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Magnus Carlsen won the Zurich Chess Challenge, the first tournament he played as the world champion. It was an amazing event, a chess triathlon, with the superstars showing their skills in blitz, rapid and classic chess, the latter being the most important. Undefeated, with three wins and two draws, the Norwegian grandmaster finished the classic part a full point ahead of the Armenian Levon Aronian.
Looking at the crosstable, Carlsen's victory may seem easy, but, in fact, it was hanging on one game – a swing game against the American Hikaru Nakamura, who was rated for the first time as number three in the world. A loss by Carlsen would have injected a new life into the event.
Nakamura never beat Carlsen in classical chess, but he came close in Zurich. Choosing the same variation against the Nimzo-Indian Defense that gave Carlsen problems in the world championship match against Vishy Anand, Nakamura outplayed his opponent. There were no obvious blunders on Carlsen's part, perhaps just a string of inaccurate moves, a strategic plan going slightly awry – but it was enough to land him in trouble.
Asked how he could have survived, Carlsen said that he tried to keep the game going one move at a time. "If you keep fighting, you will be rewarded," he explained.
Carlsen's best game – a beautiful, simple composition – was against Fabiano Caruana. The American-Italian grandmaster won the last day's rapid tournament, sharing second place with Aronian behind Carlsen in the combined classic and rapid events. Carlsen shared first place with Aronian in the blitz tournament on the opening day.
There is a new trend in chess sponsorship as more and more rich Russians underwrite major chess events such as the World Cup and the World Championship. Oleg Skvortsov was the main sponsor in Zurich.
The newly elected president of the Russian Chess Federation, Andrey Filatov, staged the 2012 World Championship match between Vishy Anand and Boris Gelfand at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Following his example, the Dutch organizers also connected chess and art last month, moving one round of the traditional Tata Steel tournament to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The grandmasters in front of Rembrandt's Night Watch: Van Wely, Naiditsch, Dominguez,
Nakamura, So, Harikrishna, Gelfand, Aronian, Karjakin, Caruana, Giri, Rapport
On that special day, two highest rated players of the event, Aronian and Nakamura, played against each other.
Aronian dominated the Tata Steel tournament and led by two points before the last round. Although having had the possibility to increase his lead and setting a performance record of the event, he collapsed against Loek van Wely. Even the world's second best player can be vulnerable to a one-move blunder.
Sometimes the players don't even notice that something went wrong and others cover up their crime. When a former world champion and the all-time best woman made mistakes, their blunders disappeared. Here is the tale:
In early February 1993, I went to Lucerne to represent Nigel Short at the FIDE bidding for his world championship match against Garry Kasparov. The results were not encouraging: Kasparov's supported bid of one million Swiss francs came from the Galician town of Santiago de Compostela. But there was an incredible bid of $5 million from Jezdimir Vasiljevic. It was the same amount Vasiljevic put up for the 1992 match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky.
I flew to Budapest to check it out since Vasiljevic was the main sponsor of the match between Spassky and Judit Polgar. He came to the lobby of the hotel with his bodyguards. I asked him: "Are you really going to sponsor the match Kasparov-Short?"
He laughed: "Oh, Kasparov, Kasparov. He should be careful. One day he may try to cross a street and he may not make it to the other side." Vasiljevic was never going to sponsor anything Kasparov. That was clear. His phantom bid was used by Campomanes to gain time for the upcoming offers from England.
Polgar played well and clinched the match victory early. Spassky won the meaningless last game, narrowing the loss to 4.5 to 5.5. Afterward he told me: "I think I did something today I shouldn't have done. I switched the moves, but I was not punished." The punishment could have been swift: a bishop sacrifice would have won material, forcing immediate resignation. The game would have lasted just three minutes, surely a record among top grandmaster games.
I wrote about it in my Washington Post column, but I later found out that the moves were altered. Perhaps not to embarrass the players, the organizers put out another version of the game, the one you can find in the databases. In their account the horrific blunders were eliminated and made my story not credible.
Fortunately, Judit Polgar came to the rescue. In her new book From GM to Top Ten, published by Quality Chess, she acknowledged what happened:
Polgar's chess is impressive in her new book, the second tome of her three-volume manual. It is also spiced up with amazing stories. And you would not expect less from a lady who got a marriage proposal on Machu Pichu.
Images by Maria Emelianova and Alina l'Ami
Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and others, featuring various news sources and columnists. The site was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet and liberal/progressive alternative to conservative news websites. It offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, the green movement, world news, and comedy. It is a top destination for news, blogs, and original content. The Huffington Post has an active community, with over over a quarter of a billion visits per month (according to Quantcast), making it the number 73 ranked web site in the world (Alexa, January 2014)..
