2018 World Championship in London

[JustinHorton]

Chess, like cricket, is a game of quirks

[chrisbeckett]

Exactly, suggesting that one stalemate is fine to be a draw whereas another is "ludicrous" and should be rebranded as a win is, to me at least, undermining the complexity of the game and the skill of the defending side. I seem to remember one of the Polgar sisters (Susan, I think) ingeniously escaping with a draw against Murray Chandler by tricking him into capturing her knight and ending up with two rook's pawns and the wrong-coloured bishop.

[Joshua Gibbs]

Exactly, suggesting that one stalemate is fine to be a draw whereas another is "ludicrous" and should be rebranded as a win is, to me at least, undermining the complexity of the game and the skill of the defending side. I seem to remember one of the Polgar sisters (Susan, I think) ingeniously escaping with a draw against Murray Chandler by tricking him into capturing her knight and ending up with two rook's pawns and the wrong-coloured bishop.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1095736

[John McKenna]

Ideally stalemate and checkmate should never be allowed to happen under any circumstances.

Woe, woe and thrice woe unto those who do allow it.

"If Nigel's auntie had balls" (see above).

In today's world such a thing is not one of three impossible thimgs to think up before breakfast, so a better measure of improbability is required.

This WC is running in parallel, for a mercifully fixed time, to the current episode - The End is Nigh for the May Queen - of the long-running serial Game of Moaners & Groaners.

Jester Jeremy has, for the nth time, had the temerity to highlight the gaping holes in Queen M's increasingly tattered raiment.

The Palace guards continue to desert... that old mole Gove has gone to ground... other unfavourable portents and omens have been observed...

But never mind all that, eh.
M & C will play another game today.

[Joshua Gibbs]

Joshua Gibbs >does anyone know why Tony Miles dubbed triple pawns the Irish pawn centre?<

It is a politically incorrect joke, that would probably be felt too offensive today. Tripled pawns, of course, help nobody's centre.

thanks

[David Robertson]

suggesting that one stalemate is fine to be a draw whereas another is "ludicrous"...is undermining the complexity of the game and the skill of the defending side....one of the Polgar sisters (Susan, I think) ingeniously escaping with a draw against Murray Chandler by tricking him into capturing her knight and ending up with two rook's pawns and the wrong-coloured bishop

Polgar's 'trick' wasn't "ingenious", it was desperate. Chandler blundered grossly in a trivially won position - he had nine obvious alternative moves that led to a win. The 'trick' required no skill. It merely required a presence of mind to exploit the ludicrous quirk

[Pete Morriss]

Joshua Gibbs >does anyone know why Tony Miles dubbed triple pawns the Irish pawn centre?<

It is a politically incorrect joke, that would probably be felt too offensive today. Tripled pawns, of course, help nobody's centre.

That is not quite correct. The term originated more or less as Lawrence Cooper quoted earlier, coined by Tony Miles to describe Eamon Keogh's tripled pawns in his game against Francisco Javier Sanz Alonso in the Amsterdam Zonal (which was drawn); in the following round Miles played Keogh, and Miles' final (winning) move also created triple pawns. Doubtless some people would use the term to be offensive, but when I asked Eamon about this a few years ago he was adamant that Tony Miles had no such intention - he was merely drawing attention to the coincidence. In some positions, I gather, tripled pawns can be useful in the short term in controlling vital squares.

[Stewart Reuben]

I have suggested to Nigel that we combine the two bees, one in each of our bonnets.
His that stalemating your opponent should win.
Mine, that White has too big an advantage, By the way, he says white scores 55%. With his stalemate rule, I believe it would be at least 60%. This would be proveable using a computer. Programmed to play perhaps 100,000 games against themselves: (a) with the stalemate rule (b) without.

The new Reuben rule would be; Black scores 1 point and White 0 if he achieves the stalemate.
White score 0.7 point and Black 0.3 if he achieves the stalemate. The actual fraction could be chosen.

