Chess960: Transcript of Showdown in Saint Louis 2015 - SP436 Caruana v Nakamura (with a comment by me)

Here is a transcript of the second fischer random game between Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana at the Showdown in Saint Louis competition 2015.

Rumours have it that the organizers experienced technical difficulties during the event, so there are no PGN records for the games available in the public domain. I have had to reconstruct the games from the video recordings on Youtube and Chess24. In order to save time and effort, I have transcribed only the opening phases of each of the games, since that is what interests us in Chess960 - the rest is just chess!

To save space in the comment text, the three commentators are initialed as Yasser Seirawan (YS), Jennifer Shahade (JS) and Maurice Ashley (MA).

Game 1 SP436: Fabiano Caruana verses Hikaru Nakamura

NOTE: Some browsers may not display the game properly

Transcriptions of the other other games will follow over coming days......

My commentary:

Move 13 Caruana to play - how beautiful is that!

Nakamura playing black, deliberately drops a pawn and then offers a queen trade!?! That breaks all the conventions of normal chess (don't simplify when down in material). But like the commentators said, Nakamura is bluffing and Caruana doesn't fall for it. If white exchanges queens, black gets a really good game with a knight biff on b4 and an attacking rook and the bishop pair. Check out the beautiful X-RAY defense by Naka here. His queen is indirectly defending both his undefended bishops without a direct line to them. Naka is even prepared to expose his weak back rank and increase the risk.

Cool stuff. C'mon people, where is the excitement for Chess960 Fischer Random Style. You would never get a position like this is old chess. It is only move 12 and so much has happened already!

Enjoy 960

Chess960: Transcript of Showdown in Saint Louis 2015 - SP112 Negi v Yifan

Here is a transcript of the first fischer random game between Hou Yifan and Parimarjan Negi at the Showdown in Saint Louis competition 2015.

Rumours have it that the organizers experienced technical difficulties during the event, so there are no PGN records for the games available in the public domain. I have had to reconstruct the games from the video recordings on Youtube and Chess24. In order to save time and effort, I have transcribed only the opening phases of each of the games since that is what interests us in Chess960 - the rest is just chess!

To save space in the comment text, the three commentators are initialed as Yasser Seirawan (YS), Jennifer Shahade (JS) and Maurice Ashley (MA).

Game 1 SP112: Parimarjan Negi vs Hou Yifan

NOTE: Some browsers may not display the game properly

Transcriptions of the other other games will follow over coming days......

Chess960: Transcript of Showdown in Saint Louis 2015 - SP112 Nakamura v Caruana

Here is a transcript of the first fischer random game between Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana at the Showdown in Saint Louis competition 2015.

Rumours have it that the organizers experienced technical difficulties during the event, so there are no PGN records for the games available in the public domain. I have had to reconstruct the games from the video recordings on Youtube and Chess24. In order to save time and effort, I have transcribed only the opening phases of each of the games, since that is what interests us in Chess960 - the rest is just chess!

To save space in the comment text, the three commentators are initialed as Yasser Seirawan (YS), Jennifer Shahade (JS) and Maurice Ashley (MA).

Game 1 SP112: Hikaru Nakamura verses Fabiano Caruana

NOTE: Some browsers may not display the game properly

Transcriptions of the other other games will follow over coming days......

Frankfurt City Chess960 Cup 2014: Let's follow the winner (part 1)

The Frankfurt City Chess960 Cup is possibly the biggest ongoing Chess960 event in the world since Mainz ended. It has been running since 2010 and plans continue to run the event until at least 2020. So lets support it! 

On my blog you can download all the games of the entire history of competitive Chess960 ever played since it was invented by Bobby Fischer, including this tournament.

I thought I would take a close look at the games of the winner of this years event FM Zuyev, a very strong 2400 ELO Chess960 player who has played in the cup every year since it began. He won every single game he played this time, seven out of seven! 

I apologize to all the players in advance for not covering their games in this blog, but time and energy do not permit it.

Zuyev's first game was white against a 2071 player (H.Schmitt) and began as a Queen's Gambit Declined Slav Defense (exchange variation). However this was not chess, but SP428 and there is no bishop on f1. Yes, this is a very funny version of the queen's gambit!

SP428 Queen's gambit: Zuyev plays 2.c4

Zuyev offers a pawn but there is no way to capture the pawn back if black accepts the gambit. Nc1-b3 or Nd3 are then not possible and white will be down a pawn for a very long time. There are some advantages with 2.c4 however. White can get a strong center if the gambit is accepted (except that e4 blocks the bishop on b1), and black will have to sacrifice tempo to support the pawn on c4 with b5. Perhaps Zuyev wanted a really active game against a player that is almost 400 ELO lower than him.

