Free ChessLecture Show

There's a new freebie each week, so the headline isn't really news. The news is that this week it's one of my videos that's the freebie, so if it isn't thrilling enough to read my work (/sarc) you can hear and see it, too. The game in question was a 2005 win by Alexander Grischuk over Famous Freakin' Legend Gata Kamsky; the video is here. You need an account to watch, but if you don't already have one you can set one up for free. The video will be available on demand through the next two Sundays (I'm not sure if it carries over into the following Monday or not, when that week's new video becomes available.) Enjoy.

Russian Team Championship

The 2019 Russian Team Championship (which, to its credit, features almost exclusively Russian players - what a concept! See this, especially the comments.) has just ended, and as I don't know a Mednyi vsadnik (the winning team) from a Strazhi pravoporyadka (the fourth place finishers) I'll focus my comments on some of the notable individual performers. Three of them, in fact; two of whom are Americans (though one was born in Russia and has returned there): Leinier Dominguez Perez, Vladislav Artemiev, and Gata Kamsky. All three performed very well, gained ratings, and between the three players only one game was lost - and that was Kamsky losing to Dominguez.

Kamsky beat the players he was supposed to, only giving up a draw to one lower-rated player, Semen Khanin. He defeated a couple of 2600+ players, Igor Lysyj and David Paravyan, and pocketed 9.2 rating points, hopefully on his way back to 2700.

Artemiev gained fewer points but faced stronger opponents, almost certainly achieving a higher TPR than Kamsky. His most notable scalp was Ernesto Inarkiev, rated 2691. Artemiev has had a string of successes recently, and and the 21-year-old is currently rated #11 in the world (tied for #10 once his rating is rounded up at the end of the month). He looks likely to join the super-elite by the end of the year.

Finally, Dominguez's return from inactivity seems complete. His strong performance in the U.S. Championship wasn't a one-off, with notable wins over Vladimir Malakhov, Kamsky, and Paravyan. He is now #12 in the world, just a point behind Hikaru Nakamura and Artemiev.

It will be worth looking at some games, if I can ever dig out of the hole produced by the other major events going on

Bravo, Bundesliga

As I've mentioned before, I don't care much (if at all) about the team aspect of the Bundesliga, which generally consists of OSG Baden-Baden's team of almost entirely non-German mercenaries beating everyone else. (They have won 13 of the last 14 years, only goofing up in 2015/16 to finish second behind SG Solingen.) But my dismissive attitude towards the team component should not be confused with a lack of interest in the games. Many of the world's best players compete, and a lot of great chess gets played in those matches, chess that often goes unnoticed by the broader chess world.

To rectify that a bit, I'll show you four fine games that were played this past March, three with fairly substantial comments. (Hat tip to Max Illingworth of ChessPublishing.com, who analyzed one of the games and mentioned the other three. All the notes to the games are my own.) Enjoy.

A Study-Like Draw From Khakimov-Kamsky

More blog fodder from Brian Karen - thanks! Here's an interesting ending from round 2 of the Viktor Korchnoi Memorial that ended in a draw between Timur Khakimov and Gata Kamsky. Kamsky is doing well in the tournament, with 4.5/5, but here he let his lower-rated opponent escape with a draw. Kamsky, or rather, his computer (this is his admission, not an accusation), discovered a beautiful variation that could have appeared on the board had Kamsky pushed his opponent a bit more.

Enjoy.

Two Recent Kamsky Games: A Double Reminder

It wasn't all that long ago that Gata Kamsky was one of the absolute top players in the world. He's still no slouch, obviously, but it's stunning to see that he is now out of the world's top 100. He was still in the top 100 a few weeks ago, during the Calgary International, but although he tied for second he still lost points.

Here are a couple of his games from that tournament, a loss and a win. The loss was a disaster against Gil Popilski, who subsequently tied for first in the U.S. Open, while the win was an impressive victory over Kayden Troff that prevented him from tying for or taking clear first.

The double reminder? The first is of the human condition: errare humanum est - to err is human. It was a very strange game all around: Kamsky chose a (dubious) Sicilian sideline, but although it was he who chose to leave the beaten track he apparently did so without a proper knowledge of the variation in question. It's hard to know exactly what went wrong: maybe he was improvising, or perhaps he mixed things up. Whatever the case, his position was already poor in the opening, and then he blundered.

The second reminder is a happier one, of his excellence. Kamsky brutally outplayed the young American GM in the last round, demonstrating that there was a reason he was in the world's absolute elite from the early 1990s until very recently, not counting the period of his retirement. Perhaps Kamsky lacks the motivation at this stage of his life to make a serious push to return to the super-elite, but if he doesn't return to the top of world chess it won't be due to a lack of talent.

U.S. Championships Start Today!

