| Grand Slam Chess Final (2011) |
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The 4th Grand Slam Chess Final was held in São Paulo, Brazil 26 September - 1 October (1st half) and Bilbao, Spain 6-11 October 2011 (2nd half). The tournament used the Sofia Rules, which forbids agreed draws before 30 moves, and the "Bilbao" scoring system of 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss (though for ratings purposes the traditional scoring method is used). (1) The organisers used the now familiar soundproofed glass box, the "Aquarium", to allow the spectators to get closer to the players. (2) Crosstable: 01 02 03 04 05 06
1 Carlsen ** 11 ½½ ½½ ½½ 01 6 15
2 Ivanchuk 00 ** ½1 1½ 1½ 10 5½ 15
3 Nakamura ½½ ½0 ** ½1 ½½ 10 5 12
4 Aronian ½½ 0½ ½0 ** ½1 1½ 5 12
5 Anand ½½ 0½ ½½ ½0 ** 11 5 12
6 Vallejo Pons 10 01 01 0½ 00 ** 3½ 10
Carlsen won the event after the tiebreak games Carlsen vs Ivanchuk, 2011 (1/2) and Ivanchuk vs Carlsen, 2011 (0-1).Previous edition: Grand Slam Chess Final (2010). Next: Grand Slam Chess Final (2012) (1) Wikipedia article: Bilbao Chess Masters Final, (2) https://images.chesscomfiles.com/pr...
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| Oct-12-11 | | visayanbraindoctor: Even without tie-breaks, Carlsen should be declared winner. His real score was better than Ivanchuk's. IMO there is something fundamentally wrong in using the Bilbao system to determine the standings. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | anandrulez: I agree, Carlsen deserves to be the winner he because he defeated his main competitor 2-0 . Ivanchuk is now having a Carlsen 'jinx' at the moment . |
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| Oct-12-11 | | anandrulez: Anand had a very average tourney , despite ending up joint second in the final standings . He lost around 5 of rating points too .Where is the next super tournament ?Looking forward to better performances from Vishy in the future . |
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| Oct-12-11 | | rogge: <ending up joint second> I thought Ivanchuk finished second? Anand ended up joint third (or joint fifth) if you like ;) |
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| Oct-12-11 | | Shams: <Anand ended up joint third (or joint fifth) if you like ;)> Well, these are not the same thing. Joint third means exactly two players outperformed you; joint fifth means exactly four did. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | rogge: Or the other way round. 6 players, when finishing ahead of only one -> fifth place.
But I was only kidding, of course. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | Shams: <rogge> I'm reminded of a silly cold war joke about a race between Soviet and USA planes, won by the Americans. The next day's <Pravda> headline: "Soviet pilot is runner-up; USA finishes next to last." |
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| Oct-12-11 | | rogge: Hehe, yeah. Is the glass half empty or half full? I guess the correct way to put it is shared 3rd - 5th. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | WiseWizard: In about 10-15 years having the Black pieces will be an advantage over White. The seeds are already sprouting. |
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Oct-12-11
 | | piltdown man: What a brilliant result. I'd written Magnus off at about the halfway mark - thought he had no chance. But his amazing fighting spirit has shown through once again. Unbelievable! |
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Oct-12-11
 | | alexmagnus: Of 30 games only 14 draws. How often do you see a draw rate below 50% in a tournament at this level? :) |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: <if I recall correctly GM Shipov said before this game that Nepomniachtchi will be difficult opponent for Carlsen due to his favorable score> akavall, i would be careful of taking two carlsen losses in corus 2011 (a very uneven event seen from carlsen's pov) as evidence that he'll struggle with nepo and giri. with giri we don't know yet, but i've got problems seeing nepo becoming a serious wc contender even if he's continued to make small but steady progress over the past few years. everett mentioned player types like topalov and morozevich as the ones that might cause carlsen problems. it's interesting then to consider how carlsen has scored very well against both, starting all the way back in 2006-2007 when carlsen was clearly not near his current strength. +3 -0 =6 against morozevich
+7 -3 =4 against topalov
in total, +7 in only 23 games. that's a huge 65% score against players of moro's and topalov's quality and strength. btw, the score at the end of 2008 was 3 wins each for carlsen and topalov. in 2009 and 2010 they faced each other in 3 double round robins and carlsen went +4 -0 =2 in those 6 games. (compare that to the very even anand-topalov match, for instance.) in 2011 they only played in amber and carlsen won the rapid game in 29 moves. morozevich has "improved" his score against carlsen, in the sense that he hasn't lost a classical game to carlsen since 2007 (the 4 games played in 2009 and 2011 were all draws). but he's <never> beaten carlsen in other formats than blitz and blindfold, i.e. neither in rapid nor classical. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: <Where is the next super tournament ?> anand plays with all the other hot-shots in tal memorial, which has an incredible field: all the players from bilbao minus vallejo, plus those qualifiers who declined to play in bilbao = kramnik + karjakin, plus the wc finalist gelfand, the current russian champion svidler and the still improving nepomniachtchi, whom carlsen probably wants to beat eventually. :o) [funny how strong players come in batches: the years 1983, 1987 and 1990 were golden ones ...] |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: < the current russian champion svidler > sorry: also wcc winner and candidate svidler.