But black did not accept the gambit (was he showing nerves?), and the game entered the Slav defense proper. The next interesting point in the game was 4.....h6!?

Black plays 4....h6!?

Black wants to develop his light bishop to h7 and oppose white's bishop on b1. This is not a bad idea, considering that the g8-a2 diagonal is blocked by d5. Perhaps a better alternative was 4....f6, preparing e4 and liberating the g8 bishop towards the center. Note that my Stockfish 5 kibitzer wanted to play 4....e6?! for quite some time until it changed it's mind to 4....f6 at depth 22.

The next critical moment is when Zuyev plays 5.f4. This move seems dubious to me since it ruins white's pawn structure, king safety and the f4 pawn is exposed to the b8 bishop. Also, the move leaves a big hole on e4 for one of black's knights to sit. Perhaps I am wrong, so I ask the question!

Why 5.f4?

The reason white played f4, is because he wants to play Nde5 where the knight will be supported twice against Bxe5(N) which would preserve two supported pawns in the center. White figured that black is unlikely to kick Ne5 with f6 because that would block a development square for black's e8 knight. This is in fact what happened in the game.

Why 8.Nb3?

I personally do not like white's idea. I think white wants to attack g7 at some point, but black can simply insert ...b7 which completely stops the b3 knight in it's tracks. Also, 8.Nb3 blocks any progress of the queenside pawns. I think better was Ncd3, where white can always withdraw his e5 knight back to f3 if necessary. This also is compatible with the old golden rule of chess, develop the knights towards the center!

Now black takes the initiative because of the hole on e4. White is uncertain about how to develop his g1 bishop and despite being 400 ELO stronger than black, is on the back foot. He plays 9.Be3:

White's decides to develop with 9.Be3

But as the diagram shows, this gives black a very simple plan to develop his knights to f5, attacking Be3, and if the bishop withdraws to f2, black has Ne4 again attacking the bishop. Although this is not fatal, black has a clear plan.

To cool things down a bit however, if black does trade a knight for white's dark square bishop, this is not necessarily bad, since the pawn construction d4-e3-f4 closes down the play for the dark squared bishops and black is better to retain a knight in a closed position (perhaps).

Here is the next key moment where black decides to trade off his undeveloped dark squared bishop for white's actively placed knight on e5:

Black plays 14....Bb8xe5(N)

I think this was a very good decision by black. No time has been wasted moving the dark squared bishop yet, while white has expended quite a lot of effort to play the knight to e5 in a forward position. Perhaps a better way to achieve this was firstly to play 14....Nxc5(N) and then Bxe5(N). The improvement is that white will be left with three isolated pawns! There will be a pawn on c5 that cannot be supported because of a5, and isolated pawns on e5 and e2.

Instead, black (may be due to time pressure) decided to simplify down the position with ...Bxe5(N), ...Nxf2(B), ...b6 (kicking the knight), ...Rc8. The problem is that all of black's initiative is gone and the game is completely even:

Move 18 white to play

White now has connected pawns in the center, is contesting the open c-file and has pressure on f7. My Kibitzer Houdini4 and Stockfish5 evaluate the game at 0.00. Black now plays a beautiful attacking game, putting pressure on black's king safety and arrives at the next crucial milestone:

Move 23 Black to play: don't blunder!

Black has pushed the h-pawn and will try to open up white's king safety. However the attack looks blunted since Qf2/Rf1/Nf4 are strong defenders. With the attack coming to a halt, black plays the natural move 23. g5? to kick the knight and continue the pressure, but this is a key blunder. Can you see why? (Solution bottom left hand corner of this blog). White sees the blunder, and black resigns in a lost position:

Move 27 Black resigns

Black's queen will be trapped after Rf3, and in any case, she is on the wrong side of the pawn with black's queenside and d5 under-defended.

Solution to move 23 blunder:

23....g5?

24. h3...Qg3 {deflecting the queen from protecting the knight on f5}

25. Nxd5! {capturing a crucial pawn, undermining the protection of the f5 knight, and revealing a discovered attack on the f5 knight}

White wins a pawn and black's queen is trapped.

Chess960: A lesson in methodically exploiting structural weaknesses

At Mainz 2001, Adams took a win with a very good display of patient technical exploitation of blacks structural weaknesses. For me the lesson of how Adams carry's through the methodical build-up of pressure is excellent, yet an even more important lesson is how black should avoid creating unnecessary structural weaknesses in the first place.

