Candidates Rd1: The Madras Tiger breaks Aronian

The FIDE Candidates Tournament is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk (Russia). The first round will start on Thursday, March 13 at 3 p.m. local time, the final round is on Sunday, March 30, 2014. The event is a double round robin (14 rounds). The time control is 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 and 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus an additional 30 seconds per move starting from move 61. The tournament will determine the challenger who will face the reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen in a title match later this year. The prize fund is 600,000 Euros (= US $832,000), the first place 135,000 and last (8th) place 25,000 Euros.

The eight candidates, sorted by their March 2014 rankings, are:

The average rating of this event is 2770. If you are missing players like Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Grischuk, Hikaru Nakamura (numbers 5–7 in the world rankings) they you should know that the qualification for the Candidates was not based on rating but on other criteria: Anand qualified by virtue of being the loser of the 2013 World Championship match; Kramnik and Andreikin by being the two top finishers in the World Cup 2013; Topalov and Mamedyarov by being the top two finishers of the FIDE Grand Prix 2012/13; Aronian and Karjakin on the basis of rating; and Svidler as the organizing committee's wild card.

Round one

The opening round of the 2014 Candidate tournament was a mixture of great excitement and cautious play.

The players wait for the games to start

The tournament is officially launched with the symbolic first move

A fisheye view of the playing hall where the next challenger for the world champion will be decided

For Dmitri Andreikin and Vladimir Kramnik, it was an opportunity to see whether Kramnik would try to bully his way past Andreikin, or whether Andreikin would be content to neutralize his prestigious opponent. Andreikin is a superb technical player, but is not one prone to taking risks, and it bears remembering that during his superb runner-up performance at the World Cup last year, losing to the former world champion, he had only won a single classical game, winning nearly all his matches in the rapid tiebreaks.  

Both Kramnik and Andreikin showed how well-prepared they were

To those seeing the opening played for the first time, it might have seemed like sharp action was taking place, but the entire Nimzo-Indian line played was a rinse-and-repeat operation that had been seen up until the 21st move last year in Mamedyarov-Kramnik (Moscow, 2013). That game ended in a draw shortly after on the 26th move, and today was not a big improvement.

A significantly more svelte Svidler faces Karjakin

Sergey Karjakin went for a less usual line against Peter Svidler’s Sicilian Taimanov with 8.f4 b5 9.e5, but got good play and seemed to have the edge in the opposite-side castling attack. Somehow he never seemed to really get going, perhaps a little too positional, and probably missed Svidler’s 22…Bc4! That was good enough for the draw.

The players share their thoughts in the post-mortem press conference

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov’s game against Veselin Topalov was another animal altogether, and it was no surprise. After all, both players really must be considered far and away the most dynamic of the entire lineup, and their game did not disappoint.

The Bulgarian played a novelty in an offbeat Gruenfeld (6…c5!?) in which he seemed very well prepared. It was not enough to force the Azeri into trouble and they simplified into a symmetrical queenless middlegame that seemed headed to a draw.

Mamedyarov and Topalov share notes after the game

This was not to Topalov’s liking who tried to inject some dynamism into the position with 19…a5?! but this was a mistake, and suddenly he was worse, fighting for the draw. At the end, Mamedyarov missed his best chance to keep the pressure and they shook hands on move 36.

Vishy Anand blew away the bookies

The game of the day was Vishy Anand, who was paired in round one against the top seed and pundits’ favorite, Levon Aronian.

GM Gilberto Milos annotates:

Something has gone wrong

An absolutely fantastic victory for the Indian, who was on everyone’s list of ‘maybe has a chance’ to ‘no chance’. This may seem grossly unfair to the great player, but it was not so much based on what he can do as his apparent see-sawing motivation and form in the last years. As it is, in just one game, in round one, he has turned the tournament’s forecasts on their head, and made the tournament a far more interesting affair. We love it.

About Gilberto Milos GM Gilberto Milos is a veteran grandmaster who has been six-times Brazilian champion, and is one of only four Brazilian players to break into the world's Top 100. He has represented Brazil no fewer than nine times in the Olympiads, and in 2000, took third in the Chess World Cup, behind Anand and Bareev. In 2014, during a rapid tournament in Brazil, he was not only the only player to hold Magnus Carlsen to a draw, but did so twice in fact. He will play for Brazil in the 2014 Olympiads and is the team captain.

The Wild Card

One topic that must be considered exceptionally controversial is the usage of the Wild Card. An example of emails received on the subject can be seen in:

Boo to the Candidates Tournament for allowing the organizers to pick a Wild Card. While Peter Svidler is an exceptional player, missing three of the Top 10 players is a shame. (...) Time to end this practice for such high stakes events and require only objective, agreed-in-advance criteria such as rating or performance in qualifying events. -- (Jason Rihel, London)

It is hard not to agree with the readers on this. While it is understandable to allow a sponsor-organizer to add a player in an unofficial event such as the Grand Slam events, or even individual stages of the FIDE Grand Prix, the use of a Wild Card in the Candidates tournament, an event that qualifies a player directly to a match for the World Championship is completely inappropriate. It not only takes away from the strict qualification steps that others underwent, such as winning the FIDE Grand Prix series, or the World Cup, but allows potentially less (or much less) worthy participants a shot at the world title for no other reason than they are fortunate enough to be from the organizing country and in the good graces of the organizers. The potential for abuse and corruption is clear.

No one is suggesting there is foul play involved, but in no way can this be viewed as fair to the players not chosen, nor even the players who did qualify by their shining standard.

Pictures from official site

GM Daniel King present highlights of round one

Games of the round:

Click on drop-down menu for all games

Schedule and results

Note: the games are played at 3 PM local time, which is 10 a.m. CET (Paris) and 5 a.m. EST (New York). Click here if you are uncertain what that means for your local time.

Playchess commentary

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.