London Chess Classic - games only

[JustinHorton]

Well we do have Mr Carlsen to give us some sort of guidance...

[John Moore]

Nice to talk about chess though as opposed to the muppetry going on elsewhere.

[JustinHorton]

Do you follow football John?

[Matthew Turner]

I think David is struggling a bit (after 17. Ne4) Be7 seems to run into the very annoying Bc4

[Matthew Turner]

18. f5 seems an odd choice from Carlsen. Qh5 seemed much more thematic

[John Moore]

Briefly Justin, I am a spurs supporter

[JustinHorton]

Briefly Justin, I am a spurs supporter

Uh huh. Oxford United, myself. Anyway, the reason I mention it is that I'm sometimes reminded, when chess debate gets on to all sorts of subjects besides chess, of what happened in football years ago: there was so much other stuff going on - hooliganism, racist chanting, collapsing stadiums, dodgy chairmen, controversial policing, ID cards, all sorts of things - that you'd be talking with your football-going friends and you'd find yourself talking, much of the time, about anything but football, or so it sometimes seemed. And you had to, because all this stuff was important. But it was a complete pain in lots of ways, even if you were interested in all these issues in normal circumstances - which I was - because basically you didn't go to football for that stuff, you went to football to see if a bunch of blokes could kick a pig's bladder into a fishing net.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Well, 19 Qh5 now - probably is stronger this way, in fact.

Arsenal, in case you wanted to ask.

[John Moore]

Reminds me of when I got headbutted by an Arsenal supporter years ago. 5 minutes later he came and picked me upand asked if I was OK. Oxford were much tougher then

[Mick Norris]

Adams v Anand is the first to have sprung into life. Anand's 16...d5 would have been prepared and I suppose the task is to assess the possibilities after 17 exd5 Bb4 18 d6

If there is anyone out there who uses computers, give us the main line and tell us which program you are using (it won't mean much to me but it probably will to others)

On Chessbomb, the computer evaluation is 0 i.e. dead equal - Houdini 2.0 x64, 30.35 sec, depth 19

The line given is 18...Bxc3, bxc3 Qd7, Qe3 Rfe8, Nb3 Nd5, Rxd5 Bxd5, Qd2 Bxg2, Kxg2 Re6, Bc7 Rg6+, Kf1 Qh3+, Ke2 Qh5+, Kf1 Qh3+, Ke2

[Jonathan Rogers]

Thanks!

[benedgell]

Adams- Anand drawn, so I'm 1/2 with my predictions. Looks like McShane's getting a very decent draw, but Carlsen's winning against Howell.

[benedgell]

According to ChessBomb/ Houdini Carlsen's 39th move was a bit of a blunder that lost a lot of his advantage, and the position Howell resigned in wasn't clearly lost.

[benedgell]

Listening to the analysis between Carlsen and Howell, David assumed there was a mate with 3 seconds left for his 40th move, and sounds gutted to have misjudged the position.

[benedgell]

My predictions for today: Howell, Nakamura and Short's games to end drawn, and Carlsen to win.