Sinquefield Cup

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JustinHorton
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by JustinHorton » Mon Aug 27, 2018 8:04 pm

Not sure that defending a pawn weakness all night against Carlsen would be my idea of a good time
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Nick Burrows
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Nick Burrows » Mon Aug 27, 2018 8:39 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Mon Aug 27, 2018 8:04 pm
Not sure that defending a pawn weakness all night against Carlsen would be my idea of a good time
Perhaps prepared by his computer dependant second?

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JustinHorton
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by JustinHorton » Mon Aug 27, 2018 9:13 pm

Caruana draws, so the four players in joint second all know a win gets them into a play-off
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JustinHorton
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by JustinHorton » Mon Aug 27, 2018 9:27 pm

I strongly suspect Nakamura missed 25 Bxh6, or at least its strength.

Grischuk is playing some imaginative chess, but as per usual taking a long time to do it.

Anand very smooth so far, the sort of game that (if he wins it) you can imagine Irving Chernev annotating.
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JustinHorton
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by JustinHorton » Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:33 pm

Aronian wins, an absolute tragedy for Grischuk who was winning himself earlier.
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IM Jack Rudd
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by IM Jack Rudd » Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:38 pm

18.Rxf7 was one of those moves that is objectively pretty bad, but given the tournament and clock situations, it was probably worth doing.

LawrenceCooper
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by LawrenceCooper » Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:45 pm

IM Jack Rudd wrote:
Mon Aug 27, 2018 10:38 pm
18.Rxf7 was one of those moves that is objectively pretty bad, but given the tournament and clock situations, it was probably worth doing.
A move that was played instantly too.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:01 am

Its 1AM here and Magnus/MVL are still pressing (probably successfully) for wins!
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Keith Arkell
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Keith Arkell » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:16 am

Beautiful grind by Magnus - what a pleasure to watch such a game live!

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Christopher Kreuzer
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:25 am

Keith Arkell wrote:
Tue Aug 28, 2018 1:16 am
Beautiful grind by Magnus - what a pleasure to watch such a game live!
But what possessed Nakamura to play 62...g5 and 66...a5?

The Aronian-Grischuk game was far more entertaining! :mrgreen:

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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by JustinHorton » Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:56 am

Chess.com report spells David Sedgwick's name wrong
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LawrenceCooper
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by LawrenceCooper » Tue Aug 28, 2018 7:15 am

JustinHorton wrote:
Tue Aug 28, 2018 5:56 am
Chess.com report spells David Sedgwick's name wrong
No play-off for the title then but Caruana & So to play-off for the final GCT place in London.

Carlsen beating Nakamura also ensured that Nakamura finished top of the GCT points table as Aronian picked up 15 points not 18 :shock:

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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Alex Holowczak » Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:30 am

Overall, as a spectator, I thought yesterday was a bad day at the end of a bad tournament PR-wise.

I started watching the English language commentary on YouTube, and all I saw were comments about #freeagadmator. After a bit of research, it appears that the St. Louis Chess Club sent this to him: https://twitter.com/agadmator/status/10 ... 5152007168

I'm not qualified to comment on the legal rights or wrongs of the situation, but that sort of email was always going to generate bad PR if it became public knowledge, which it was going to. As a result, the video for yesterday's commentary generated 1K likes and 1.2K dislikes, compared with about 700 v 100 the round before. Nearly all of the YouTube comments are related to this issue, and hardly any of them during the live stream were about the chess. As a result, the channel's chat moderator(s) spent most of their day deleting the comments and questions people were asking, and at one point making a plea to comment on the chess games. It was difficult to ignore the kerfuffle while trying to watch the video.

For context, agadmator has over 240,000 YouTube subscribers - more than the St. Louis Chess Club channel by about 70,000 - and his videos tend to be post-mortems on games; this week, they have been mostly Sinquefield Cup games. As a result of the kerfuffle, St. Louis hasn't gained many subscribers in the last 24 hours; compared with gaining a steady 300-500 per day during the rest of the Sinquefield Cup. Agadmator gained over 1300 subscribers yesterday, which is more than at any point during the past fortnight.

I enjoyed the commentary as usual, and went to sleep expecting a Caruana v Aronian playoff this evening, and was surprised to see Carlsen won his game when I was eating my cornflakes. Knowing that this would result in a coin toss, I thought this would be quite dramatic and exciting, so I went to the relevant social media page(s) to find ... the playoff had been scrapped.
Alex Holowczak wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 4:15 pm
David Sedgwick wrote:
Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:49 pm
If there is a tie for one or more of the first four places, playoffs will be held.
In my opinion, it would have been better and simpler to have a countback system in the event of a tie on GCT points. They use that in a number of sports where there are a series of events that earn points towards an end-of-season points tally. Formula One was the example that immediately came to my mind; although there has never actually been a tie for the Championship.
I didn't realise at the time I wrote this that one of the benefits of using a countback system would have been that ultimately, Caruana might have been willing to agree to a playoff today for the Sinquefield Cup given he would have had no other commitments.

I have a lot of sympathy with those who had to write the regulations. When 37 out of 45 games in a tournament are drawn, you run out of tiebreaks very quickly. When 5.5/9 is good enough for 1st=, it's not really surprising that you would have to revert to drawing lots. Football had to draw lots pre-penalty shootouts; the 1968 European Championships where Italy beat the Soviet Union in the Semi Finals on a coin toss spring to mind. But the coin toss happened, they didn't mutually agree to some other format of concluding the match. I shouldn't really, but I feel robbed of a chance of seeing a playoff that the regulations say should be taking place, particularly given that much of the hype during the Round 9 commentary was about the potential for it to happen; they even mentioned this exact scenario where a coin toss might be necessary.

This comes at the end of a tournament where a lot of the commentary throughout the chess media has been about the high number of draws, irrespective of the quality of chess that led to them. It's not clear to me what anyone can do about that.

I thoroughly enjoyed the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz, but I can't say I enjoyed the Sinquefield Cup.
Last edited by Alex Holowczak on Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tim Harding
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Tim Harding » Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:52 am

Was Christopher Kreuzer's question ("But what possessed Nakamura to play 62...g5 and 66...a5?") answered by Lawrence Cooper?
Can it really be that it dawned on Naka at move 62 that he would be better off losing the game? Surely not!?

66...a5 is irrelevant as he was probably losing the pawn anyway to some zugzwang, but 55...Qf7 allowing Magnus to trade queens was the first unforced error, though it didn't change the objective evaluation I expect.

If Alex had been watching the Sinquefield Cup on chess24 he would not have been distracted by all this fuss about this agadmator guy I have never heard of and couldn't care less about.

Agreed, I too feel cheated of the play-off involving Magnus, but I guess the Caruana-So tiebreak match is what Wesley was hoping for when he played so tamely last night.

Also, further to my remarks last night, MVL and Vishy managed to draw every game they played in the tournament. Maybe the days of inviting Vishy to the GCT will be over, as presumably Magnus will play next year whether he retains the crown or not. Or perhaps there is no future for the GCT, except maybe as a rapid/blitz series only.
The Sinquefield Cup was better in the 2014 format.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Sinquefield Cup

Post by Roger de Coverly » Tue Aug 28, 2018 10:15 am

Alex Holowczak wrote:
Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:30 am
After a bit of research, it appears that the St. Louis Chess Club sent this to him
It appears St Louis had a touch of the Agon's about the guy's coverage.

Agon and FIDE's assertion of six billion chess players is total nonsense, the market for on line chess video is not so large that existing providers can afford to squabble.

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