R10: interview Karpov
23 January 2008 14:11 PM | Last modified: 3:56
Just like yesterday, Anatoly Karpov, special guest here in Wijk aan Zee, has been looking for quite a while, and quite interested as well, at the TV screens here in the press room. He agreed to a short interview.
Shall we cover a normal Corus round today? Yeah, why not. Surprising openings: the Scotch in Radjabov-Topalov and a French Defence in Mamedyarov-Polgar.
Update 14:47h
Some interesting developments today. Timman-Ljubojevic, already mentioned in the comments, sees the same Nxf7 as in Topalov-Kramnik yesterday. A very cunning way of playing by Timman, who had been watching Topalov’s press conference in the press room attentively yesterday, and who this morning must have thought: “wait a minute, Ljubojevic was analysing his game against Korchnoi at that moment! Ljubo apparently hasn’t seen our video yet, since he’s been thinking for half an hour after 13.e5. (14:54h Ljubojevic has played a novelty and it’s Topalov’s suggestion 17…Rhg8. Either he has seen the video, or he’s just better than Kramnik. 
)
Anand-Leko is a quiet Ruy Lopez, Kramnik-Gelfand a quiet Queen’s Indian. Polgar treats her French a bit oddly, with …b6, …Rb8 and …Bb7, and Adams, also in a Ruy, chose the pawn sac line with 8.d4 against Aronian. Carlsen plays the Wolga/Benkö Gambit against Van Wely; his early …Qa5 is not very common. After repeating moves, Eljanov fortunately decided to continue the game against his compatriot Ivanchuk in a Closed Catalan. Against Radjabov, Topalov’s 1…e5 led to a Schotch. As usual, the line with 5.Nxc6 Qf6 resulted in a queenless middlegame, and it looks approximately equal.
Update 15:34h
Two games have finished in A. The line Adams played is not very dangerous for Black, when he knows what he’s doing, and so this game has already ended in 21 moves. Understandable for Aronian, who’s on shared first and played Black, but Adams could have shown some more fighting spirit.
Anand-Leko was even quieter than we thought, and these gents are already back in their hotel rooms as well. And so another White game is gone for Anand, right when he started to have some chances for the tournament victory too, but perhaps he has faith in his coming Black games against Van Wely and Carlsen. In the last round he’s White against Kramnik.
Timman has answered with a4 and Rfe1 to Ljubo’s novelty. The Dutchman is playing the position on both wings and it looks like he really feels at home.
Update 17:10h
Kramnik seems to have a slight edge against Gelfand, because Black’s bishop on a8 is a bit silly, but we’re not completely sure. Polgar, with her original opening set-up, actually managed to draw comfortably against Mamedyarov. Carlsen is in big trouble against Van Wely and since he plays Anand, Kramnik and Radjabov in the last three rounds, he will have trouble reaching his desired goal of plus two. Topalov lost the exchange but has some compensation. In B, Smeets already lost to Movsesian, in only 25 moves. The Dutchman scored a half point out of his last four games and has to take drastic measures now.
Update 17:33h
INTERVIEW ANATOLY KARPOV
Update 19:34h
A terribly tragic finish of the game, for Loek van Wely. He had reached a completely winning position but without much time on the clock (but Carlsen had probably even less), and in a ridiculous timescramble, White position went from plus 4.something to minus 4.something. A stroke of unexpected luck for Carlsen, who’s now clear first again with 6.5 out of 9. And, to be honest, his defeat against Leko yesterday was highly unfortunate, so now the scales are balanced again. Some short comments by Carlsen:
Kramnik couldn’t get trough a rock-solid Gelfand today and Topalov managed to create enough counterplay to hold the draw despite being an exchange down. Ivanchuk beat Eljanov and it took longer than we’d expected. He outplayed his opponent and won a pawn, but then Eljanov started to defend quite well - but to no avail. After a new victory against Krasenkow, Short is now shared second with Bacrot, but a point below Movsesian. In C, Caruana lost, and so it’s really exciting there. Poor Braun lost again.
