London Chess Classic - games only

[Ola Winfridsson]

Howell's thrown away a perfectly reasonable position. 29. Red3 was a blunder, and 30. Rxd6 just loses.

True, but they were both in quite a bit of time trouble, so these things are bound to happen.

[benedgell]

Short has a pretty clear edge against Adams now. Big blow for Adams' tournament hopes if he loses a second game with white.

[Paul Cooksey]

Howell's thrown away a perfectly reasonable position. 29. Red3 was a blunder, and 30. Rxd6 just loses.

True, but they were both in quite a bit of time trouble, so these things are bound to happen.

I'll take the opportunity to make a safe prediction - Howell - McShane will be decided in a crazy time scramble!

[Ola Winfridsson]

Howell's thrown away a perfectly reasonable position. 29. Red3 was a blunder, and 30. Rxd6 just loses.

Kramnik, Anand, Short all very critical of being in time trouble every game. Simply randomises your results.

Great minds think alike, hey Paul?

It does, but the problem is that it's a lot easier to say "don't get into time trouble" than actually getting rid of the problem. It requires a lot of mental training to become more disciplined on clock handling.

I even seem to remember that Kramnik himself was quite a bit of a time-trouble addict in the '90s (perhaps I'm confusing him with someone else).

[benedgell]

The Anand- Nakamura game has seen far too many mistakes for a game at this level, imo.

[Sebastian Stone]

Good to see Nigel get some pts, also McShane doing awesomely.

I'm not anti draw, but I imagine the low number of draws will be pleasing to people who care about such things.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Anand finally broke his run of draws, I see

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Carlsen is still making mischief in a position where most people would have shaken hands on a draw hours ago. 31. f4 is inspired.

Is there any analysis anywhere of that? I was trying to work out what happens if Black replies 31...Rxh6. I assume it starts 32.f5 and, then, er, something else happens after that! Carlsen looked quite bored while playing his moves towards the end. Almost as if he knew the position was drawn but also knew there were little tricks and he was waiting for some little slip.

Watching the Howell-McShane time scramble was painful. Howell had only seconds left when he resigned after Qg5+. I'm sure many in the audience were trying to work out what was going on, but were being left behind by the flurry of moves. The commentary team took the audience through lots of lines afterwards, which was good.

Watching that time scramble also meant missing the critical moment in Anand-Nakamura. By the time I started watching that game again, Anand's position already looked in ruins. I wonder what Gelfand is thinking if he is following these games? Anand still has Kramnik, Carlsen and Aronian to play, though he does have White in two of those games (Black against Aronian).

Had to leave before the Adams-Short game finished, but saw that the exchange had been sacrificed and that Short was already winning by that point. Am impressed with how Short has come back from those two losses. It doesn't get any easier for Adams, as he now has to play Kramnik with Black, Aronian with White, and Carlsen with Black, finishing with Nakamura in the final round (after a round 8 bye).

Looking at the overall standings, Kramnik and Aronian are well placed as they have that game in hand. Nakamura has only the English players left to play, which should be interesting. Don't think it is possible to predict who might win the tournament yet. Any of the current top five (Carlsen, McShane, Nakamura, Kramnik, Aronian) could still do that.

[Matthew Turner]

Chris,
After f4 the computers say that Kramnik could indeed take the pawn on h6. However, after Rxh6 f5 Rh5 Kd6 Black must be extremely careful. I think Kramnik came up with a very good response with Bd7

[Krishna Shiatis]

I think Ola and Paul get the title of 'forum oracles' for yesterday and also I think Matthew Turner, as he did get 3/4 the day before and that is rather good!

[Matthew Turner]

I'm going to get my predictions in very early for round 5.
Nakamura to beat Howell
Short to draw with Anand
Kramnik to beat Adams
Aronian - Carlsen, not sure about this one. All three results seems equally likely to me, so I'll sit on the fence and go for a draw.

I didn't make a note of Luke's odds at the start of the tournament, but I'm sure they are a lot less now. Does he have a chance of winning?

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

My predictions are slightly different to Matthew's:

Nakamura vs Howell - draw
Short vs Anand - win for Anand
Kramnik vs Adams - draw
Aronian vs Carlsen - win for Aronian

[Jonathan Rogers]

I'm going to get my predictions in very early for round 5.
Nakamura to beat Howell
Short to draw with Anand
Kramnik to beat Adams
Aronian - Carlsen, not sure about this one. All three results seems equally likely to me, so I'll sit on the fence and go for a draw.

I didn't make a note of Luke's odds at the start of the tournament, but I'm sure they are a lot less now. Does he have a chance of winning?

Surely so. Two Black wins will mean that he a good chance of winning any tiebreak. The "but" is that he now has two days off, and I doubt that this will help.

At the moment I would make Carlsen favourite, Naka second favourite and Luke third. Kramnik has "only" beaten Short but he hasn't much chance to do anything else. Aronian still has it all to do.

The chess has been entertaining but in terms of quality of chess, yesterday was something of a low. Apart from anything else, Adams and Short both seem to be suffering from anaemia when they play White - apparently playing for equality and struggling even to get that. Anand's case is harder to assess, since he is having to hide his "real" prep for the third Boris.

[Alex McFarlane]

Nick Pert has indicated he will be late in arriving.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Nick Pert has indicated he will be late in arriving.

Ah, the FIDE Open. Not much discussion of that yet.

Round 5 pairings:

http://www.livechess.co.uk/classic/2011 ... rings.html

No massive surprises (though there were some), and no GM clashes yet, I think.

Yesterday (round 4), Lorin D'Costa beat Mark Hebden in a R+B vs R ending. Let's get that out of the PGN files. Oh. How disappointing. The PGN file seems to be empty. Can anyone else manage to get that game score? It looks like they are not available yet. Probably being entered as we speak (er, type, you know what I mean).