.Qxh7 Rf8 31.Kb2 Rf2+ 32.Kb1 a5 33.h4 b5 34.cxb5 cxb5 35.a3 b4 36.a4 Ne2 37.Kb2 Kd6 38.Qg6+ Nf6 39.Qf7 Ne4 40.Qg6+ Kc5 41.d4+ Nxd4+ 42.Kc1 Nc3 0-1

The Nakamura - Aronian game was just brutal. It simultaneously sums up everything I love and hate about 960. The players are out on their own left with nothing but their own skill at chess creating dynamic and wild battles (where else would a 3-0 score between 4 2700's be unsurprising??), but on the downside - the players are out on their own and under time pressure in a situation where the opening position alone justifies hours of thought, so often the games don't seem so deep.

So now the first half of the Chess960 tournament has been played and I've got 3 points out of 5. This is nothing particularly special as I won my games against the weaker players and lost against two players above ELO 2500.

Obviously I can't comment on all of my games but I'll bring my game against former World Championship Candidate Andrej Sokolov, who has been residing in France since the fall of the Soviet Union and still has ELO 2560. In the FIDE candidate cycle 1985-1987 he rushed through until Karpov stopped him in the candidate finals. He's actually quite a nice guy and after the game I got the opportunity to use my rotten command of the French language to analyse our game with him (-:

Andrej Sokolov (2560) - Oliver Uwira (2260)
Chess Classic Mainz 2009 - FiNet Open (Chess960, Round 2, Board 31)



1. d4 c5

Direct counter attack - my bishop attacks h2 and White is almost forced to respond with the same attack. My opponent said that he didn't even see that h2 is weak when he played his first move - that's how Chess960 is like. A grandmaster is capable of overlooking a simple counter attack at move 1 (-:

I, on the other hand, have seen this idea quite a lot before. It's one of the basic Chess960 tactics... it didn't help me too much, though...

2. c3 Bxh2 3. Bxh7 Bxg1 4. Qxg1 cxd4 5. cxd4 Rxc1+ 6. Kxc1 d6?!



My move is a serious inaccuracy. As analysis showed, I should have played 6...f6 with the idea of playing ...Bg6 which forces White to take at g8 and after ...Qxg8 I'm the one winning the tempo by means of attacking a2.

7. f3 g5 8. d5 b6

Well, this is the tempo White has won now. I can't afford to rescue the exchange as I'm sure I'll get mated somehow by Qxa7 and Ba5. The following moves up until the next diagram constitute something like a normal development of the game. The crucial position is at move 16.

9. Ng3 Ng6 10. Bxg8 Qxg8 11. Nc2 Nc7 12. e4 Nf4
13. Bd2 Nd3+ 14. Kb1 Bd7 15. Qe3 Nf4 16. Qa3



Now I have trouble with my queenside, but I thought that I would get sufficient counterplay by a series of knight hops. Sadly, my opponent shows me that I don't have anything and that the White position is already vastly superior.

16...Nb5 17. Qa6!

It looks kind of dangerous to move the queen into enemy terrain where it might easily be trapped by Black's minor pieces. But White has everything under control...

17...Nd3 18. Qb7 Qg7?!



I won't call this a blunder because Fritz still doesn't see too many problems for me, but here I begin to crumble under time pressure. Either 18...Qh8 (in order to not present a target to a possible Nf5) or better play later on would have been necessary here...

19. Bc1

Of course, I kind of overlooked this one. Now I don't have any time left and I don't have a plan and I'm under pressure... not a good situation to be in...

19...Nc5 20. Qb8+ Bc8 21. Nf5 Qf6 22. Nb4 Na6?? 23. Nxa6 1-0

I guess I'm already dead at the time of my last blunder, but it was still kind of embarassing to go down like that...

Finally I want to show a blunder of Germany's most accomplished arrogant b*st*rd

Arkardij Naiditsch (2697) - Sergey Grigoriants (2564)
Chess Classic Mainz 2009 - FiNet Open (Chess960, Round 4, Board 7)



Hmm, what do I know? If somebody is able to win, it must be White. But karma strikes back, as we know. The following is all coupled with a funny story. A friend of mine told me that right after he entered the hall with a couple of his trainees, they saw the above position and one of the kids said "uh, Naiditsch, I hope he'll lose".... well, this is what happened:

1.e5?? Rg4+ 2. Kf3 Rg3+ 0-1

Ouch...


Alright guys, that's it for today. Hope you'll enjoy it. I'm going to the beers now ((-:

Wow I can't believe a 2697 could lose this ending like that.. And blunder so badly when Rg5+ Rg4+ is quite obvious. I'm guessing he wasn't in time trouble either?