After four draws, there were suddenly two wins by Black today in the Honorary Four. Portisch had an off-day and lost without a chance against Korchnoi, while Ljubojevic was most cold-blooded in the chaos we’ve already been talking about. Today he was the one who did the press conference so later tonight you’ll have Part II of the big Nxf7-Anti-Moscow Story.
| Grandmastergroup A L. van Wely - M. Carlsen 0-1 V. Anand - P. Leko ½-½ V. Kramnik - B. Gelfand ½-½ T. Radjabov - V. Topalov ½-½ S. Mamedyarov - J. Polgar ½-½ P. Eljanov - V. Ivanchuk 0-1 M. Adams - L. Aronian ½-½ |
Grandmastergroup B N. Short - M. Krasenkow 1-0 E. Bacrot - I. Cheparinov ½-½ P. Harikrishna - G. Sargissian Y. Hou - H. Koneru ½-½ D. Stellwagen - E. L’Ami ½-½ Spoelman - Nepomniachtchi 0-1 S. Movsesian - J. Smeets 1-0 |
Grandmastergroup C I. Krush - A. Braun 1-0 J. van der Wiel - P. Carlsson ½-½ S. Li - F. Caruana A. Ushenina - E. Grivas 1-0 F. Nijboer - D. Reinderman 1-0 P. Negi - D. Ruijgrok 1-0 Z. Peng - M. van der Werf ½-½ |
Schedule/results Honorary Four:
| Round 1 - Saturday the 19th L. Ljubojevic - J. Timman 0-1 V. Kortchnoi - L. Portisch 1-0 |
Round 2 - Sunday the 20th V. Kortchnoi - J. Timman ½-½ L. Portisch - L. Ljubojevic ½-½ |
Round 3 - Tuesday the 22nd J. Timman - L. Portisch ½-½ L. Ljubojevic - V. Kortchnoi ½-½ |
Round 4 - Wednesday the 23rd J. Timman - L. Ljubojevic 0-1 L. Portisch - V. Kortchnoi 0-1 |
Round 5 - Friday the 25th L. Portisch - J. Timman V. Kortchnoi - L. Ljubojevic |
Round 6 - Saturday the 26th J. Timman - V. Kortchnoi L. Ljubojevic - L. Portisch |
New photos by forest:
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External links:
Isn’t Timman - Ljubojevic repaeting yesterday’s Topalov-Kramnik game???
Strange and exciting at the same time!
Yes, 12. Nxf7, Kxf7. 13. e5 !
Indeed, very exiting.
hi
i like chess very much
Let’s just see how these two guys handle this variation.
I hope for Ljubo that he saw the post-mortum and press conference.
Whats the name of the opening in the Carlsen Wely game?
Nope, Ljubo is lost in the woods. Gefundenes Fressen für Timman!
he did not, but I can tell you Timman did!
And Carlsen is playing the Wolgagambit
thanks!
@Benjamin: It’s called Wolga
I don’ t think there was yesterday a post-mortum between the two rivals Topalov and Kramnik. Hopefully Ljubo can defend better than Kramnik!
O yes, there was a post-mortum, but of course not between the two rivals.
Ljubo just played the ‘best’ defensive move, indicated by Topalov yesterday: 17. …, Rhg8.
It seems Van Wely is doing well?..
I’m thinking about Bf1 for Van Wely…
What is wrong with 20. b5 ?! for Van Wely? He gets a protected free pawn.
20. Nb5 ?!. Van Wely plays tactical tricks with Bf1.
Ljubo: 18. …, Ba8. Now Timman is consuming a lot of time…
What about 19 Qg6 Nc7 20 d5! cxd5 21 axb5 threatening Ra6?
Oops, I’m overenthousiastic, 21… Nxe5 off course.
19. Rfe8.
‘Uberdeckung’ of the protector of his ‘octopus’ on d6.
20. d5 !, a very nice move inspired by the idea for opening more open files to the already very exposed king. I am curious if this idea really works already.
Nice of Timman to me to play 20 d5! anyway. I guess the idea was 20… Nxd5 21 Bxe6 Kxe6 22 Qg6+ Ke7 23 e6 Ne5 (Nc5 24 Nc8+) 24 Nf5+ Rxf5 25 Qxf5 Rf8 26 Qh7? No chessprogram at hand here…
It is much better to follow the games without a pc and use your own thinking and imagination… ;-))
Is Ljubo on top after 25… b2 26 Rad1 Nc3 27 Nxh6 Be4?
What do you think of 21.f6 in Hou-Koneru? Looks interesting. Qxf6 doesn’t work, I’m not sure about gxf6, as it opens the king’s wing for winning the pawn (can’t see a direct threat though) and Hou likes to play agressive. Humpy chose exd4, I don’t have a clear idea about that move.
