London Chess Classic - games only

[John Moore]

Nigel does play all sorts of interesting ideas in the e4 e5 lines. I wish he wouldn't do this self indulgent thing of playing on until mate, though.

[Krishna Shiatis]

Nigel is the 'King of the unexpected'....Luke is pacing a little....looks like a good battle going on there.

[Krishna Shiatis]

Both David and Luke have same amount of time; David has played more moves - he is on move 18 and Luke on 12ish...

[JustinHorton]

Oooh, has Nigel lost a piece there, or sacrificed it?

[Mike Truran]

The tournament seems to be going horribly wrong for all but one of the English players.

[Joey Stewart]

Still, it will be nice to have a third 2700 amongst the English ranks, since Luke is almost certain to reach that milestone sometime in the near future. I wonder who will be next after him, though - will Gawain Jones continue his impresive rise to the heights, or will David Howell manage to shake off his run of bad form and be the superstar we always expected him to be?

[IM Jack Rudd]

Feel the Arkelling!

‎[Event "London Chess Classic"][Site "Olympia Conference Centre"][Date "2011.12.10"][Round "8.28"][White "Rudd, Jack"][Black "O'Toole, George"][Result "1-0"]1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.Nf3 g6 5.Qc2 bxc4 6.e4 d6 7.Bxc4 Bg7 8.Nc3 Nfd7 9.Bf4 Ba...6 10.Nd2 Nb6 11.Bxa6 Nxa6 12.a3 O-O 13.h4 c4 14.Be3 Rc8 15.h5 Nc5 16.hxg6 Nd3+ 17.Ke2 fxg6 18.Nf3 Qd7 19.Rh4 Bf6 20.Rh3 e6 21.a4 exd5 22.a5 dxe4 23.axb6 exf3+ 24.Rxf3 axb6 25.Nd5 Qe6 26.Nxb6 Ne5 27.Rxf6 Qxf6 28.Nxc8 Rxc8 29.Qe4 Qe6 30.Ra7 Re8 31.Qb7 Nf7 32.Kd2 d5 33.Qd7 Qxd7 34.Rxd7 Rd8 35.Rc7 Nd6 36.f3 Nf5 37.Bg5 Rb8 38.Bf6 Rb6 39.Be5 Re6 40.f4 Re7 41.Rc8+ Kf7 42.Rd8 Ke6 43.g4 Nh6 44.Rd6+ Kf7 45.g5 Ng4 46.Rxd5 Nxe5 47.Rxe5 Rb7 48.Kc2 Rb3 49.Re4 Rb4 50.Re2 Rb3 51.Rh2 Kg7 52.Rd2 Kf7 53.Rd7+ Kg8 54.Rc7 Rb4 55.Ra7 Kh8 56.Ra2 Kg7 57.Kc3 Rb3+ 58.Kxc4 Rf3 59.Ra7+ Kg8 60.Rd7 Rxf4+ 61.Kc5 Rg4 62.Rd5 Kf7 63. b4 Ke6 64.b5 Rg1 65.Kc6 Rb1 66.Rc5 1-0

[Joey Stewart]

The endgame was very arkell'esque but the middlegame seemed a little too lively to me, almost like black had some chances but failed to apply the appropriate technique to win...

[Keith Arkell]

Haha, well the real me has to deal with top board v the top seed in the last round to decide the spoils...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Nigel does play all sorts of interesting ideas in the e4 e5 lines. I wish he wouldn't do this self indulgent thing of playing on until mate, though.

I dunno. It wasn't until mate this time (and in one of those games, Short was the one delivering mate!), but I did enjoy seeing Luke play the best moves as I was watching on the screen in the lobby and not quite playing the position as well as he was! He kept pushing pawns when I'd have played other moves. I did predict all the results, but that wasn't exactly difficult today given the rating and form disparities. I should have been preparing to play chess myself rather than following this tournament, as in the first three rounds of the weekender I entered I was better in all three games but lost two and drew one (which I could easily have lost as well). Just wasn't able to concentrate, and atrocious clock handling.

Anyway, looking at the pairings for the last two rounds, it still looks like Nakamura's to win, as he is quite capable of beating both Short and Adams (in that order), with White. Where it will get interesting is if Nakamura draws or loses one of those games. McShane came close to downing Carlsen, and he is very capable of drawing both his games (both with White) against Kramnik and Anand (again, in that order). It would be a real coup (and unexpected) if he won one or both those games against a former and current world champion, but I'll be rooting for him all the way in both games.

Of the three leaders and the fourth player settled in just behind them (the winner will be one of these four), only two of them play each other in the final two rounds: McShane-Kramnik today. On that topic, when Kramnik was commentating in an earlier round, I think he responded to one of the "world's strongest amateur" comments about McShane with something along the lines of saying that McShane is a very strong player regardless of whether he is playing professionally or not, which is very true. Will be interesting to see what opening is played today. Kramnik's last round game is against Aronian, and the result there may depend on what result Kramnik needs to play for.

Carlsen plays Short in the final round, but before that he has the little matter of a game against Anand, and Carlsen has Black. Again, will be interesting to see what Carlsen comes up with, as a draw here won't be the end of his chances, but a win would make him massive favourite to win the tournament.

I'm going to predict for round 8:

Carlsen (with Black) to beat Anand
Howell (with White) to draw with Aronian
McShane (with White) to draw with Kramnik
Short (with Black) to beat Nakamura

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Haha, well the real me has to deal with top board v the top seed in the last round to decide the spoils...

Good luck!

I'm trying to find out whether I even have a game. With only 0.5/3 and others possibly taking byes, there might be an odd number of players and someone given a bye. No pairings online though:

"Weekender 'B' U170
Pairings and Results for this event will appear on this page.
Bookmark it now with CTRL+D."

http://www.livechess.co.uk/classic/2011 ... index.html

[Krishna Shiatis]

Good luck to Keith and Christopher! - will be looking out for you....

[Carl Hibbard]

An alternate presentation of the live games is here, if it works that is:

http://rs8.blueapricot.com/pgn4web/live ... iewer.html

[Jonathan Rogers]

What predictions did we have for today?

I am afraid I don't see much compensation for Luke. I don't see much going for Naka either though - it is odd how top players sometimes seem to play the English with "nothing much in mind", perhaps especially against Short! (cf his game v Movsesian recently). A Kramnik win and Naka draw would put Kramnik in sole first - but probably still needing to beat Aronian tomorrow.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Now looking a bit deeper and am becoming happier with Luke's position ... and Qh5 (rather than Qxf4) certainly makes a difference