2013-2014 Women's Grand Prix, Geneva

I added the crosstable for the 2013 Geneva event to my page on the 2013-2014 FIDE Women's Grand Prix. (The PGN will follow shortly.)

2013-2014 Women's Grand Prix

I added a new page for the 2013-2014 FIDE Women's Grand Prix to my index page on the World Chess Championship for Women. The first of the six Grand Prix events has already been played and the results can be found at geneva2013.fide.com. I'll add those results to my own page as soon as I can.

The official site for the 2013 Geneva event included a new FIDE logo that I don't remember seeing before. I've copied it to this post.

More Cumulative Scores

When I prepared the Cumulative Scores for the early candidates tournaments, and later for the 2013 London Candidates, I overlooked the two most recent World Championship tournaments,

• 2005 San Luis, and
• 2007 Mexico City.

While I was preparing those, I realized I had no tiebreak info for 2007 Mexico City, and will add it ASAP.

2012-2013 Grand Prix, Zug

I added the crosstable for the 2013 Zug event to my page on the 2012-2013 Grand Prix. (The PGN will follow shortly.)

The second edition of the FIDE Grand Prix has been just as chaotic as the first (see 2008-2009 Grand Prix for background and links). I last commented on the situation in a post on London Candidates - First Week, but much has happened since then and I haven't found the time to dissect the changes. In any case, the situation is certain to continue evolving. I'll add relevant links to the page on the 2012-2013 Grand Prix -- and maybe do a post here -- as soon as I can.

2013 Anand - Carlsen (in India?)

I added a page on the forthcoming 2013 Anand - Carlsen title match to my main World Chess Championship index page. The new page is little more than a stub, but I expect lots of news over the next six months.

Why would FIDE want to award the organization of the match without a bidding process? Didn't they learn anything from the disastrous schism that was the result of the flawed award in 1993? See FIDE/PCA Chronology for more about those dark days that resulted in a lost decade for world class chess players.

London Candidates - The Players

I added the eight players who participated in the 2013 Candidates Event to the Index of players who have participated in any World Championship event since the beginning of recorded time. While I was there, I restructured the index to make it a bit more friendly.

Six Months Before Anand - Carlsen

Now that the 2013 Candidates Event, played in London, is behind us, we can look forward to the Anand - Carlsen title match in November. The FIDE Calendar 2013 currently says '6-Nov-2013 : 26-Nov-2013', but this is undoubtedly subject to change.

The Rules & Regulations for the match mention both Anand and Carlsen, so they were published after the end of the Candidates tournament. We are looking at a 12 game match with tiebreak. According to a post I wrote three years ago, Intermediate Scores as a Match Predictor, 12 is a sufficient number of games. What happens if either Anand or Carlsen can't play?

3.6.2 If a player refuses to participate in the World Championship Match, he will be replaced as follows: The runner up finalist of FWCM 2012 GM Boris Gelfand replaces the World champion Vishy Anand and the runner up of the Candidates Tournament 2013 Vladimir Kramnik replaces the challenger Magnus Carlsen. In case any or both players refuse to participate when invited, or for any further replacements needed, the rating list of January 2013 will be used to determine their replacements.

The Chessgames.com links I created for the Candidates event, 2013 London CT Player Records, proved particularly useful. Here's the same for the title match: Classical games: Viswanathan Anand beat Magnus Carlsen 6 to 2, with 19 draws. Those 27 games are from a total of 58 played between the two opponents. How does that compare to my own PGN file on Carlsen's Tournament, Match, and Exhibition Record? I downloaded the file, extracted the Anand - Carlsen games, and also came up with 58. Here are some SCID stats for the first moves used.

Judging by comments in various places, Carlsen is the favorite going into the match. He was also the favorite going into the Candidates tournament, but emerged the victor thanks to a controversial tiebreak system. Given that he has little match experience, I expect the upcoming title match will be close.