I'm pretty sure that when I was 1200 USCF I'd be able to win this ending fairly easily with 1. Ra7+ Ke8 (Kf6 e5#) 2. f6

Also: Nice report, thanks for sharing Viik.

I must admit that I the black king might not have been on f7 exactly. I just looked at the broadcast screen when my mate told me the story of his trainees. The screen showed 0-1 and I looked at the moves, recognising that the Ra3 went off... but even if the king wasn't at f7 your plan (like, first giving check and then playing e5) should give White very good winning chances.

That diagram for the rook ending in Naiditsch - Grigoriants may not have been the position unless White was in serious time trouble: it's clear that he can simplify into a very easily winning pawn ending with 1. Ra7+ 2. Ra8+ 3. Rxg8 4. e5/Kf3.

Nakamura went 3-0 today in the 960 apparently after deciding to focus much more heavily and spend more time on the opening phase of the game. Should be a great play off!

The actual position was this:



Last move was h7-h5.

The game can be found here: http://www.chesstigers.de/ccm9/live.php?lang=$lang

Wow, blundering here with 1. e5?? is just as bad if not worse than Viik's diagram.

Really? I mean Viik's diagram is super easy to win, but I'm not so sure there's a definite win in the real diagram. Either way it's obviously pretty terrible, but I could at least imagine trying too hard to win in the real position and overlooking the obvious tactic.

Not sure why people are so shocked. It happens, even super-elite players make catastrophic obvious blunders. Remember Shirov earlier this year against Carlsen? I forget the exact situation, but he played a king move that interfered with his own bishop's control of a queening square. Carlsen just played b8=Q (or whatever) and Shirov resigned.

I remember some game from ages ago where Gurevich played ...Nh5 and was rudely surprised by Qxh5 or something like that. And Kramnik missing an absurdly obvious mate in 1 vs. Fritz. etc, etc.

Also, it was rapidplay and by this time (about move 60) they were probably down to the 5 second increment.

Well, the Chess960 is history. Alexander Grischuk took it down after a very strong and souvereign performance. The guy is really amazing: Playing poker all night and then delivering such performances continuously (-:

I ended up as an also-ran, which was to be expected. In the end I had 6/11 and wasn't really satisfied with my result. I continued the pattern of losing against 2500 players in the even-numbered rounds and win against the weaker players in the odd-numbered rounds - up until I blundered a piece from a very good position in round nine which effectively killed my tournament, even though I won the last two rounds.

What was annoying me in particular was that I totally outplayed the 2500 guy of my first round today during the opening. But then he just showed me why he's a GM and I'm not. He set up a defense and I couldn't really find a way through. Then it took just one or two inaccurate moves to hand him the initiative and eventually the game. I don't have the games this time, because it's such a pain in the ass to enter a Chess960 game at chessvideo.tv - I'm gonna post some of my games from the following Ordix open, though.

The main events brought some big upsets. First, Hikaru Nakamura pulled back with 3/3 in the rematches and tied Levon Aronian for first and second place. He then continued to smash Aronian up 3.5:0.5 in the finals.

Aronian couldn't have been too depressed about it though, because today, in the first round of the convential chess tournament, he outplayed Anand with two knights against two bishops. Anand also lost against Ian Nepomniachtchi in a Poisoned Pawn Najdorf. Nepomniachtchi brought a (probable) novelty with ...g5 and Anand reacted by sacrificing another pawn and a knight, only to see his opponent return the piece and reach a vastly superior ending. Anand starting with 0/2 was an absolute upset, but he pulled back by smashing up Naiditsch in the third round, who has now 0/3.

I'm very excited about how Anand will fight on tomorrow. He probably needs 2.5/3 tomorrow to make it to the finals.

As usual, the games are available at chessbase.com and under the link Ajezz posted above.

Cheers,
tomorrow I'm gonna kick butt (-:

nice updates, looking forward to seeing your Ordix open blog

Kramnik's "absurdly obvious mate in 1 vs. Fritz" was not that obvious.

It was an atypical mating pattern with a Lone Knight on f8, supporting a mate on h7 with a Queen from the middle of the board.



Imo, that type of blunder is more understandable than the one in the rook ending above (Which becomes more understandable itself if you only have 5 seconds).

Well basically it's like this. A super GM is capable of blundering like you and me, but they do it significantly less often. Boris Avruchm, for example, writes in the preface to his book "Grandmaster repertoire 1.d4"

Skills that come to mind are discipline (especially when it comes to calculating variation and sitting on one's hands) and objectivity. They would also have deeper chess knowlegde which most of the time is a learned skill (although I figure that having talent might help a great deal )

As for mind-boggling blunders of world class GM's - Vasily Ivantchuk blundered a piece against Nisipeanu at the FIDE WCC semifinal 1999 in Las Vegas:



Ivanchuk played 13...Bxf2?? here and resigned after 14.Qxf2 (of course not 14.Kxf2?? Qd4+). And that was it for Ivanchuk...

