Tag: caruana

Indians at the Tromso Chess World Cup

Post author By AsimPereira
Post date August 13, 2013
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The Chess World Cup is taking place in Tromso, Norway. The top 2 winners qualify for the Candidates, the winner of which will wrestle against the world champion.
There are 4 Indians participating at the Tromso World Cup (Sasikiran, Negi, Adhiban & Akash).

Update after R2:
Adbhiban is the lone Indian standing. He now faces world #9 Hikaru Nakamura in R3.
Sasikiran was ousted after he lost 1.5-0.5 to Sergey Karjakin in the rapid playoffs.

Edit: After the tiebreaks in Round 1:

Caruana (2796) 1.5 – 0.5 Akash (2332) => Akash eliminated
Alekseev (2714) 3 – 5 Adhiban (2567) => Adhiban wins
Kryvoruchko (2678) 4 – 2 Negi (2634) => Negi eliminated
Sasikiran (2660) 2.5 – 1.5 Lupulescu (2650) => Sasikiran wins

Caruana (2796) 1.5 – 0.5 Akash (2332) => Akash eliminated
Elo difference: 464 points!!

Game 1 – Akash 0-1 Caruana

Akash lost the first game with White although he was equal for nearly 25 moves. Caruana slowly squeezed Akash back to the wall and cramped his position.

Position after White’s 40. Re2

How did Caruana (Black) end the game!?

Solution: (highlight the black box to see the solution) Rxh4! (Hint: Simplification!)

Game 2 – Caruana 1/2 Akash

Needing a win in the final game of the mini match and playing Black against the World #3 is not easy. The pieces soon came off the board and Akash’s extra doubled pawn gave no significant advantage and a draw was signed after 57 moves.

Alekseev (2714) 1 – 1 Adhiban (2567) => Tiebreak
Elo difference: 147 points!

Both games were uneventful draws. So Adhiban has done a good job of taking his higher rated opponent to the tie breaks.

Tie breaks consist of 2 games with a time control of ‘25 minutes for each player with an addition of 10 seconds after each move’. Tie breaks are on Tuesday, 17:30pm IST.

Kryvoruchko (2678) 1 – 1 Negi (2634) => Tie break
Two decisive games with Black pieces!

Game 1 – Kryvoruchko 0-1 Negi
Negi nicely maneuvered his pieces and exchanged them at the right time. The Rook, Knight and King soon set a nice mating net around the White King and the opponent resigned. Pretty instructive game!

Game 2 – Negi 0-1 Kryvoruchko
With White pieces, Negi only needed a draw to qualify for the next round. But Caissa had other plans!
Negi came out of the opening with a advantage. When things were almost equal, Negi made a mistake by moving his Bishop to e6 at move 42!

Position after White’s 42. Be6?

How did Kryvoruchko (Black) force things here?

Solution: 42… d3!! {offering his Knight!} 43. Ra1 (43. Rxb4 Rd8 {

who can stop the pawn?} 44. Re4 Qxe4!! 45. Qxe4 d2 {wins}) 43… Nc2 44. Rd1
Qe2 45. Qg4 Rd8 {and Negi resigned 5 moves later} 0-1

Sasikiran (2660) 1 – 1 Lupulescu (2650) => Tie break

Game 1 – Lupulescu 1/2 Sasikiran
Draw in 19 moves! (I remember reading how Sasikiran has a fighting spirit and generally does not accept quick draws.). But this strategy probably makes sense in a match, where you are content to draw with Black, preserve your energy and fight for a win with White.

Game 2 – Sasikiran 1/2 Lupulescu
Sasikiran did get a tiny advantage in the Nimzo Indian but Black was never into any serious trouble.

Tie breaks consist of 2 games with a time control of ‘25 minutes for each player with an addition of 10 seconds after each move’. Tie breaks are on Tuesday, 17:30pm IST.

Tags adhiban, akash, caruana, chess world cup, india chess, negi, sasikiran, tromso chess

android

10 best chess games of 2012 – pgn available for download

Post author By AsimPereira
Post date May 20, 2013
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I just noticed this post on GM Pogonina’s website and I thought I could easily go through the games on my Tablet, but unfortunately there was no PGN for download. Using a Chess board on a webpage is not the world’s easiest thing.

So I searched the relevant games she had listed there, on Chessgames.com, and created a PGN. Thought it will be useful for others too.

Now I can sit back and play through the games using my Analyze This Android app!

