15 April 2020

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Video Commentary

A few days ago on my main blog, I featured a video showing GM Anand on the Lockdown. I introduced the topic saying,
As I prepared the short list for this month's video feature, I found two themes repeated again and again. By coincidence, they echoed the two words in the title of last month's news highlights: Coronavirus Candidates (March 2020). I'll look at the 'Coronavirus' side in this post, then look at the 'Candidates' side on my World Championship blog. Another theme that cropped up repeatedly was 'streaming'.

The 'Candidates' theme and the 'streaming' theme fused in a series of live commentaries from the main chess news sites, each commentary covering a round in the Candidates tournament. With only a little effort I put together four such series of streams from the four Youtube channels shown in the following table. It's a logical continuation of the previous post on this blog, Yekaterinburg Candidates - Intermezzo.

Chess.com Chess24 FIDE chess STLChessClub
Rd.1 Rd.1 Rd.1 Rd.1
Rd.2 Rd.2 Rd.2 Rd.2
Rd.3 Rd.3 Rd.3 Rd.3
Rd.4-1 • Rd.4-2 Rd.4 Rd.4 Rd.4
Rd.5 Rd.5 Rd.5 Rd.5
Rd.6 Rd.6 Rd.6 Rd.6
Rd.7-1 • Rd.7-2 Rd.7 Rd.7 Rd.7
Postponed • Radjabov Stopped Postponed Adjourned

That last set of videos covers the abrupt termination of the tournament with a choice of words to describe the decision: Postponed, Stopped, Adjourned. It's too early to say which word will best describe the ultimate fate of the tournament, because the planet is nowhere near a solution to tame the coronavirus that caused it. I'll go with 'Stopped', after everyone agrees that the year 2020 should be forgotten and summarized by an asterisk, with all future plans for 2021+ advanced by one year. 'World Title Match 2020': No; 'World Title Match 2021': Yes!

The table doesn't show who were the various commentators, so it's worth noting that World Champion Carlsen was listed in the titles of four Chess24 videos: Rd.1, Rd.4, Rd.5, Rd.7. This shouldn't raise any eyebrows after we recall 'Smart Is the New Sexy' (September 2019), where 'I remembered an announcement from a few months ago, Chess24 and Play Magnus join forces (chess24.com; March 2019)'. That was exactly one year before the Candidates Tournament.

Given (1) seven rounds in the tournament plus a round diagnosing its termination, (2) multiplied by four sources, and (3) assuming four hours per stream -- this results in approximately 128 hours (8 x 4 x 4) of video viewing. If I watch all of this in one week I'll have just enough time for sleep to fill the 168 hours (24 x 7) in the week. I'd better get started as soon as I post this.

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08 April 2020

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Intermezzo

Where do we go after Yekaterinburg Candidates - Second Week? The stopping of the Candidates Tournament produced three themes:-
  • Official reactions (FIDE)
  • Player reactions
  • Questions about resumption, e.g. GM Radjabov

The major chess news sources had plenty of commentary, from the pundits and from the fans, but which site to use as a reference? Since I had four references from each, I decided to go with all three (in no particular order).

Chessbase.com:

Chess.com (Peter Doggers):

Chess24.com (Colin McGourty):

Re GM Radjabov, my page on the 2020 Candidates Tournament, Yekaterinburg quotes the announcement from FIDE (6 March): 'Teimour Radjabov has informed FIDE about his decision to withdraw from the Candidates Tournament, citing personal reasons.' That statement, making no mention of the coronavirus pandemic as the underlying 'personal' reason, is about as intellectually dishonest as any statement I've seen from FIDE, including the weirdness that emanated frequently during the Ilyumzhinov reign.

How FIDE treats Radjabov in any resumption of the tournament will again show what it really thinks of its top players. Are they partners -or- Are they pawns?

***

Later: I should have mentioned a related FIDE announcement that appeared a day before the Candidates tournament was stopped.

  • 2020-05-25: Statement by the FIDE Council regarding the Chess Olympiad (fide.com) •: 'FIDE has decided to postpone the 44th Chess Olympiad (including the competition for players with disabilities) and the FIDE Congress. These events, to be held in Moscow and Khanty-Mansiysk during the summer of 2020, are rescheduled to the summer of 2021 at the same locations.'

The FIDE calendar currently shows:-

World Chess Cup 2021 • Minsk, Belarus • 01 Aug 2021 • 28 Aug 2021

The World Cup will be one of the most important qualifying events for the World Championship cycle, 2021-2022. Many players who participate in the World Cup also represent their country in the Olympiad. Something's got to give.

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01 April 2020

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Second Week

This might become one of the shortest blog posts I've ever written. After last week's post, Yekaterinburg Candidates - First Week, there was no second week. Shortly after I finished the 'First Week' post, FIDE announced, FIDE stops the Candidates Tournament (fide.com; 26 March 2020). The announcement said,
Today, the government of the Russian Federation announced that starting March 27, 2020, Russia interrupts air traffic with other countries without indicating any time frames. FIDE can not continue the tournament without guarantees for the players' and officials' safe and timely return home. In this situation and on the basis of clause 1.5. Rules of Candidates Tournament, the FIDE President decided to stop the tournament.

It will be continued later, with the exact dates to be announced as soon, as the global situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic will allow. As it was stipulated by the special rules agreed with the players before the start of the event, the results of the 7 rounds played remain valid, and the tournament will be resumed in the same composition starting with the games of the 8th round.

