Corus Round 6: White is Okay
1/17/2004 – Chessplayers often explain the advantage of the first move by comparing it to having the serve in tennis. Today the aces were serving aces and all four wins came with the white pieces. All four were also scored by the leaders: Adams, Kramnik, Anand, and Topalov moved to +2. Report with photos and analysis here.
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Corus Wijk aan Zee 2004 – Round 6
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66th Wijk aan Zee Tournament –
Jan. 10-25 |
| Round 6 (Saturday, January 17, 2004) | ||
Adams, Michael |
1-0 |
Bareev, Evgeny |
Kramnik, Vladimir |
1-0 |
Zhang Zhong |
Anand, Viswanathan |
1-0 |
Shirov, Alexei |
Timman, Jan |
½-½ |
Svidler, Peter |
Topalov, Veselin |
1-0 |
Bologan, Viktor |
Sokolov, Ivan |
½-½ |
Van Wely, Loek |
Leko, Peter |
½-½ |
Akopian, Vladimir |
The Open, then the C, B, and A groups all in the same hall.
In classical chess, as opposed to rapid and blitz, having the white pieces gives you much better chances of winning a game than having black. The stronger the players, the bigger the relative advantage of having the first move. The other number that rises with Elo is the percentage of draws, unfortunately. Among the 2600 crowd white wins run almost two to one over black, but draws hit 65% in 2003 at the top level.
Basically all these number reflect what we already know. Winning a chess game requires a mistake and the top players don't make many mistakes. Another consideration is that since drawing with black is considered a minor victory you regularly see draws when black is slightly better and would likely play on in the same position with white.
After adding four more in round six, wins by white are over four to one over black in Wijk aan Zee's A group, although draws are still at the usual 65%. The white factor may work out in Kramnik's favor down the home stretch. The pairings give him the first move against rivals Anand, Topalov, and Leko. Anand has black against his co-leaders (and already had black against Leko and Svidler, ouch!).
Bareev and Adams preparing for a short day at work. 1-0 in 25.
Going into the round the leaders knew they had to push hard with the first move, especially since they all outrated their opponents. It made for a day of thrilling, hard-fought games. Adams was the first to hit the media room with a full point in his hand. Bareev blundered a pawn to a fairly simple fork and resigned in disgust on move 25. Topolov out-dueled Bologan in a sharp game to keep pace.
Longer grinds were required for Kramnik and Anand to beat Zhang and Shirov, respectively. Kramnik's inexorable win has the look of a work of art. He will simply not be denied. Anand and Shirov swapped and swapped until they both got what they wanted. Shirov had a theoretically drawn endgame and Anand had excellent winning chances. As so often happens, practical chances beat theory hands down.
The Maestro: Anand limbers up before beating Shirov.
Leko was the only "white leader" who couldn't keep the pace. He was held to a tough draw by Akopian. The audience was denied good chance for a second celebration day when Timman agreed to a draw against Svidler in an endgame that was very close to winning for the Dutchman. Timman had lost his previous two whites so maybe he figured this was good enough. Call it karma for Svidler, who resigned in a drawn position against Kramnik in round four. In yet another wild game the rivalry match-up between Sokolov and van Wely ended in a draw after both sides missed wins.
A battle of heavyweights. Timman could have pressed for a win over Svidler.
The field is starting to stretch and none of the leaders meet tomorrow either. But they all have black, so anything can happen. Will the underdogs charge the net against the big dogs or be content with serve-and-volley draws?
Let's start with an easy one. Bareev recaptured with the wrong piece on move 23 and now he finds out why. It shouldn't take you long to find 25.Rxe6! and Bareev resigned on the spot instead of playing a lost endgame. 25.Rxe6 Kg7 (25...fxe6 26.Bxe6+ Kf8 27.Bxc8) 26.Re7 |
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Your eyes do not deceive you, Black is up a rook for two pawns. Yes, those pawns are dangerous passers, and it seems that both players were too distracted by them to notice that Black's king is a far bigger issue. The game ended in an exciting draw on move 46 after 33.d6 Qf8. White's pawns and threats on the dark squares created a dynamic equilibrium. Sokolov could have won immediately in the diagram by preempting Black's defense of g7 with 33.Bh6! Black has no way to cover both e5 and f6 that doesn't lose major material. 33...Qb8+ 34.d6 Rxf2 35.Qe5 f6 36.Qe7 and there is no
perpetual even if Black gives up his rook. |
I was delighted when this theoretical endgame came up and I'm sure the ChessBase boys will be too. (Shirov might be less delighted.) I got to make use of one of the new ChessBase toys. Black went in for a drawn ending, but having to find the right move on the last move of the time control was too much for even an endgame wizard like Shirov. Those of us who have the spiffy new ChessBase Endgame Turbo DVDs could play the cruel game of seeing if the super-GMs could find the computer-perfect moves.
After that Anand was relentless. He didn't play perfectly but he never let the win slip away. A pity Shirov had to make such a critical decision on move 40. Still, these endgames are terribly hard to defend under the best circumstances. How important are tablebases to the endgame play of chess engines? Using Fritz 8 on my laptop – which unlike my desktop doesn't have the space for a few dozen gigabytes of tablebases unless I delete all my Caetano Veloso Vorbis files and run DOS 1.2 – it evaluates the drawing moves and most of the losing moves with the same +2.44 score. That's with most of the five-man tablebases but not the critical six-man R+2 pawns vs R database that weighs in at 4.35 GB. I guess I could always run it off the DVD directly... Running these games through Deep Fritz 8 had an amusing side-effect in this game. Usually this is a handy and quick way to check all the games for blunders, but when Fritz is thinking about tablebase mates a blunder takes on a whole new meaning. It went about suggesting 30-move line improvements on just about every move of this endgame! (White could mate two moves faster this way, Black could hold out four moves longer this way...) I deleted most of these notes before uploading the games to the round six replay/download page so it wouldn't take an hour to load if you're on a dial-up connection. |
Standings after round six
All the games in PGN (no notes) GM group A • GM group B • GM group C
Schedule – (Rest days 12, 16, 21)
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