2016 Candidates Moscow 10-29 March

[JustinHorton]

Anand resigns

[Martin Benjamin]

Just saw the press conference with Caruana and Anand. Is there any point to these without good questioning from the interviewer? Vishy managed to get through it without being asked a question and without making a single comment!

[JustinHorton]

Another deficiency of the presentation on the official site: it looks like it's Black who's won when it is in fact White.

[Roger de Coverly]

Agon particularly when Andrew Paulson was in charge wanted to reinvent lots of wheels.

I would have said the established methods of presenting positions would have been

either
Black Player 0
diagram
While Player 1
or
diagram
White Player 1-0 Black Player

[LawrenceCooper]

Just saw the press conference with Caruana and Anand. Is there any point to these without good questioning from the interviewer? Vishy managed to get through it without being asked a question and without making a single comment!

If nothing else I thought that he might have been asked if he had anything to add to what Fabiano had said. The impression I got was that it was all one way traffic from the early middle game.

[Paolo Casaschi]

Agon particularly when Andrew Paulson was in charge wanted to reinvent lots of wheels.

I would have said the established methods of presenting positions would have been

either
Black Player 0
diagram
While Player 1
or
diagram
White Player 1-0 Black Player

If you compare different presentation systems on websites, you'll find there's not really any established method; everyone places the players' names in different places.

On printed material you see more often than not something like this at the beginning of an annotated game, with/without a result but not necessarily close to a diagram:
White Player
Black Player

The first forms you suggest makes some sense, but only if the diagram is shown with White on bottom; if the presentation system allows for flipping the diagram then it might get confusing.

You get such a variety of options that often, in order to avoid confusion, you get a small white/black square/circle next to the players' names.

[Chris Rice]

Topalov looks to be in prime position to torture Aronian for a couple of hours.

[JustinHorton]

You sure about that?

[Chris Rice]

You aren't?

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Well, it looks like Aronian has a bad bishop, but there are presumably some specific features of this position that make it easy to defend (or hard for Topalov to take advantage of). You generally need two weaknesses to attack to break through in this sort of position (and a timely b5 by White gets rid of one of the weaknesses). If the queens come off, it might be much better for Black, but with them on, presumably there is enough to draw.

(I'd prefer to be Black, no question.)

[JustinHorton]

You aren't?

I agree Aronian's maybe had problems adjusting after he let his advantage slip. Still, should a player of his standard really be struggling here?

[Chris Rice]

Agreed, probably going to be a draw but Topalov might as well have a go.

[Chris Rice]

Besides, always a chance Aronian might touch his king by mistake.

[JustinHorton]

Or that he might decide to channel his inner-1900 player, who seems to be dictating strategy at the moment

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Still, Chessbase shouldn't really be saying, as they do here:

http://en.chessbase.com/post/candidates ... joins-lead

Standings after ten rounds (assuming Aronian-Topalov is a draw)

That's a bit cheeky.