Carlsen wins again, grabs the lead
10 December 2009, 2.22 CET | Last modified: 12:40 | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
Magnus Carlsen also won his second white game at the London Chess Classic. The Norwegian defeated Luke McShane in round 2 and took sole lead in the standings, with 6 points. Vladimir Kramnik recovered fron yesterday’s loss and won a good game against Ni Hua.
The London Chess Classic takes place December 8th till 15th in Kensington, Londen. Venue is the Auditorium of the Olympiad Conference Centre. The time control is 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves and then 15 minutes plus 30 seconds increment to finish the games. Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Nigel Short, Michael Adams, Ni Hua, Luke McShane and David Howell play.
Round 2
Your editor-in-chief is staying with a friend who lives in Woodford, London. That’s about two hours of travelling by Underground every day, but it’s nice to see my former club mate again and he has a beautiful house. Although he hasn’t played competitive chess for years (he’s a risk analyst for a bank here, trying to prevent a second credit crunch) he still follows chess with keen interest. He described Carlsen’s play as follows: “Finally there’s a player at the top again whose moves I just cannot understand. Somehow it looks a lot like how Fischer played. It seems that the chess is so perfect that you’d almost desribe it as an absence of playing style.”
Two Whites, two wins. Carlsen got his full six points out of the possible six, which means he took a three-point lead. That’s the equivalent of one victory against a loss in this football scoring system, although there’s not too much difference with the one-point gab in the traditional system.
It was great to see that Carlsen still often has a carefree state of mind during his games. At yesterday’s press conference he twice said that he couldn’t foresee all the complications of certain moves, but that he simply found them too interesting not to go for! Right after the game, when organizer IM Malcolm Pein asked the young Norwegian to comment on the game for the audience, at first Carlsen didn’t feel like doing it. But then he agreed to a brief session, and of course the chess lover woke up again and diving into the complications together with his opponent Luke McShane, this commentary session lasted for more than half an hour.
The audience had been treated with a similar, wonderful show earlier that day, by Vladimir Kramnik. These post-game press conferences are really close to perfection. The players sit behind laptops and enter the variations they had been thinking about, which is shown both on a beamer screen for the present audience (at least fifty people) as well as the internet audience via Playchess. They answer questions from strong English players (IM Lawrence Trent is one of them) who do the commentary during the round. This way the spectators are getting first priority at a chess tournament, and that’s how it should be.
Kramnik understood his task, and went quite far in his explanation of a basic pawn ending. At some point White had a queen and king, and Black pawns on g7 and h2 and a king on g1. “Without the g-pawn Black would be lost, but here White is winning. I’ll show you,” Kramnik said, and he gave checks with his queen until the black king was locked on h1 with the white queen on g3. Kramnik: “Now White can just get his king closer as Black has to move his g-pawn.” The audience had learnt a lot, and then had a good laughter as well when GM Ian Rogers added: “What about Qf2?” “That’s even better!” Kramnik smiled.
For a further report of this round I refer to the excellent official website, because I should really get started with the first videos. I’m going to do a general impression videos with some words from Malcolm Pein, and I have interviews with Kramnik and Howell. “Stay tuned.”
London Chess Classic 2009 | Pairings & results
London Chess Classic 2009 | Standings (’football system’)
London Chess Classic 2009 | Standings (regular system)
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Carlsen vs Rybka is the future championship. This boy is a human version of HYDRA. During the opening is using a book called KASPAROV and later turns on a powerful and persistent engine with high testosterone levels.
Man, that Carlsen kid is going be pretty darned good one day, eh?
His performance rating so far is, what?, over 3400? The boy probably has to give Rybka pawn and move . . .
Nice recovery from a loss by Kramnik, also, who dominated in fine style.
It’s an exciting tournament so far! Round 1 was a great one, with clash between Carlsen and Kramnik, then a marathon won by McShane. Carlsen is in a great form, I wonder he is on the rampage like in China, but I won’t write off Kramnik. Not yet.
I won’t write off the only guy to beat Kasparov in a set match, either, but Kramnik has some serious problems to overcome now. He is a full point (er, 3 pts) behind in a very short event – 7RR – and doesn’t get to play the leader again.
He needs help from someone else, and I don’t see anyone else showing the form right now to take down Carlsen. Not that it can’t happen, of course, but it sure seems to be happening less and less lately . . .
Short has at times shown the ability to come back fiercely from slow starts to figure in the mix at the end, but the long loss to McShane had to be disheartening to him, as is his tournament position on home turf after two rounds.
(Besides the Big 2) Will anyone finish with a plus score and if so who?
When did Carlsen lose his last game under classic time controls?
jgr: it was in Dortmund when Carlsen lost last time, 10 July this year in round 8. Guess against whom?!
)
Till today, Magnus Carlsen has 24 games in a row without loss.
I can’t exactly explain why, but i’m sure that Carlsen won’t finish this tournament without a loss. Who bets?
I’ll take that bet
@Estragon. I would say that the TPR of a 100% score is infinity. From the table
it seems to be 2801+692=3493. Somebody knows how this is defined? Maybe you need to subtract say 1/4 and then calculate the TPR from it. Hence, pretend that Carlsen actually scored 1.75 points (Classical scoring) out of 2 against Kamsky and McShane
Carlsen will play very risk so he may lose.
Very nice win by Carlen, maybe one of my favorites. The kid had the stones to gave back the exchange for a deadly grip.
Adams was creating a text book example of how to play against the backwards pawn, but Nakamura found some amazing tactics to get into a final with a pawn less but lot of activity.
1. A performance rating from two games is meaningless.
2. Carlsen will not lose a game.
3. If he does, it will be against Nakamura, who will finish on a plus score as well.
Much better commentaries today and yesterday than previously.
Great stuff, thanks Chessvibes!
Carlsen’s live rating is 2813… And he’s just 19…. Yikes
What’s Topalov’s highest? 2813? And Kramnik’s is 2811 right?
Unbelievable stuff…
It is a bit strange that the average rating of the top 100 keeps increasing due to rating inflation but the very top seems to have reached a plateau for some time now. Kasparov’s best was 2851 (at the year 2000!); one would think that by now at least the top 10 would be above 2800.