Comments on: Levon Aronian wins 18th Amber after dramatic last round

By: Popuscu [Bulgaria]

Popuscu [Bulgaria] — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:29:33 +0000

to brujito,
I do not remember well if Topalov lost to a 2400 player in a “worth” blindfold game,
i.e. where neither the board nor the pieces are available.

By: chessfan

chessfan — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:18:34 +0000

Performance calculations based on Amber 1992-2008 tournaments revealed clear answer: Topalov is fourth after Morozevich, Kramnik and Anand. Does mean one thing – Topalov ’s aproach is very serious.

By: brujito

brujito — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:36:24 +0000

…Not to mention that these current players have the use of a computer screen to help guide them. It’s obvious that the old timers like Alekhine and Najdorf were much superior in Blindfold play…

By: brujito

brujito — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:31:55 +0000

GG: “And let me ask you, who were the opponents of Alekhine in these blindfold simuls?”

The opponents have nothing to do with not knowing where your pieces are in these blind games. lol! And I’m talking about 30 board simul vs just One.

By: acirce

acirce — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:30:27 +0000

This does smell suspicious.

I despise Topalov, so my judgment may be biased. But I did not think there was anything weird going on at all, watching the game. OK, he was winning but agreed to a draw anyway. Maybe he was hallucinating something. It’s blindfold, and the players are becoming tired. Such things happen.

I didn’t think so when I first heard the explanation either. Ah, OK, so that’s why. He just forgot where the rook was. That’s the kind of thing that has happened many times in blindfold. Simply natural.

And the short draw in the final game was also nothing special at all. I still don’t think so. It was not at all his only short draw in the tournament, and he has made quick last-round draws many times anyway, even when he has been otherwise fighting through the tournament.

But then it was pointed out to me that his explanation was actually very, very odd and the blunder very strange EVEN FOR BLINDFOLD. Then, and only then, did I start having suspicions! There is no proof, obviously. But, given everything I know about the situation at this point, do I think it is more likely than not that Topalov deliberately avoided winning? I truly don’t know. Maybe I am leaning towards that position, yes.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:28:36 +0000

I don’t know if Topalov even “tried hard to win the tournament”. While others may have considered him one of the favorites (looking at ELO ratings of the participants), he may actually realize that he is not as strong in rapid and blindfold chess. And a simple statement acknowledging this fact would have been more polite towards the organizers.
Looking at the fourth column of the tournament tables, very few players performed “as expected” (within 20 points of their nominal rating):
- Leko and Karjakin in the blindfold (though I would consider Karjakin a bit underrated in classical chess)
- Carlsen in the rapid
- Morozevich and Kamsky in the combined standings (based on very “asymmetric” results in the two subsets).

This seems to confirm my earlier statement that ratings based on classical time controls have limited predictive meaning for rapid and blindfold. Rating performances are still an interesting aspect (and a default option of the software creating tournament tables?), but should be taken with a few grains of salt for the Amber tournament.

By: Popuscu [Bulgaria]

Popuscu [Bulgaria] — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:21:02 +0000

I agree with Thomas.

Moreover, poor Topalov: he tried hard to win the tournement and when he did not manage to do so, he claim that the tournement is not interesting (i.e. rated??)

The arguments of the bad losers are the same.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:06:55 +0000

@Jonas: I am not sure if all GM’s took the Amber tournaments equally seriously. Some indeed gave away their novelties, for others it may have been “serious fun” (experimenting with uncommon openings).
As far as Topalov is concerned, some of his fans argued that his ‘mediocre’ performance is not that important because the tournament wasn’t rated. Indirectly, Topalov said more or less the same (in an Europe Echecs interview published on Chessbase).
Now this could be considered a pragmatic (professional?) approach. But it could also be considered as sort of an insult against the organizers?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:02:00 +0000

@GG:
“Will you be so kind to explain how Topalov could know the result of Kramnik-Leko game?”
Well that’s easy to answer – the Kramnik-Leko games were finished before the Aronian-Topalov games even started. As a matter of fact, the organizers had changed the order of last-round pairings so that Aronian, Anand and Carlsen would all play at the same time (and “forgot about the fact that Kramnik also still had winning chances?!”).
It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it would have been even better to have all six games simultaneously for the last round – don’t tell me they don’t have enough space on the stage, or not enough laptops for the blindfold games available ,:) .
“the only chance to win Amber for Kramnik was 2-0 in Topalov-Aronian match”
1.5-0.5 would have been good enough to put Kramnik into shared first – in my book, tiebreak points are not that relevant. I don’t know if they affect the prize money, but I rather hope they wouldn’t.

By: GG

GG — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:49:05 +0000

I do think that Amber is a supertournament, the unique place where we can see Anand, Aronian, Kramnik, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Carlsen, Leko, Morozevich all together.

…and I don’t defend Veselin, i just see that some people here try to cover his name in mud, making also Aronian’s deserved win a result of some last-round backstreet intrigues.