At 1 p.m. local time in St. Louis (= 2 p.m. ET) the U.S. Championships get underway in St. Louis. Both the Championship and the Women's event are 12 player round robins finishing April 25 - April 26 in case of a playoff, and don't forget that after the event, on the 28th and 29th, there will be a blitz event that might include the big three (Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, and Wesley So) and definitely includes none other than Garry Kasparov. (I hope for his sake he has been training hard.)

The Championship is incredibly strong, with three players in the top 10 (the aforementioned Mssrs. Caruana, Nakamura, and So), and the second tier of Gata Kamsky, Alexander Onischuk, Ray Robson, and Sam Shankland isn't exactly chopped liver. On the Women's side, it looks likely to be another battle to the death between Irina Krush and Anna Zatonskih, who between them have won the last 10 women's championships. Krush has won the last four, but they've almost always come down to the wire and Zatonskih is the very slightly higher-rated player.

Here are the first round pairings for the main event: 

• Fabiano Caruana (2795) - Varuzhan Akobian (2615)
• Sam Shankland (2656) - Akshat Chandra (2477)
• Wesley So (2773) - Gata Kamsky (2678)
• Hikaru Nakamura (2787) - Aleksandr Lenderman (2618)
• Alexander Shabalov (2528) - Ray Robson (2663)
• Alexander Onischuk (2664) - Jeffery Xiong (2618) 

It's a good time to be a fan of U.S. chess! Tournament predictions? Nakamura is the defending champion, and he and Gata Kamsky have won the last seven between them. So only started playing in the U.S. Championship last year and Caruana is a rookie, so the Nakamura-Kamsky streak isn't as relevant as it would otherwise be. My prediction is that Nakamura will win.

The U.S. Championships Start Tomorrow (Wednesday)

The semi-retired Gata Kamsky has won the last two U.S. Championships, but in neither event did he have to overcome U.S. #1 (and now world #3) Hikaru Nakamura. In this year's U.S. championship, he'll not only have to outperform Nakamura, but world #8 Wesley So as well. On the women's side, Irina Krush will be going for her 27th straight title (give or take...it'll be "just" her 7th title and fourth in a row, if she wins). For some reason her main rival, 4-time champ Anna Zatonskih, isn't playing, so her toughest opposition may come from Tatev Abrahamyan.

Play begins each day at 1 p.m. local time in St. Louis = 2 p.m. ET. The pairings will be determined tonight, and both tournaments are 12-player round-robins. Sticking to the men's event, what do you think: Nakamura, So, or the field?

Kamsky, Krush Win The U.S. Championships (Again)

It wasn't easy, but defending champions Gata Kamsky and Irina Krush both managed to keep their U.S. Championship crowns. For Kamsky, this is his fifth title and fourth in the last five years, while for Krush it is her sixth title and third in a row.

In the open championship Kamsky had the best tiebreak of the three playoff participants, so he waited for the winner of the bid-Armageddon semi-final match between Alex Lenderman and Varuzhan Akobian. Akobian had the low bid with 29:57, so he was given Black and draw odds against Lenderman, who got White and 45 minutes. The position was around equal when Lenderman made a fatal miscalculation. He sacrificed a pawn, expecting to regain it after 22.Na4 with a positional advantage. He completely missed (or at least underestimated) the weakness of f2, and Akobian quickly finished him off with a direct attack and advanced to the final.

An Armageddon game at the stage could eventually be reached, but before that could happen the players would have a couple of normal game/25s (with five second increments) first. Akobian had White against Kamsky in the first game, got nothing, and the game was a relatively uneventful draw. In the second game Kamsky played his usual patient chess, essaying the London System and playing for a little queenside pressure. Objectively the position after 17 moves was approximately equal, but Akobian, who was already starting to run low on time, tried to resolve the position immediately with 17...dxc4 18.Nxc4 e5. He was probably better off keeping the position intact, but it's hard for most of us not to just "do something", especially in a high pressure game with time dwindling away. The same goes in spades for Akobian's 21...c5, which was an outright error. After this mistake he was just about lost, and he was soon down a pawn and down to his last seconds on the clock; bad news against anyone, and hopeless news against Kamsky.

In the women's championship things proceeded quite similarly. Krush, likewise the defending champion, had the best tiebreak scores and could await the winner of the bid-Armageddon game. The winning bid here was very similar to that in the open event, with Tatev Abrahamyan getting Black and draw odds with 29:45 on her clock to Anna Zatonskih's 45 minutes. Here the similarities end, as Abrahamyan was simply unfamiliar with the theory of a major line - not good. 12...Nxc3 is the standard move; instead, her 12...Nc5 was a lemon. When Zatonskih found the brilliant and correct 16.Nxd5!! it looked like it would be game over, and the commentators were already making her the favorite for the final, given how sharp she seemed to be. Abrahamyan's response was a further error, and on move 20 Zatonskih had several winning moves. Instead, she blundered with 20.a4?? - a good idea in general, but not properly timed - and after this Black was not only not dead lost, but better. From there Abrahamyan always kept control, and although both sides committed various inaccuracies Zatonskih never had the chance to be better. In the final position Black was around +50 according to the computer, but with White enjoying some threatening possibilities and a handy perpetual available Abrahamyan took the easy way out and proceeded to the final.