I added a link to that announcement -- along with subsequent, related announcements -- to my page 2020 Candidates Tournament; Yekaterinburg (Russia), III-IV, 2020. Eventually I'll expand the months 'III-IV, 2020' to include whatever FIDE decides, although I doubt we'll see that decision anytime soon. The result of the first half of the tournament is shown in the following chart.


FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament 2020
(theweekinchess.com)

In the 'First Week' post I noted a curious coincidence about the last four Candidates tournaments : 'The winner was one of the leaders after the first half of the tournament.' Would Yekaterinburg have continued the sequence? The leaders after seven rounds were GMs Vachier-Lagrave and Nepomniachtchi, with the Frenchman beating the Russian in the seventh round. My explanation about the success of the leaders after the first half has to do with momentum and motivation. Since there will now be a months-long pause before the tournament recommences, momentum will not play a role.

The tournament should have been postponed before it started. FIDE's lack of good judgement and its disregard for the safety of the players and officials will not be forgotten.

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25 March 2020

Yekaterinburg Candidates - First Week

Last week's post Yekaterinburg Candidates - Kickoff, coincided with the second round of the tournament, so we have a full week of play to review for this post. In the equivalent post from two years ago, Berlin Candidates - First Week (March 2018), about the 2018 Berlin Candidates Tournament, I created a chart showing the round-by-round progress of the three previous Candidates tournaments: 2013 London, 2014 Khanty-Mansiysk, and 2016 Moscow. That chart is again shown here.

I also noted,

In all three tournaments, the eventual winner was from the group of players who had a plus score after round 3. The winner was also one of the leaders after the first half of the tournament.

Did the same pattern hold for 2018 Berlin? Indeed it did. After the third round, GMs Kramnik, Caruana, and Mamedyarov all had plus scores. Caruana, alone in the lead after the seventh round, went on to win the tournament. Strange perhaps, but true.

As for the 2020 Yekaterinburg tournament, GMs Nepomniachtchi, Vachier-Lagrave, and Wang Hao had identical plus scores (+1-0=2) after the third round. The seventh round, being played today, will give us another prediction about the eventual winner.

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18 March 2020

Yekaterinburg Candidates - Kickoff

The 2020 Candidates Tournament is already into its second round and I haven't done a kickoff post like I did two years ago in 2018 Berlin Candidates - Kickoff (February 2018). First, here are some links to basic information:-

Next, here is a crosstable showing the historical record of all previous games between the eight players -- including the current World Champion -- courtesy Chessgames.com. The links behind the players' names go to their rating cards on ratings.fide.com:-

  Ale Car Din Gir Gri Nep Vac Wan : Car
Alekseenko xx * * * * * * * : *
Caruana xx * * * * * * : *
Ding Liren xx * * * * * : *
Giri xx * * * * : *
Grischuk xx * * * : *
Nepomniachtchi xx * * : *
Vachier-Lagrave xx * : *
Wang Hao xx : *
Carlsen : xx

That's enough to get started. As soon as I can, I'll update my WCC pages with the latest FIDE annnouncements.

***

Later: Re that last sentence, 'I'll update my WCC pages with the latest FIDE annnouncements', I added eight announcements from FIDE.com to my page on the 2020 Candidates Tournament. Five of the announcements were related to the coronavirus pandemic currently sweeping the planet. Also worth noting from FIDE.com is a series on the eight players in the candidates, each titled 'Introducing Candidates':-

I list them here in the same order that FIDE published them. Was it lowest rated to highest rated?

I also intended to add a new page for the title match to be held later this year -- coronavirus permitting -- but found no annnouncements on FIDE.com. One report published on this year's leap day, World Championship match almost certain to take place in Dubai (chessbase.com), started,

During the 90th FIDE Congress in Abu Dhabi, the President of the Federation Arkady Dvorkovich mentioned that this year's World Championship match will almost certainly take place in Dubai as part of the 2020 World Expo, clarifying that this is not yet a formal announcement.

I couldn't find an earlier call-for-bids on that match.

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11 March 2020

C29 Zonal Links

Continuing with the previous post, C29 Zonal Rating Reports, I added the links listed there -- all for ratings.fide.com -- to my page Zonals: Links (and Other References). That page now covers ten cycles (C20-C29), one cycle per column, which is probably as wide as it should be. I should also note a couple of details about the page, both related to my own conventions for numbering the FIDE 'zones':-
  • I changed the numbering for the 'European Small Nations Championship' from '1.10' to '1.0s'.
  • I added '3.1e' even though I'm not sure it served as a World Cup qualifier.

Both of those conventions need to be consistent across all of my other pages. The titles at the top of the page, e.g. '2001-11 KO Moscow', should also be linked to my corresponding pages.

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04 March 2020

C29 Zonal Rating Reports

With only a few weeks remaining before the start of the 2020 Candidates Tournament, Yekaterinburg (15 March - 5 April, according to my page), I have just enough time to tackle the first of the Small Projects for 2020:-
An exercise for the current cycle is still not finished. [...] There remains 'C29 Zonal Rating Reports' and 'C29 Zonal Links'.

Most of the remarks I made for the same exercise in the previous cycle, C28 Zonal Rating Reports (February 2018; 'continental and zonal events that played a role in the current World Championship cycle: C28'), are still valid in 2020, so I'll just list the links to ratings.fide.com (rfc) for the current cycle. The link titles are from rfc.

I double checked those reports against my own page, Zonals 2018-2019 (C29), and everything seemed to match. My page was also useful as a template for building preliminary links to the rfc summaries by country/month.

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