Candidates 2014 tipping!

Last year's Candidates tournament in London was an amazing event to follow, with Carlsen and Kramnik leading after Round 13/14. Both lost in a dramatic final round, resulting in Carlsen winning on tiebreaks, going on to take the title of World Champion from Anand by a score of 6.5-3.5 in November. 

Candidates 2013
Carlsen, Aronian, Kramnik, Svidler, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Gelfand

Candidates 2014
Anand, Aronian, Kramnik, Svidler, Karjakin, Topalov, Mamedyarov, Andreikin

This year, the double round robin will be running in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia between March 11th-April 1st. Here are the predictions by the members of FIGJAM:

Andrew: 1st Aronian =2nd Karjakin, Kramnik, Topalov

Junta: 1st Kramnik 2nd Aronian 3rd Topalov

Moulthun: 1st Aronian 2nd Karjakin 3rd Kramnik

2 weeks of chess in Japan

"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency."

- Raymond Chandler

by Junta

Through August-September I'm in my summer holidays here in Japan, and my last two weeks were filled with chess.

August 5-8:
Participated in a joint training camp of 7 university chess clubs of Japan, in Niigata.
August 9:
Played some training (rapid & blitz) games with Japan's top player, FM Shinya Kojima.
August 10-13:
Played in the 7-round FIDE-rated Japan League tournament in Tokyo, finishing =3rd with 5/7.
August 14, 16-18:
Played one blitz, one rapid tournament in Yokohama, with overseas masters also participating.

Over the two weeks I played 7 classical games, 17 rapid games, and easily over 100 blitz games over the board - I feel it's time for a bit of a rest from playing! I'll be posting game snippets and pictures in the days to come.

The second most important (after the World Championship match in November) and perhaps most exciting chess event of the year is the Chess World Cup currently going on in Norway - tonight the second game of the 4th round is being played, and every round has been very interesting to follow, with intriguing games and high drama.

On the official website above, you could enter your predictions for all 64 matches - there were 809 entries submitted before the commencement of Round 1, and after 3 rounds I'm sitting on =61st-84th with 69.8% of match winners correctly predicted. A Morozevich-Nakamura final seems extremely unlikely, but who knows...

Edit: Yes, Nakamura has been knocked out by Korobov.

Candidates 2013 tipping!

Andrew:
1st-2nd Carlsen, Aronian 8.5/14
3rd-4th Radjabov, Ivanchuk 7.5/14

Fedja:
1st Carlsen 8.5/14
2nd Aronian 8/14
3rd-4th Radjabov, Ivanchuk 7.5/14

Jonas:
1st Carlsen 9/14
2nd Aronian 8/14
3rd Radjabov 7.5/14

Junta:
1st Aronian 9/14
2nd Carlsen 8.5/14
3rd-4th Grischuk, Kramnik 7.5/14

Moulthun:
1st Carlsen 9.5/14
2nd Aronian 8/14
3rd Ivanchuk 7.5/14

Tata Steel 2012 tipping!

"You might be a really good chess player, but I'm much better at waiting than you!"
A waitress being mean to GM Zhao at the Australian Championships

by Junta

After the Australian Championships finished a week ago, where we bid a year's farewell to Fedja who'll be on exchange in Holland for 2012, he's replaced here in Queenstown, NZ by Andrew.

Each of us have played here, in this 'adventure capital of the world', before, and after checking out the familiar tournament hall at the Millennium Hotel several hours ago, we've kicked into chess mode and can't wait to play from tomorrow.

But on the other side of the world, in Wijk aan Zee, perhaps the most exciting chess tournament of the year is about to start - after watching the official tournament video covering the opening day (the interviews are nice to watch), we agreed that it was simply impossible to not follow the games live tonight.

Here are our tips for the three groups of the 74th Tata Steel tournament (A, B, C):
In the A Group are Carlsen, Aronian, Radjabov, Topalov, Karjakin, Ivanchuk, Gashimov, Nakamura, Gelfand, Caruana, Kamsky, Giri, Navara, Van Wely for a tournament record average of 2755.

Andrew
A Group: 1st Carlsen 9/13, 2nd Ivanchuk 8.5, 3rd Aronian 8, 4th-5th Karjakin, Topalov 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Turov with 10/13

Fedja
A Group: 1st Topalov 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Karjakin, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Harikrishna with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Adhiban with 10/13

Junta
A Group: 1st Aronian 9/13, 2nd-3rd Carlsen, Radjabov 8.5, 4th Nakamura 8,
5th Karjakin 7.5
B Group winner: Potkin with 9/13
C Group winner: Sadler with 10/13

Moulthun
A Group: 1st Ivanchuk 9/13, 2nd-3rd Aronian, Carlsen 8.5, 4th-5th Nakamura, Kamsky 7.5
B Group winner: Tiviakov with 9.5/13
C Group winner: Grover with 10.5/13



Trivia questions:
Between Moulthun and I, we've played 7 of the 42 Tata Steel participants in tournament games.
1. Who are the 7 players?
2. We won against a player from the A group. Which player was it?