Download Best 10 games of 2012.pgn

“Top-10 chess games in 2012 according to Natalia Pogonina:
1. Volokitin – Mamedyarov. I had very few doubts about the first place. This is a fantastic game.
2. Kramnik – McShane. I believe this was Kramnik’s supreme masterpiece in 2012. A great example of a sacrifice of an exchange.
3. Carlsen – Caruana. Magnus is known for his remarkable endgame technique. This game is a living proof of how good he is.
4. Gelfand – Anand. Gelfand took full advantage of the light-squared bad bishop. The fact that this game way played in the WCC match adds to its importance.
5. Bodnaruk – Javakhishvili. A great game by Anastacia Bodnaruk. White sacrificed two rooks and slaughtered the Black king.
6. Gustaffson – Kramnik. A wonderful journey of the a-pawn 🙂
7. Ivanchuk – Vachier-Lagrave. The sacrifice on d5 is standard, but it never gets old. Especially when accompanied by such a nice move as 26.g3.
8. Carlsen – Topalov. A wild duel with fireworks. I love replaying this game over and over again 🙂
9. Aronian – Morozevich. A lot of splendid games have been played at Tal Memorial, but I decided to pick this one. Both sides has their chances, but in the end Black prevailed.
10. Rodriguez – Veskovi. An impressive attack on the king.”

BTW, the complete list of 38 games is here

Tags anand, best chess games, carlsen, caruana, gelfand, ivanchuk, kramnik, mcshane, top 10

Zurich Chess Challenge 2013 on Indian National TV (DD)

Post author By AsimPereira
Post date April 6, 2013
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Zurich Chess challenge was won by Fabiano Caruana ahead of Kramnik, Gelfand and Anand (23-Feb to 1-Mar).

DD (Door Darshan) is India’s national TV channel and the show will be aired on the following days:
1st Episode – 9th April 2013
2nd Episode – 10th April 2013
3rd Episode – 11th April 2013
4th Episode – 12th April 2013
(All episodes from 11pm – 11:30pm IST)

With all due respect to Mr Vijay, I am not sure who would want to watch a tournament footage more than a month after it is over?!
Fans either prefer to watch it live (or a day late maybe) or probably 50 years later for historical reasons!
Moreover, the air time is 11pm when half of them would be asleep. Just goes to show Chess is NOT important!

PS. Maybe if they post it on Youtube, the videos would get more viewers

Source : http://susanpolgar.blogspot.in/2013/04/zurich-chess-challenge-2013-on-dd-tv.html

Tags caruana, gelfand, kramnik, susan polgar, vishy anand, zurich cc

Anand, Amazon and Abetment to suicide!

Post author By AsimPereira
Post date March 2, 2013
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Yesterday was a good day, a very good day. Anand won a surprise game against Kramnik in the last round of Zurich Chess AND Chess Book Study and ebookdroid apps started to function properly in the Amazon app store after more than 4 months ordeal!

Anand
No doubt Anand’s loss to Caruana was disappointing. Yesterday Anand was playing Kramnik in the last round and I logged in around the half way stage to find that the position was dead equal.
After Dinner, I suddenly remembered about the game and what a surprise awaited me!
This was my first reaction!!

Anand – Kramnik, R6, Zurich Classic – position after Kramnik’s 21…Qb8

Anand played 22. Rxa6! and after 22… Rxa6 23. Qxd3 Qxb2 24. Rb1 Rd6 25. Qxe2

Qa2 26. Qb5 c6 27. Qb2 1-0 Kramnik resigned!

Guess, this mistake more than compensates for Anand’s incredible blunder against Kramnik in the Zurich Blitz.

Anand – Kramnik, Zurich Blitz – position after Kramnik’s 44…axb3

Here Anand played 45. Rxb3 and immediately resigned!

Caruana had a dream outing, winning both the Blitz and Classic sections. Congrats to the future champ!

Amazon
After many weeks and months of frustration, the Chess Book Study and ebookdroid apps were finally made live again in the Amazon app store yesterday.

After some release in October, Chess Book Study app in the Amazon app store started to crash. Previously they worked just fine. It was difficult to understand, since the Play Store versions worked perfectly fine too. Versions which worked fine in my testing on the Kindle Fire emulator would simply crash during Amazon’s testing.
Amazon’s testing process is appalling and at times dumb. Chess Book Study and ebookdroid need to coexist. At one point, they approved Chess Book Study app and rejected the ebookdroid and Chess Book Study (Free) versions! huh!? What will a user do simply with the Chess Book Study app if they cannot install the ebookdroid app?
I just told Amazon that they are killing me (with this stupid process) and that they should simply allow me to jump off the Amazon building!! *sigh*

I figured that after uploading the humble app to the Amazon store, Amazon’s process somehow messes up the application. The upload process, which should be as simple as a one-step upload of the application binary, has now become a 5 step process which includes opening up the guts of the file modified by Amazon and undoing the damage that Amazon does to it and uploading it again to Amazon!

However, I am glad that the apps are finally live, although the damage (bad reviews) will be difficult to fix.