5/11/2011 – The candidates for the 2012 World Championship are taking two days of rest. But on Thursday the remaining four – Kramnik, Grischuk, Gelfand and Kamsky – will continue their matches in Kazan, and we our live coverage on Playchess and the browser-based broadcast which gives you a running evaluation of the games. This is being provided by the Hiarcs team using some extraordinary hardware.
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May 2011
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From 3 to 27 May 2011 the FIDE Candidates matches are being held in Kazan,
the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, with eight strong GMs competing to
qualify as Challenger for the 2012 World Champion match. Time controls in the
four regular games are 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the
next 20 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, plus an additional
30 seconds per move starting from move 61. In case of a tie there will be four
rapid chess games, and if the tie is still not broken then up to five two-game
blitz matches 5'+3". Finally there may be a sudden-death final decider.
The prize fund of the candidates is 500,000 Euros.
The first round of the Candidates matches
Did
you enjoy the first leg of the FIDE Candidates matches? The stakes are high
in Kazan, but the results theoretically disappointing. Just take a look at the
statistics: of the sixteen regular full-time games fourteen (=87.5%) were drawn,
while the two wins, both scored with the black pieces, pushed Kamsky and Gelfand
into the next round. However, if you draw the conclusion that the even until
then was dull and boring you were greatly mistaken. Many of the draws were extremely
hard-fought, with blood-curdling twists and turns, with drama and tragedy. At
least that is what most of our readers felt.
Then came the tiebreak games – rapid and in one case four blitz games.
Here there were 41.7% draws, 33.3% wins by White and 25% by Black. There was
high drama,
which included the clock suddenly deciding it had had enough in the critical
phase of a critical game. The arbiters had to get a new clock, consult the live
video feed to get the times on the original clock (21 seconds for White and
12 for Black).
After the match we got a playfully irritated call from Garry Kasparov. "Did
you send them my DVDs?" the former World Champion wanted to know. "They
are playing my openings!" Indeed, Kasparov has recorded four ChessBase
DVDs, one on the Queen's Gambit and three DVDs on the Najdorf. Eleven (out of
a total of 28 games) saw the Queen's Gambit: Kramnik and Radjabov played it
in seven from eight games, Aronian-Grischuk four times; and the Najdorf was
played in four games: twice by Topalov against Kamsky and twice by Gelfand against
Mamedyarov. Maybe you, too, should study Kasparov's DVDs?
Here, to whet your appetite, is a sampler of Kasparov on the Queen's Gambit.
Close your eyes and imagine Kramnik and Kamsky listening to this during their
preparations for the Candidates matches in Kazan. Then go to the ChessBase
Shop where you will find more general and ordering information on these
timeless DVDs
In the end, with or without Kasparov's assistance, the following candidates
went through to the semi-finals:
WR
Player
Rating
Nat.
Born
4
Vladimir Kramnik
2785
RUS
1975
12
Alexander Grischuk
2747
RUS
1983
16
Boris Gelfand
2733
ISR
1968
18
Gata Kamsky
2732
USA
1974
And here are the results and the pairings for the next stage:
Quarterfinals
(best of 4)
Semifinals
(best of 4)
Final
(best of 6)
1
Veselin Topalov
1.5
8
Gata Kamsky
2.5
Gata Kamsky
Boris Gelfand
4
Boris Gelfand
2.5
5
Shak Mamedyarov
1.5
3
Levon Aronian
3.5
6
Alexander Grischuk
4.5
Alexander Grischuk
Vladimir Kramnik
2
Vladimir Kramnik
7.0
7
Teimour Radjabov
5.0
This is the schedule of the next rounds:
Day
Date
Game
Thursday
May 12
Round 2 Game 1
Friday
May 13
Round 2 Game 2
Saturday
May 14
Round 2 Game 3
Sunday
May 15
Round 2 Game 4
Monday
May 16
Tiebreaks
Tuesday
May 17
Free day
Wednesday
May 18
Free day
Thursday
May 19
Round 3 Game 1
Friday
May 20
Round 3 Game 2
Saturday
May 21
Round 3 Game 3
Sunday
May 22
Free day
Monday
May 23
Round 3 Game 4
Tuesday
May 24
Round 3 Game 5
Wednesday
May 25
Round 3 Game 6
Thursday
May 26
Tiebreaks, closing
Friday
May 27
Departure
Following the games from Kazan
The Russian organisers in Kazan are providing live
coverage on the official site, as are many servers all over the world. But
what is more interesting is that they are also streaming excellent hi-res
video coverage from
the playing hall in Kazan, with live commentary (in Russian). This can be watched
as the games are taking place, or later in the archives. Some day, we feel,
all chess tournaments will be covered this way.
The Russian Chess Federation's live coverage from the playing hall in Kazan
Naturally Playchess is also covering the event, with players like Sam Collins,
Dejan Bojkov, Daniel King, Loek van Wely and Jan Gustafsson providing commentary.
GM Daniel King is doing live audio commentary on the Playchess server
Live evaluation from the Hiarcs computers
In addition to the Playchess commentary the games are also being displayed
on our Chesslive broadcast page, which can be accessed in any regular browser,
even Apple, without having to download a special client. When you go to the
Chesslive broadcast page you
get a list of all the games that are currently available in the broadcast room.
The ones with the most viewers are on top, so it is easy to access the most
important games. You can load and follow multiple games by clicking on "Games"
on the left, to get the list. Each loaded game has its own icon, and clicking
on these will jump to that game.
The games of the FIDE Candidates in Kazan are being analysed by our most powerful
chess engines. Their evaluation of the current board position, together with
the main line and an evaluation profile of the entire game so far, are displayed.
This only happens when the games are live and the remote engines are running.
This is Deep Hiarcs 13.285 analysing during the final Topalov-Kamsky game
In the above enlarged image (in our Silverlight broadcast you can resize all
the windows) you can see at a glance the course that game four of the Topalov-Kamsky
match took: Topalov had a small advantage from the start, which suddenly turned
into a practically winning position when Kamsky blundered in intense time pressure
just before the 40th move. Then at move 44 Topalov threw away most of the advantage
and slowly moved into to a 0.00 score, with Hiarcs expecting White to repeat
moves for a draw.
During the quarterfinals the engines were running in a somewhat haphazard fashion:
Fritz, Hiarcs, Rybka and Junior were given a game apiece by our sysops, sometimes
running on a quad system, but sometimes on a very special system: the Hiarcs
computers, located in the study of Harvey Williamson in the middle of London
(picture above).
Harvey uses two very fast machines. One is a sixteen core (with hyperthreading)
system with each core running at 3.2 GHz with 12 GB of RAM. The second is a
24-core system, with the CPUs currently overclocked at 4.2 GHz. That machine
has 48 GB of RAM. Naturally they have every tablebase known to man, and the
latest opening books on board. These computers have helped some
very strong players in their preparation
for some very important matches.
The Hiarcs team: Harvey Williamson with program author Mark Uniacke
Harvey, who has been using chess computers since the early 80's, has been working
with Mark Uniacke on Hiarcs for several years now. He plays a lot of correspondence
chess and hold the IM title there. His real job, however, is the BBC's News
and Sport radio network, Radio 5 Live,
which is moving to Manchester later in the year: Harvey and his computers will
do likewise – but don't worry, you won't notice a thing. During the semifinals
we will be using Deep Fritz 12 and Deep Hiarcs 13.2 to give us running assessment
of the games.
The games are being broadcast live on the
official web site and on the server Playchess.com.
If you are not a Playchess member you can download ChessBase
Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program
to read, replay and analyse PGN games.
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