Yes we're all human Viiki, good point.

Lmao @ Ivanchuk's blunder .. that's more proof to him being "crazy" than anything else.

Looks like Anand is not going to win the chess classics Mainz for the first time in like a 100 years.

edit: he might get lucky though since Naiditsch lurched into action and beat Nepomiachtchi.

Half of the Ordix Open has been played by now and I have got 3/5. Like in the Chess 960 tournament I managed to win against the weaker players but lost to the stronger ones.

While I did have my chances against the 2450 player from round 5, I was clearly outmatched in my second round encounter against Gata Kamsky...

Gata Kamsky (2717) - Oliver Uwira (2260)
Chess Classic Mainz 2009 (Ordix Open, Round 2, Board 4)

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 c5 3. g3 Nc6 4. Bg2 Nf6 5. O-O e6 6. c4 Be7 7. cxd5 exd5 8. Nc3 O-O 9. Bg5 c4



I figured that if there's any chance at all, it must come from a rather complicated variation. I also had some experience with the 9.c4-Tarrasch, but unfortunately I couldn't remember the theory well enough to hold my own in this game.

10. Ne5 Be6 11. Nxc6 bxc6 12. b3 Qa5 13. Na4 Rac8 14. e3



Now Black is at a crossroads. I knew that 14...Rfd8 isn't sufficient for equality so I played a move recommended by Harald Keilhack in his Tarrasch Defense bible. I wish I had actually analysed this variation a bit rather than just consuming the section in the book.


14...h6 15.Bxf6 gxf6 16. Qh5 Kg7 17. Rfc1



From here on I was on my own and I have to address the threat of Rxc4. I have neither had a look into the book nor asked Fritz about the position yet so I don't know what's best here. I decided to bring to queen out of the vis-a-vis with the Qh5.

17...Qb4 18. Bh3 c5 19. dxc5 Bxc5 20. Bf5



At this point I blundered the game with 20...Be7 but the question is what to play instead. Maybe 20...Rfe8 is called for in order to protect e6. After my blunder, Black is just dead and the rest is agony...

20...Be7? 21. Qg4+ Kh8 22. Bxe6 fxe6 23. Qxe6 Qd6 24. Qh3 Kh7 25. Nc3 Qe5 26. Ne2 Bc5 27. Qd7+ Kg8 28. Nf4 Rfd8 29. Qg4+ Qg5 30. Qe6+ Kh7 31. Qf7+ 1-0


Well, but anyway, the opportunity to play a player like Kamsky alone made my participation worth it (-:

As for the main event: Anand is out! He only made three draws in the second round and must now settle for the third place playoff against Naiditsch. The final will be between Aronian and Nepomniachtchi and I would bet my
money on Aronian here.

I have got to go now. Round 6 is starting in 25 minutes (-:

Cheers

That was awesome that you got to play Kamsky! Made the price of admission worth it I'm sure.

Don't feel bad about messing this game up, just make the most out of your next opportunity against a top flight player.

Now it's all history. I finally ended up with 6.5/11, having scored 3.5/6 on the second day. I continued to beat the lower ranked players but got whipped by Rafael Vaganian in round 7. In the last round I finally had the chance to beat a higher ranked player (2390) but I screwed up a knight vs. bishop ending with a pawn up like I was a complete beginner. Time trouble might take part of the responsibility here but I was mad at me anyway.

My consolation was that even with 7.5/11 I wouldn't have had a chance to win one of the five rating prizes in the 2400-2200 tier. So I basically paid 45 bucks for 22 games, three of which were against famous players - namely Andrej Sokolov, Gata Kamsky and Rafael Vaganian.

After the last round I went to watch soccer and returned during the second round of the main event finals. Aronian was in the process of crushing Nepomniachtchi the second time while Anand and Naiditsch were producing a boring draw.

Being up 2-0, Aronian played it safe in game 3, reaching an easy draw with White to win the match. In the fourth round, Nepomniachtchi played the Center Game as White and the game escalated into a wild hacking. Aronian sacrificed everything he had and eventually gave perpetual check (he must have seen that before as his emergency exit) but he even had a forced win with barely any heavy material left. Easily the best game of the whole event.

The Anand-Naiditsch match was completely useless. Four boring draws and no risk taking from either player. No need to lose further words about it.

So that's it then. Nice tournament, but I still feel kind of depressed now. I thought I could vent my personal trouble and sorrows by crushing some stronger players, but I played solid at best, if not mediocre. It is just inevitable - you can't play confidently if your mind isn't free. It's the same with poker which is why I'm currently taking some kind of poker hiatus...