
Finding Nepo
News Release by John Saunders
November 30 marked the opening of the 4th London Chess Classic, which succeeds
last year’s tournament as the strongest ever tournament in Britain. Note,
I’ve not described it as an opening ceremony as it was a generally informal
affair. Anyone who comes to London looking for pomp and ceremony should go to
watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace; the London Chess Classic
is a more relaxed affair.

The press conference was a tad later than we promised – apologies to
those of you watching online – as Magnus Carlsen and Judit Polgar were
whisked off for a photo-shoot at the London Eye and it took time to get them
back to Olympia through the London traffic. Meanwhile, the other top GMs, back
at Olympia, were limbering up with a practice game on the giant chess board
in the foyer at the venue.
Levon Aronian (above) took White against his girlfriend Ariane Caoili. You
might think, given the rating differential, he could at least have given his
girlfriend the white pieces – I, of course, could not comment.
Nigel Short helped even up the odds by joining Ariane’s team (picture
above), while a couple of kibitzers took the mickey. That wasn’t a clue
– Mickey Adams wasn’t one of them – but if Carlsberg did kibitzers,
it would probably have been these guys – current world champion Vishy
Anand and his immediate predecessor Vladimir Kramnik. Later, and not for the
first time this afternoon, there was a communications mix-up on the black side
of the chessboard, with a gigantic white queen thumping down on g6 to put an
end to this mega-skittles game.

By that time Magnus and Judit had arrived from their photo-shoot and we moved
to the press conference, with all nine competitors at the table with tournament
director Malcolm Pein chairing. The press conference was streamed live to the
vast internet audience. (You can still view it on our website.) Malcolm told
us that in excess of 360,000 people watched the tournament online in 2011, and
that we were hoping to exceed that in 2012.

Malcolm told us about the success of the Chess in Schools and Communities charity
which runs in parallel with the London Chess Classic, and which now funds chess
teachers at 176 primary schools in England and Wales in 30 different areas of
the UK, which we’re very proud of. This year we are encouraging the online
audience to donate a small sum – one dollar/euro/pound per viewer –
to the tournament to fund the charity and help ensure the continuation of the
tournament itself. We’ll be providing details of ways to do this during
subsequent live broadcasts and on the website.

We then moved to questions, from the online audience as well as the people
in the room. The first came from an Internet questioner with a Scandinavian
name. Sitting on the immediate right of Magnus Carlsen (above), Malcolm was
a little self-conscious about reading out the questioner’s name. After
a tentative try at pronouncing it, he turned to the world number one for help.
“Could he be a Norwegian with a name like that?” With immaculate
comic timing, Magnus shot back: “Not the way you pronounce it!”.
That brought the house down. A third career possibility for Magnus: after chess
super-GM and fashion model... stand-up comedian?
Seconds out
As was revealed
in the Norwegian press a couple of days ago, there had been problems getting
Magnus’s Russian second a visa to enter the UK and Magnus faced the prospect
of working on his own in London and only being able to contact his second via
internet telephony. This was not the first time Britain’s slightly fraught
diplomatic relationship with Russia had caused the tournament problems.

"Yann NepOMniashee" – that is how you pronounce it
Malcolm was on the point of naming the Russian GM in question but he then remembered
what had happened when he had tried to pronounce the Norwegian name. Instead
of having a stab at pronouncing Ian Nepomniachtchi’s name, he turned to
Magnus and said “I’m going to have pronunciation problems with Ian’s
name, aren’t I? Do you know how to say that one?” A cunning attempt
to turn the tables on Magnus, but the young man wasn’t falling for that
trick. After a slight hesitation, he answered “I don’t know!”
to another ripple of laughter. Malcolm had a valiant go at it but passed the
microphone to Vlad Kramnik for a definitive Russian pronunciation. “I
can do it better,” said Vlad. I can’t render the Kramnik pronunciation
in print but it was something like ‘Nepomniashee’, with a very slight
accentuation of the ‘om’ syllable, with the voice falling away on
the subsequent syllables. More importantly, the visa story had a happy ending:
Malcolm had used his diplomacy to persuade the Russians to issue Ian Nepomniachtchi
with a visa and he should arrive on Saturday to start work with the world number
one.
The Twitter Game
The players now proceeded to play a game against all-comers on Twitter, with
the Classic competitors playing moves in a fixed sequence. Reverse alphabetical
order was used, which meant that Judit Polgar had the honour of playing 1.d4
for the Classic stars on the giant chess set. I’m not entirely sure how
seriously the players on Twitter were taking this, but it is fair to say that
the Classic competitors treated it as a harmless bit of fun and took the opportunity
to tease each other about their choices of move. It is reassuring to see that
super-GMs are no different to ordinary club chessplayers in this respect. Once
the game was utterly won, they showed a more sadistic side of their nature,
spinning the game out for a few moves rather like a cat playing with a mouse.