London Classic 2011 tipping!

"Sam is one of the Gold Coast's young talents and has been introducing many kids to chess with the Gardiner Chess Academy. Today it was Sam who learned a lesson." - IM Aleks Wohl

from the official website, http://www.londonchessclassic.com/

Just a week after the Tal Memorial concluded in Moscow, the 2800 club + Nakamura head west to play in the 3rd London Classic, joined by four of the best English players for a 9-player round robin. The pairings are here.

The football scoring system of 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw is being used.

Andrew's predictions:
1st: Carlsen - 16, 2nd: Aronian - 15, 3rd-4th: Kramnik, Adams - 12,
5th: Anand - 11

  

Fedja's predictions:
1st: Charlsen - 16, 2nd: Aronian, 3rd-4th Anand, Kramnik, 5th: McShane

Junta's predictions:
1st: Aronian - 16, 2nd: Carlsen -15, 3rd: Anand - 12,
4th-5th: Nakamura, Adams - 11

Moulthun's predictions:
1st: McShane        2nd: Hikaru        Equal 3rd: Aronian, Short, Carlsen

The games will be at 1am AEST, except for Round 4 at 3am and the final, Round 8 at 11pm. The rest day is at the halfway mark on the 7th, but with nine players, one gets a rest from playing each round - they will be providing commentary on the games, a brilliant idea which has received widespread praise.

Information for the numerous side events, exhibitions and innovations are all on the official website - it sure sounds like one professionally organised, fun chess event to be a part of. On Friday afternoon, the 9 participants took part in a game vs. the world on Twitter, which, amusingly, the super GMs won with the North Sea Defence (1.e4 g6 2.d4 Nf6 3.e5 Nh5) as Black in 23 moves!

Some (especially) interesting games to watch will be:
Round 1: Kramnik-Nakamura, a re-match from last year where Kramnik made a surprising knight sacrifice right out of the opening but Nakamura won.
Round 2: McShane-Carlsen, another grudge match from last year where McShane surprised observers by conducting a smooth positional victory in R1.
Round 3: Carlsen-Nakamura, with Kramnik commentating. Key word: Kasparov.
Round 5: Aronian-Carlsen - Let's hope we'll witness another fascinating game between the two highest rated players in the world (2829 and 2815 on the live list).
Round 7: Aronian-Anand - the decisive game count is 5-0 in favour of Aronian since Anand became WC in 2007 (four of them with Black)!
Round 9: Short-Carlsen - will we see another of his vital last round wins?

In any case, it's hard to see there not being more decisive games than in Moscow (just 10/45), although the chess played there was very entertaining and of admirably high quality.

World Cup 2011 tipping!

 by Junta

The biennial, epic knockout event in the world of chess - the time for the World Cup has arrived. Just like in 2009, when 2012 World Championship challenger Boris Gelfand won through the 7 rounds as top seed, the drama will unfold in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. The pairings tree (PDF) can be downloaded from here.

Moulthun's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Andreikin,

            Vachier-Lagrave, Wojtaszek, Malakhov, Wang Yue

Top 4: Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Vachier-Lagrave, Wang Yue

Final: Vachier-Lagrave beats Kamsky

Junta's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Ponomariov, Adams,

            Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Navara, Morozevich

Top 4: Kamsky, Adams, Radjabov, Morozevich

Final: Morozevich beats Adams

Fedja's predictions

Top 8: Polgar, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Svidler,

            Navara, Radjabov, Grischuk, Gashimov

Top 4: Svidler, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Ponomariov

Final: Svidler beats Grischuk

Andrew's predictions

Top 8: Karjakin, Kamsky, Le Quang Liem, Adams,

            Vachier-Lagrave, Mamedyarov, Navara, Morozevich

Top 4: Kamsky, Adams, Vachier-Lagrave, Morozevich

Final: Kamsky beats Morozevich

The Oceania region is represented by our very own GM Zong-Yuan Zhao [seeded 101 out of 128], who is up against Russian Super-GM Evgeny Tomashevsky [28] in Round 1.

from Wikipedia:

"Partly for being a mostly positional player, partly for wearing glasses and being well-educated, Tomashevsky, in spite of his young age, earned himself the nickname "Professor" among the chessplayers."

To try and prepare against such a strong opponent, we can only wonder how difficult it must be to think about anything else in the 2 months between when the pairings are released, and actually sitting opposite the player in a distant venue.

The official tournament website is at http://chess.ugrasport.com/ .

Games are at 7pm AEST.

The whole event (August 28-September 21) should be full of exciting chess!

Round 1 Game 1 results are here. Games can be replayed on the official website, or for those games involving players rated over 2700, here (on a game viewer).