Chris Rice quoting Nigel >If stalemate were a win for the stalemater, which was the entirely logical rule for the first several hundred years of chess, then Magnus Carlsen would be one point up already (after game 3) and people would be complaining much less about draws."<

Of course this is nonsense. The game would have been played in a different manner.

My favourite stalemate variation.
White Ka1, Bc1, Pb2 Pd2. Black K anywhere, B any white square, two of them if you prefer, Pb3 d3. White is confined to two squares. Black can reach 56. Yet it is is a draw.

[Mick Norris]

It's at least thinkable - though it ranks below ending climate change, Trump & our terrible Government as a call on my time

Very impressed if you can manage all 3 of those

[chrisbeckett]

suggesting that one stalemate is fine to be a draw whereas another is "ludicrous"...is undermining the complexity of the game and the skill of the defending side....one of the Polgar sisters (Susan, I think) ingeniously escaping with a draw against Murray Chandler by tricking him into capturing her knight and ending up with two rook's pawns and the wrong-coloured bishop

Polgar's 'trick' wasn't "ingenious", it was desperate. Chandler blundered grossly in a trivially won position - he had nine obvious alternative moves that led to a win. The 'trick' required no skill. It merely required a presence of mind to exploit the ludicrous quirk

Of course Chandler could and should have won. But if you don't think there was any skill involved in luring him into the blunder then to me that's completely ignoring the human element of the game. Also, in the Caruana-Carlsen game 3,I'd say it was Caruana's skill, calculation etc that earned him the draw rather than what you seem to view as a quirk of geometry.

[Roger de Coverly]

Today's opening - a Wing Gambit of sorts.

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g6 4. O-O Bg7 5. Re1 e5 6. b4 Nxb4 7. Bb2 a6 8. a3 axb5 9. axb4 Rxa1 10. Bxa1 d6 11. bxc5 Ne7 12. Qe2 b4 13. Qc4 Qa5 *

It appears to have been already a known idea in the 1960s, although I only have Adam Ashton on record of English players trying it in British events. His opponents played 6. .. cxd4 after which he played 7 . a3 .

[John McKenna]

Hi Stewart,

I will not buy a ticket, todays game has sealed that so I will spend £80+ in the chess shop.

I'll also buy a single wooden Black Pawn and rush up breathless to the door saying let me in,
They have lost a pawn I am here to replace it.

Or... Kaspersky are the FIDE computer guys so I could use their logo to knock up a really fancy doo-dah
badge and just stroll in under the guise of an IT guy. (I'll wear a Spice Girls tee-shirt to look the part .)

---

Think Caruana is setting Carlsen up for a gambit. Expect to see 6.b4 here

r1bqk1nr/pp1p1pbp/2n3p1/1Bp1p3/1P2P3/5N2/P1PP1PPP/RNBQR1K1 b kq - 0 6

Game 5 is his last White before Carlsen has back to back White's. Time to go for it.

Would you credit it?

Well, credit where credit's due.

I hope Geoff got his money's worth at the shop and I think he should get a VIP (Very Important Pawn) ticket for today, too.

[Simon Brown]

True. If he bet that Black's king would be on c3 by move 26 he'd have cleaned up as well.

[Chris Rice]

Grischuk with some deep insight into a SuperGM's thinking process:

Sopiko: But [Fabiano] takes a lot of time. What is the thinking process?
Grischuk: For me it's very easy to understand such a thought process "I don't like Bc3, Kc7 I don't like, s**t, why have I got this position? & some thoughts completely unrelated to chess. That's my career.

btw Ian Rogers says the opening line in Game 5 was covered in the 1984 Batsford book 'The Anti-Sicilian 3.Bb5' by Razuvayev and Matsukevich, considering Black's position satisfactory after 11...Ne7.

[David Robertson]

It's at least thinkable - though it ranks below ending climate change, Trump & our terrible Government as a call on my time

Very impressed if you can manage all 3 of those

Made good progress on the last one today