Am I wrong or does Hou generally like to “push” with the pawns?
Anyway, interested in your opinion guys, I’m not a very strong player, so you probably see more through than me. You’re allowed to tell me if I write nonsense.
Did’t Loek miss just now 27. Rb8.
@ Spock
Did you calculate the following moves? 27. Rb8 looks interesting but complicated, maybe Loek considered 27. f4 as “safer”. But as said, would be glad to hear about your follow up idea to 27. Rb8
30. Rb8 ! Loek is heading to a very nice win over Carlsen.
Things turned quite around in Van Wely-Carlsen.
Haha, nice comment of Karpov about Handshakegate:
Shrugging shoulders, smiling, “this is ridiculous”, “I don’t know what’s going on” and avoiding the question about the if they should be a rule by saying “this should be normal”…he seems to communicate he doesn’t even wanna talk about that nonsense.
Poor Van Wely…
Nice counterplay by Carlsen, but I wonder where Loek went wrong
Poor Loek
Was Loek in time trouble?
What a crazy game, impatiently waiting for analysis by the professionals!
Wow…
Unbelievable! What was Van Wely thinking about… Amsterdam?!? What he needed was to offer exchange at some point and Carlsen would have given the whole attack up… Silly
Brings us back to what sb wrote here:
There should be doubles: Games started by van Wely (to get into a winning position) and finished by Kramnik (to win).
Nevertheless, Carlsen did tried to complicate & confuse Loek (under time pressure I guess?!) and it worked. Respect for that, even if it was Loek’s unexpected mistakes which decided the game.
39.Qe7 would have easily won… After 39.Qe3 he could still have kept the advantage though with the nice 40.Kg1! Ld4 41.Rh8!! Kxh8 42.Be5 Qxe5 43. fxe5 Bxe3 but i am not sure it’s enough to win.
In the game, 41.Qb3 would still have drawn. He seemed to play Qf3 very fast there, probably didn’t realize he reached the 40th move already. Quite unlucky…
@Michel:
actually the idea about doubles (Van Wely - Kramnik) was initially proposed by Vosuram
I think the Van Welly plan (if any existed?) with 20.Nb5 was not the best one. I agree with Wolf, 20.Bf1 with the double-fold idea, either to keep (and move on) both pawns on Q-side or, in a case if Black change Bg7 for the Nc3, to develope and attack to K-side (with the black bishop along main diagonal and the white one along the b1-h7 diagonal) would be a better approach to the position. Because of a strong White’s center and low mobility of Black’s pieces it would work, I believe.
Incredible victory by Carlsen, as his position seemed completely lost at some point.
Terrible blunders by Van Wely, but such cold blood from Carlsen deserves congratulations, considering he’s so young. It’s just as if Carlsen just taught Van Wely what cold blood is !
Congrats Carlsen, for his victory and for achieving his +2 goal already.
I’m impatiently waiting for the press conference.
“Ljubojevic has played a novelty and it’s Topalov’s suggestion 17…Rhg8. Either he has seen the video, or he’s just better than Kramnik. )”
Ljubo is the best - and in his active years would have run circles around Kramnik. He comes by it naturally, not by studying other’s analysis.
Yes Ljubo ruled!
Thomas S:
Achieving his +2 goal already? He has got 6,5 points. His goal is 7,5 points. He has not achieved that already. He is CURRENTLY +2. Big difference…
he is currently +3 even. so he can lose a game and finish at his own goal. but somehow I doubt that he would be happy with that now…
You’re right, of course. He is currently + 3 (6,5 in 10 games).
But he has not achieved + 2 already.
I don’t know, he should be happy at +2 or +3. If he had met Anand, Kramnik and Radjabov in the first 3 rounds, he wouldn’t have been at + 3 by now, I think.
He has had easier opposition in the first 10 round than Aronian, for instance.
I seem to remember Karpov a long time ago refusing to shake hands with Lev Alburt and Victor Korchnoi. So this courtesy hasn’t always been normal for him either.
Long live the Fischer of 1970-1972! I believe Dick Schaap once said that Fischer had the greatest killer instinct of any sportsman he had ever met.
Ljubojevic won!
ahahaha thats how you should play Kramnik!!!
GO ON Carlsen!!!! You can win this!!!! Keep her Lit!!! Ireland is with you!!!!