The first g/25 was a mess, with Krush's position constantly vacillating between clearly winning and much better, with an occasional fleeting moment where Abrahamyan might sneak out with a draw. The last such moment came on move 66, when after a long stretch of very resourceful defense Abrahamyan could have drawn with 68...Rg8+ 69.Rb8 Rb6!! 70.Rxg8+ Kxg8, when any sideways rook move will be met by 71...Ra6+, winning the pawn or repeating. If instead 71.a5, then 71...Rb5 72.a6 Rb6 and the pawn is lost due to zugzwang. Missing this last chance, she lost the game. In game 2 Krush equalized with Black, but 20...Nxd5? was too cynical. Yes, it traded some material, but gave White the opportunity to target Black's weak b- and d-pawns, not to mention the Black king by means of the h7 square and the a2-g8 diagonal. Abrahamyan also enjoyed a huge advantage on the clock, but Krush defended well (except on move 31) and eventually both advantages disappeared. In the end Krush had the better position - and crucially, one that could not be lost - and White eventually acquiesced in the draw. (All the games can be replayed here, with my on-the-fly notes.)

Congratulations once again to Gata Kamsky and Irina Krush! Their challengers are getting closer and closer, but close, as they rightly say, isn't good enough.

Recently Completed Events: Beijing

In the previous post and this older one I presented a pair of games from the SportAccord World Mind Games; in this one I will recap the results and present still another game. It was a very strong event with 16 elite GMs participating. The event had three stages: a 7-round Swiss in rapid chess, a double round-robin in blitz, and finally five rounds of Basque System chess. (The Basque System refers to a match where the opponents simultaneously face each other on two boards, having one color on one and the opposite on the other.)

In the Rapid, Peter Leko was leading with 5/6 going into the last round, but he lost to Wang Yue and took second to him on tiebreak. Alexander Grischuk took the bronze with 4.5 points, also on tiebreaks ahead of Leinier Dominguez.

Likewise in the blitz, there were ties for both the gold and the bronze. Sergey Karjakin scored 19.5/30 and finished ahead of Levon Aronian on tiebreaks, while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's 18 point total proved better than Shakhriyar Mamedyarov's, likewise thanks to the tiebreaks.

Finally, Karjakin was also able to "Basque" in the glory of a triumph in the third tournament, winning with a very impressive score of 8.5/10. Mamedyarov was second, a full two points behind, and Ruslan Ponomariov was third with 6 points.

Now to another game from the tournament. In my older post on the event (linked above) I presented a catastrophic loss by Vassily Ivanchuk to Ian Nepomniachtchi in just 20 moves. For an encore, let's see his loss to Gata Kamsky, which only went 21 moves. (Sometimes the best thing one can do about a tournament is to forget it as quickly as possible.)

Sinquefield Cup, Round 5: Two Draws Leave Carlsen in Clear First Entering the Last Round

The penultimate round of the Sinquefield Cup saw the players leave the round the way they started, relatively speaking, with Magnus Carlsen half a point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura, a point ahead of Levon Aronian, and two and a half points ahead of Gata Kamsky.

Nakamura started the day winless against Carlsen in classical chess, but armed with the white pieces and his trusty sunglasses he hoped to win and thereby leapfrog his way into first place. It was not to be. He played the very safe 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.Re1 line against Carlsen's Berlin, and although the game started to get interesting thanks to Carlsen's later advance of the f-pawn both combatants played excellently and the game finished in a repetition.

With a win against Kamsky Aronian could have caught Nakamura in second, half a point behind Carlsen, and that would have meant that his fate would be in his own hands for tomorrow's last round. (It isn't now, because even if he defeats Carlsen tomorrow Nakamura can win the tournament by defeating Kamsky.) Conditions looked good for that, as Aronian had won nicely yesterday and had the advantage of the white pieces against a desperately out of shape and discouraged opponent. Despite that, he didn't even come close to a victory. Kamsky played the Dutch, following Carlsen's lead in round 2 against Aronian, and although he didn't obtain quite as serious an edge as Carlsen did he still wound up with a good position. He also seemed to have a better feel for the play than Aronian did, but while it was enough to press it wasn't enough for a victory. (Games here, with my comments.)

The games tomorrow start two hours early, at 11 a.m. local time (12 noon ET/6 p.m. CET), as they are alotting time for a playoff in case of a tie for first. It is possible; in fact, there could even be a three-way tie for first (or next-to-last place, if you prefer) if everything works "properly". Here are the pairings:

• Carlsen (3.5) - Aronian (2.5)
• Kamsky (1) - Nakamura (3)