The game was marred by a communications foul-up when a horrible blunder (15...e5??)
submitted via Twitter failed to be weeded out by the somewhat haphazard system
we were using to relay data and choose the world’s move (although, as
a Twitterer pointed out, at least the blunder proved we weren’t cheating
and using a chess engine). Maybe a brilliant chess computer programmer, like
Mark Uniacke of Hiarcs, could design us a chessplaying engine/Twitter interface
to remedy this technical problem and make it easier to handle the feed?

[Event "?"] [Site "?"] [Date "2012.11.30"] [Round "?"] [White "London Chess
Classic"] [Black "Twittersphere"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A45"] [PlyCount "43"]
1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5 e6 3. e4 h6 4. Bxf6 Qxf6 5. Nc3 Bb4 6. Qd3 d6 7. O-O-O O-O
8. Nf3 Nd7 9. Kb1 a6 10. g4 b5 11. g5 hxg5 12. Rg1 g4 13. Rxg4 e5 14. Nd5 Qe6
15. Rh4 Ba5 16. Ng5 Qe8 17. Qh3 g6 18. Rh8+ Kg7 19. Rh7+ Kg8 20. Nf6+ Nxf6 21.
Qh6 Nxh7 22. Qxh7# 1-0
Nigel Short, like former British prime minister Gordon Brown before him, had
promised to ‘save the world’, but the position after 15...e5 proved
to be beyond even his chessboard lifesaving skills. Actually, it was probably
a timely mistake as it allowed the super-GMs to escape and get some rest before
the coming fray. The real fun starts tomorrow Saturday and you can follow all
the action at the official website.
Photos by John Saunders, Ray
Morris-Hill
Tournament Information
The 2012 London Chess Classic will take place in the Olympia
Conference Centre from Saturday, December 1st until Monday, December 10th.
Games start each day in general at 14:00h London time, except for round four
(16:00h) and the final round (12:00h). Time controls are classical forty moves
in two hours, then twenty moves in one hour and thirty minutes for the rest
of the game. A win is counted as three points, a draw as one, and a loss zero.
Tiebreaks: 1) number of wins, 2) number of wins with black, 3) result of the
individual game between the tied players. In the unlikely event that there is
still a tie then: 4) 2 x 15'+2" games, and if necessary 5) Armageddon game:
6'+2" vs 5'+2" with draw odds for black. If there is a tie involving
more than two players then the Rapid games will be conducted as a double round
all play all.
There are nine players, including the three top-ranked in the world, make
for a rating average of 2751. The player rested during each round will provide
commentary on the games in progress.
Name |
Title |
Country |
Rating |
W-rank |
Born |
Carlsen, Magnus |
Super-Grandmaster |
NOR |
2848 |
1 |
30.11.1990 |
Aronian, Levon |
Super-Grandmaster |
ARM |
2815 |
2 |
06.10.1982 |
Kramnik, Vladimir |
Ex-World Champion |
RUS |
2795 |
3 |
25.06.1975 |
Anand, Viswanathan |
World Champion |
IND |
2775 |
6 |
11.12.1969 |
Nakamura, Hikaru |
Super-Grandmaster, US Nr. two |
USA |
2755 |
13 |
09.12.1987 |
McShane, Luke |
Super-Grandmaster |
ENG |
2710 |
