London Classic Grand Tour

[LawrenceCooper]

Giri is in danger of winning !

He was just teasing us by repeating the position before playing on

[LawrenceCooper]

Giri is in danger of winning !

He was just teasing us by repeating the position before playing on

Drawn in 37 moves. Meanwhile So has won rather too easily against Topalov and Caruana seems on his way to a win against Nakamura.

[JustinHorton]

And Aronian has played himself into a losing position.

[Matt Mackenzie]

A real nightmare for Topalov, again. I have never been a fanboy but this is not good to see.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

How close can Caruana get to Carlsen in the live ratings over the remaining rounds (and how low can Topalov go)? Is So guaranteed an actual rating over 2800 yet?

[Tim Harding]

They are saying Caruana will get to number 1 if he wins the last three rounds.

If the chess24 calculations are right, So's three wins have gained him 14 (from 2794) and his draws won't change that.

His last three opponents are all over 2800 so if he draws those games he is okay, and he can probably lose one and still be above 2800?

If he loses twice it could be close (I am not a ratings statistician) but I think three losses (highly unlikely) would leave him pretty much back where he was at the start.

[MartinCarpenter]

Comforting to see they're still allowed to play Sicillians!
(And rather fun ones at it.).

[LawrenceCooper]

Comforting to see they're still allowed to play Sicillians!
(And rather fun ones at it.).

The view of Emil Sutovsky on Facebook:

"The last leg of Grand Chess Tour in London is absolutely exciting. But that comes at a heavy price - myriads of mistakes. In every round. In half of the games. Still - that leads to a lot of excitement. Best quality chess is rarely that spectacular. But the blunderfest we witness in London is a bit too much, don't you agree?"

[Mick Norris]

How close can Caruana get to Carlsen in the live ratings over the remaining rounds (and how low can Topalov go)? Is So guaranteed an actual rating over 2800 yet?

Caruana needed a score of 7/9 to go to number 1

Topalov can presumably drop to 2725

So plays 3 opponents who are higher rated (as at the start of the event), which would mean he gains points with draws; I'm guessing he needs 1/3 rather than 0.5/3 to finish above 2800

[Matt Mackenzie]

Giri has now drawn 5 out of 5. Surely not.......?

He might struggle to maintain that run today.

He was worse and then better, but in the end.......

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Giri features in this article:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-histor ... in-england

Strangely, no byline and no indication of who wrote it.

A fair assessment of English (or British) chess, or not?

[Chris Rice]

Giri features in this article:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-histor ... in-england

Strangely, no byline and no indication of who wrote it.

A fair assessment of English (or British) chess, or not?

Sabrina Chevannes has been writing articles for Chessbase during the tournament so its a good guess she did this one. Here's the one from the day before http://en.chessbase.com/post/nunn-the-wiser

[MartinCarpenter]

Comforting to see they're still allowed to play Sicillians!
(And rather fun ones at it.).

The view of Emil Sutovsky on Facebook:

"The last leg of Grand Chess Tour in London is absolutely exciting. But that comes at a heavy price - myriads of mistakes. In every round. In half of the games. Still - that leads to a lot of excitement. Best quality chess is rarely that spectacular. But the blunderfest we witness in London is a bit too much, don't you agree?"

He's being a bit harsh I'd have thought Topalov does seem to utterly out of form and his sundry losses are consequently not tending to be very interesting.

Otherwise games like Caruana - Nakamura (especially!) but also Vachier-Lagrave - Aronian and Anand - Giri were obviously hugely unbalanced and its basically inevitable that they'll contain blunders as judged by a computer.

[JustinHorton]

Giri features in this article:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/the-histor ... in-england

Strangely, no byline and no indication of who wrote it.

A fair assessment of English (or British) chess, or not?

And what a piece it is. From the introduction

There have been some historical moments in chess, which date back even as far as the 19th Century in England

I thought the authors might be Sellar and Yeatman.

I liked this

obviously, the reasons for this rivalry will be hearsay now

- or they might be written down and discussed in contemporary papers of various kinds, which how we know about them - and this.

there are some old scriptures seen in George Walker’s old column

I look forward to seeing these "scriptures" for myself one day, as well as enjoying the "old scriptures / old column" pairing, much as I enjoyed "held alongside the Great Exhibition, held in Crystal Palace". Talking of old scrptures I assume this bit was written by adapting a small chunk of Wikipedia, including marking up its 2006 estimate for the contemporary value of the prize fund

Staunton was able to raise a prize fund of £500, which probably equates to around £400,000 now.

I might have preferred £61,000, if you check here, or nearly £63,000, more entertainingly, here, but see what you think. Back to the piece, having done "old/old" and "held/held", we move on to "incrdible/incrdible".

an incredible event was held at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, where the House of Commons faced the House of Lords in a match that oozed history. This time, it was done with a twist, as they had some incredible guests

Or indeed incredible! From the proliferation of exclamation marks I thought the author might be trying to parody Matthew Sadler! Looks, here's some more!

But it’s not the first time that a chess event has been held there! The House of Commons has an extensive chess history. Plus, Chess in Schools and Communities celebrated their first birthday there back in 2011! They even had a special guest in the form of Garry Kasparov in attendance!

But did you know?

Some fantastic event date back hundreds of years ago.

I'm guessing that should be "events", although the only one we are informed about is

the incredible “Chess Cable Match” of 1897

which to my mind is not much more than a hundred years ago, although it was nevertheless "incredible". Meanwhile

where

should probably be "in which", and when the author writes

the members of Parliament in London played the members of Congress

I believe they mean "the House of Representatives".

in Washington DC!

but not Westward Ho, which would justify the exclamation mark. But that's what happens when you get carried away!

Instead, it was played over telegraphic cable and took two days to complete! The final score was a 2.5-2.5 tie!

Et cetera, et cetera. No, the article is not a fair assessment of English chess, British chess, or anything else, but a fair assessment of the piece would be that it needs to be returned to the student with a large quantity of red ink attached and the words "see me" at the bottom.

[John McKenna]

"Topalov does seem to utterly out of form and his sundry losses are consequently not tending to be very interesting." (MartinCarpenter)

Would it be both unkind and premature of me to suggest that he may have just passed his sell by date for further inclusion in the Fortnum & Masons and other such grand establishments of the chess world?