Candidates Tournament 2013

[Clive Blackburn]

they say that commentary on playchess.com will be starting in about 45 mins

[Eoin Devane]

There's a live stream on http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1504 ... ts/1948241 that is linked to on the ChessCasting site.

What do people think of the ChessCasting presentation (http://candidates2013.worldchess.com/#t ... rings-view)? Personally I'm not so sure about the white/red colour scheme, but I do like the "Current advantage breakdown" bars, giving you evaluations of Material, King Safety, Pawn Strength, and Mobility. Also, the player profiles are quite a nice idea.

[JustinHorton]

Is Kramnik's opening the new Berlin Defence, then?

[JustinHadi]

Svidler looks like he was unprepared for the Semi-Tarrasch.

Is there a way of extracting the pgn from the live games on pgn4web?

[Matthew Turner]

I don't like the red colour scheme at all, but I am enjoying watching on the link paolo provided. I sense the audience might get four fighting games today.

[Eoin Devane]

Is there a way of extracting the pgn from the live games on pgn4web?

http://livegames.fide.com/london2013/live/games.pgn is a link to the pgn download.

[Roger de Coverly]

What do people think of the ChessCasting presentation (http://candidates2013.worldchess.com/#t ... rings-view)? Personally I'm not so sure about the white/red colour scheme, but I do like the "Current advantage breakdown" bars, giving you evaluations of Material, King Safety, Pawn Strength, and Mobility.

Agree with you on the red colour scheme. The advantage thing is presumably an experimental feature from whatever chess engine is running in the background. One thing missing is the facility to play through the game from the beginning or to go back to earlier positions.

A record of the current thinking time is a useful novelty.

[Eoin Devane]

One thing missing is the facility to play through the game from the beginning or to go back to earlier positions.

I just noticed this issue too. Prompted by Justin Horton's comment, I wanted to take a look at Kramnik's opening choice, but found it wouldn't let me.

[JustinHadi]

Thanks Eoin.

[Roger de Coverly]

Svidler looks like he was unprepared for the Semi-Tarrasch.

I'm not sure. The game actually started (or transposed) 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 d5. Kramnik now went 4 exd5 and now 4. .. Nxd5, so with 5. e4, it's a bit Grunfeld like. It goes to show that one should know "Ideas behind the Openings" even at low move numbers as I would have expected 4. .. exd5 to be automatic. A bit of research showed that it's a line that can be played, not least by Fischer in the early 1960s.

The current structure has White with pawns on the a file and then e to h. Black has the queen side majority with a and b pawns and the king side minority with f g and h. It's still quite like a Grunfeld, but a Grunfeld structure would likely have a d pawn as the central majority.

(edit) It is of course Svidler with White and Kramnik with Black playing the Grunfeld lookalike. There was a parallel game in the European Club Cup last October which Kramnik varied from with 11. .. Be7 .(/edit)

[Jonathan Bryant]

Is Kramnik's opening the new Berlin Defence, then?

3 ... Nxd5 was a *big* surprise for me.

I used to play this myself before I took up the Dutch. Got a series of good results with it - albeit via some shocking positions. Then I got tanked once after White played an early a3 and I gave it up as a bad job.

I suspect Kramnik's preparation a little deeper than mine, though.

[Carl Hibbard]

Live coverage FAIL, why do they ever not ask someone ( like me ) who actually knows what they are doing?

[Adam Raoof]

There's a live stream on http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1504 ... ts/1948241 that is linked to on the ChessCasting site.

What do people think of the ChessCasting presentation (http://candidates2013.worldchess.com/#t ... rings-view)? Personally I'm not so sure about the white/red colour scheme, but I do like the "Current advantage breakdown" bars, giving you evaluations of Material, King Safety, Pawn Strength, and Mobility. Also, the player profiles are quite a nice idea.

It's easier on the eye to use Google Chrome and use Paolo's pgn4web flexible extension - http://pgn4web.casaschi.net/home.html

[Paolo Casaschi]

Svidler looks like he was unprepared for the Semi-Tarrasch.

Is there a way of extracting the pgn from the live games on pgn4web?

Click on square D8 and a popup window will show the full PGN.
Click on square C8 and a popup window will show the PGN of the shown game.

[Eoin Devane]

Live commentary with Malcolm Pein and Lawrence Trent has just started on http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1504 ... ts/1948241.