29 |
07.01.1984 |
Adams, Michael |
Super-Grandmaster |
ENG |
2710 |
32 |
17.11.1971 |
Polgar, Judit |
Super-GM, strongest female ever |
HUN |
2705 |
43 |
23.07.1976 |
Jones,Gawain |
Grandmaster |
ENG |
2644 |
112 |
11.12.1987 |
Pairings
Round
1: Saturday, Dec. 1st, 2012, 14:00h |
Luke McShane |
|
Magnus Carlsen |
Levon Aronian |
|
Hikaru Nakamura |
Vladimir Kramnik |
|
Judit Polgar |
Gawain Jones |
|
Michael Adams |
Vishy Anand (bye) – assisting
commentary |
|
Round
2: Sunday, Dec. 2nd, 2012, 14:00h |
Judit Polgar |
|
Gawain Jones |
Hikaru Nakamura |
|
Vladimir Kramnik |
Magnus Carlsen |
|
Levon Aronian |
Vishy Anand |
|
Luke McShane |
Michael Adams (bye) –
assisting commentary |
|
Round
3: Monday, Dec. 3rd, 2012, 14:00h |
Levon Aronian |
|
Vishy Anand |
Vladimir Kramnik |
|
Magnus Carlsen |
Gawain Jones |
|
Hikaru Nakamura |
Michael Adams |
|
Judit Polgar |
Luke McShane (bye) – assisting
commentary |
|
Round
4: Tuesday, Dec. 4th, 2012, 16:00h |
Hikaru Nakamura |
|
Michael Adams |
Magnus Carlsen |
|
Gawain Jones |
Vishy Anand |
|
Vladimir Kramnik |
Luke McShane |
|
Levon Aronian |
Judit Polgar (bye) – assisting
commentary |
|
Wednesday,
Dec. 5th, 2012 Rest day |
|
Round
5: Thursday, Dec. 6th, 2012, 14:00h |
Vladimir Kramnik |
|
Luke McShane |
Gawain Jones |
|
Vishy Anand |
Michael Adams |
|
Magnus Carlsen |
Judit Polgar |
|
Hikaru Nakamura |
Levon Aronian (bye) –
assisting commentary |
|
Round
6: Friday, Dec. 7th, 2012, 14:00h |
Magnus Carlsen |
|
Judit Polgar |
Vishy Anand |
|
Michael Adams |
Luke McShane |
|
Gawain Jones |
Levon Aronian |
|
Vladimir Kramnik |
Hikaru Nakamura (bye) –
assisting commentary |
|
Round
7: Saturday, Dec. 8th, 2012, 14:00h |
Gawain Jones |
|
Levon Aronian |
Michael Adams |
|
Luke McShane |
Judit Polgar |
|
Vishy Anand |
Hikaru Nakamura |
|
Magnus Carlsen |
Vladimir Kramnik (bye) –
assisting commentary |
|
Round
8: Sunday, Dec. 9th, 2012, 14:00h |
Vishy Anand |
|
Hikaru Nakamura |
Luke McShane |
|
Judit Polgar |
Levon Aronian |
|
Michael Adams |
Vladimir Kramnik |
|
Gawain Jones |
Magnus Carlsen (bye) –
assisting commentary |
|
Round
9: Monday, Dec. 10th, 2012, 12:00h |
Michael Adams |
|
Vladimir Kramnik |
Judit Polgar |
|
Levon Aronian |
Hikaru Nakamura |
|
Luke McShane |
Magnus Carlsen |
|
Vishy Anand |
Gawain Jones (bye) – assisting
commentary |
|
The games – except for rounds four and nine – start at 2 p.m.
or 14:00h British time = 15:00h CET, 17:00h Moscow, 7:30 p.m. Chennai, 22:00h
Beijing, 01:00 a.m. Melbourne, 03:00 a.m. Auckland, 6 a.m. San José,
9 a.m. New York. You can check your location here.
Naturally the games will be covered live on the official web site (below) and
on Playchess. The games of round four begin two hours later, those of the final
round two hours earlier.
Links
The games will be 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 and get
immediate access. Or you can get our latest Fritz
13 program, which includes six months free premium membership to Playchess. |
|