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Topic: Kazan knockouts in first round
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Hello all,
I am fortunate enough to be in Kazan, arrived to see the knockouts in the first round. I have'nt seen a major tournament live before but let me say that I think it might have been rigged. Both of the Russian candidates won (on victory day no less), but there were some 'irregularities'. Kramnic was down against Radjabov, and was in a drawn blitz endgame. The draw would knock Kramnik out. For some reason they stopped the game at move 60 (didn't happen for any other game). Both players disappeared for a while, When they resumed from the game the drawn endgame (bishops of opposite colours) Radjabov soon lost two pawns, the rooks were traded off and he resigned in a position that I still thought was drawn (but maybe it wasn't at that stage). The other match up saw the highest player knocked out (Aronian) by the Russian Grischuk. There were three strange moments in the games. One was not playing Nb1 about two moves earlier than he did, which would have let him clean up an isolated pawn. One was not capturing an isolated pawn on d5. The last and strangest was sacrificing a Queen for a rook and knight. I will have to check the online commentary at some stage.
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Here are the two games whyBish commented on:
Kramnik, Vladimir vs. Radjabov, Teimour
Grischuk, Alexander vs. Aronian, Levon
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Thanks for the recap whyBish.
The delay in the Kramnik game was apparently due to an electronic clock malfunction. It was the 2nd of four blitz games with Kramnik winning the next two anyhow but obviously this win spurred him on. Rybka sees the game basically as a draw (+0.10) so Kramnik was lucky indeed.
In the Aronian match, Rybka sees the queen sac as the essentially equal to the best move (Qa8) so the game must have gone downhill for Aronian after that although the game was evaluated at around +0.80 at that point.
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Game one round two. More bollox with a 16 move draw from Grishchuk v Kramnik. I assume the Russians want their highest rated player through? Otherwise why throw away an advantage with white?
The Kamsky Gelfand match was interesting, Can someone explain to me why 15 Bxe7 isn't winning for white??? Kasky thought for ages on move 15 and played Nxe5 which seems to not be as good as the bishop can be used by black to regain a pawn on c3. The knight looked unassailable after the Kamsky move, but it was tied down to the defense of c2.
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| Game one round two. More bollox with a 16 move draw from Grishchuk v Kramnik. I assume the Russians want their highest rated player through? |
On what do you base your assumption? Shouldn't the highest rated player have won then?
Of course we could wish Grishchuk played on, but in fact he had no advantage at that point and Kramnik had demonstrated that there was nothing new in the position for him - he played fast and equalised easily showing his home preparation. Grishchuk already had less time and probably thought that there is no point in fighting against Kramniks home analysis.
Re: Kamsky - Gelfand 15. ...Bxe5. Why do you think it should be winning? Black has intermezzo 15. ...Nf4!? or 15. ...Qxe7 16. Nxe5?? Nf4 -+ for one.
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Amos, you must be very very good at chess! Welcome to the site.
Unfortunately I'm not able to evaluate a position so closely so you and whyBish will have to debate that on your own.
The Rybka analysis is interesting with g3 selected as the best move after depth 19. However, the top move did flip between these three at various depths.
g3 +0.16
Nxe5 +0.14
Bxe7 +0.11
... a pretty close measurement!
I should note that I'm using the free Rybka program (v2.2n2).
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