SP811: Adams takes a win

The standout lesson for me is that Leko probably should have avoided creating a weakness on e6 at move ten with more dynamic and creative play:

 

A creative alternative to 10...d5



Chess960: Leko's amazing bishop

I'm hoping to work my through all the competitive ELO 2000+ games of Chess960 listed in my Chess960 compilation database

 

Here is one of the first ever competitive games of Chess960 played at Mainz. It features a really nice Chess960 opening idea by Leko.

 

SP934: Just watch Leko's amazing dark bishop win the game

 

 

 The stand out moves for me were:

• 4.Bb2!? - Leko decides to put his bishop on the long diagonal despite that it will be blocked by the d4 pawn and that he already had spent a tempo releasing it along the c1-h6 diagonal! The point is that white will have to play e3 to release the light bishop (Leko cannot play e4), and so the dark bishop would have been trapped in any case. With the dark bishop on b2, it plays a defensive role keeping control of the dark squares around what Leko realises, is very likely to be a queenside castling system.
• 27.Bd2! - Leko finds the best move that engines only find at depth 17. Black is totally lost because of the mating configuration b4/Qc5+/Bf4+. Notice that it features that amazing Leko dark bishop!

Chess960-SP287: The edge pawn debate continued

Cool more high quality games to study from Mark's blog that do not contain tactical blunders, just strategic errors:
http://chess960frc.blogspot.com/2011/04/parallel-games-ii.html.
It's particularly cool because last month I tried really hard to prove that the edge pawn is safe in all 960 positions (there is no benefit in taking it):
http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com/2011/03/chess960-opening-survival-guide-edge.html.
I did pretty well in what was a lot more difficult than it needs to be. That said there were a few "holes" in my proof that I could not plug and still have not plugged whatever! Unfortunately nobody came to my aid to help me unbind them. So here are more practical cases of the edge pawn under threat. Should be a lot of fun.

SP287 Game 1: edge pawn gambit accepted

SP287 Game 2: edge pawn gambit declined

Game 1 Analysis:

An great chess960 game for studying how white assists black in achieving a draw pretty much right out of the opening. Remember that the roles of the colors in Chess is for white to try and find a win, and black to prove a draw or wait for an error. For some reason almost every single move of white's encourages a draw and black should be only to happy to play along. Amazingly, I almost have to redefine my definition of symmetrical play after seeing this game:
http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com/2011/04/chess960-sp139-questions-of-positional.html
There is a  third rule of symmetrical play that this game highlights and that is that white must not steer the symmetry in a direction where it is they that looses the initiative. That's what happened in this game!

White's drawing moves:

• 2.Bxa7?! Why capture the least significant edge pawn when the opponent can do exactly the same? Is it not better to continue development for the sake of more tangible pressure?
• 4.Nb3?! Why would white give away the initiative in a symmetrical opening if they are already playing a drawish line? Better to keep the initiative going with 4.e4 or even the dubious initiative move 4.Qh3 (attacking the edge pawn and threatening potential lines against the king at the expense of sidelining the queen). If white has the initiative at least there is a chance to play for a win. This particular move Nb3?! is fascinating from the point of view that white temporarily breaks symmetry with a complementary Zwischenzug type move that gives black the initiative and forces the line back into symmetry.
• 7.d4?! This is the start of a series of move that set's up a hedge-hog pawn structure that looks drawn because there is no play for the only remaining bishop. 

Looking at the way white played, it almost looks as if they were deliberately aiming for a draw perhaps because of the tournament table who knows. If that is the case then hat's off to them. The game was played to extremely high technical standards without major strategic or tactical errors. It is interesting how soon the kings centralize in a such a stalemated mid-game. The endgame drawing sequence was extremely sharp tactically and well played. Although most of the game looks like a draw, the subtleties are beyond me I have to admit and perhaps Peter Leko would be the best to comment considering he has actually played a Chess960 game against Bobby! (can anyone find that game!?)

Note: See this post for how to play this SP with more energy:
http://chess960jungle.blogspot.com/2011/04/chess960-sp287-how-to-play-opening-with.html

Game 2 Analysis:

Game two is easy to analyse because it contains a couple of strategic errors and no tactical errors:

• 7.BxN? In a position where the game will open up, it is suicidal to exchange away one bishop unless the benefit of having two knights balances the exchange. In SP287 this is highly unlikely. Without the dark bishop, white's queen will have to do the job of being a queen as well as being a dark bishop. It is too much.
• 19.O-O? With black's bishops bearing down on the c-side you can understand that white is nervous. However it is already lost for white because black's bishops can so flexibly re-deploy either to attack the c-side or the g-side. Even worse, white castles into open attack, because as soon as he has done so, black begins the attack with 19....h5!