in fact, 6 of 7 "known" players in the next candidate tournament are present. only grischuk and the unknown "wild card" are missing (whether anand or gelfand is the 6th "known" player we do not know, but they're both there...) |
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| Oct-12-11 | | TheVillageIdiot: <cuppajoe: It's almost a tradition to call chess players by diminutives (Mikhail Tal = Misha, Vladimir Kramnik = Volodya, Vishwanathan Anand = Vishy, Robert Fischer = Bobby, etc.)> Isn't Kramniks diminutive Drawnik. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | The Rocket: Mentioning Morozevich in the context of challenging Carlsen is almost to the point that you wonder if they have any idea what they are talking about. Morozevich is not even an joker.... He is out of the discussion. A totally irrelevant player in todays top level chess. Partly because of how he plays and also because he is not nearly strong enough. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | rogge: I think Grischuk would agree. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | kia0708: Ivanchuk wasted a huge lead :-(
First he goes up like a rocket and then
falls down with even higher speed.
He will never ever be a world champ. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: <Mentioning Morozevich in the context of challenging Carlsen is almost to the point that you wonder if they have any idea what they are talking about.> i think everett's point was about playing <style> more than moro and topalov - the players - being potential challenges for carlsen. <my> point was that carlsen has indeed done very well against these (concrete) players having this particular style, so i'm not really sure if he's got a good point. in a way i feel that the "styles" of aronian, anand and kramnik all represent the biggest challenge to carlsen. the foundation for (the current version of) all of them is a basically sound, solid approach with a high-level end game. maybe aronian's game is the most flexible and universal of the three: he's got a very fine eye for initiative, he's seemingly got a very good team at home to prepare novelties and new ideas (re the opening idea/pawn sac against anand), and he's a very tough defender (re how he held two difficult endings against carlsen here). in short, in order to challenge carlsen, over time, you simply have to be a very complete, consistent player. all the current top 4 players must be described as such, and usually it takes a lot of time/practice/experience to get to that level of completeness. overall, i think the level among the top 10-15 players in the world is incredible these days. hence, i think it's a shame that they have to play ultra-complex chess under time controls like 90 0 - to me it represents an element of disrespect to the chess elite and the royal game. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | visayanbraindoctor: <the level among the top 10-15 players in the world is incredible these days.> True frogbert, but the 1990s IMO was the strongest decade in chess history. Anand, Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Gelfand, Svidler, Topalov.. were younger, hungrier, and on the rise. Karpov was on the decline but still close to his prime. Kasparov was still in his prime. Chess history never had such a strong bunch of top players before or since. I guess you will argue that today's decade is the strongest, and that Carlsen being top rated is the strongest player in history? Before we get to that debate, I would like to see Carlsen first beat the reigning World Champion in a WC match. I would pass a debate on this if you don't mind. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | znsprdx: All this discussion about relative player strengths should be posted in Cafe Kibitzer. <Chessgames> makes no attempt to edit the tournament sites and send this stuff where it belongs. I guess they have put me on 'ignore' oooo-scary I give up - I can't lick it so I might as well join in - here is my two cents worth... <@scormus "Fischer at his prime outperformed his peers to a greater extent than any player since, but does that mean anything?"> ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING - it is probably the only meaningful basis for comparison as stated by <nimh: "Fischer's level of play in both his 6-0 matches would be adequate to perform consistently 2800+ ...even in today's elite tournaments"> - the retrograde computer analysis of hundreds of games to establish some kind of statistical profile could still be subject to criticism - after all we don't know what Isaac Newton or Leonardo Da Vinci would have done having today's tools ...anymore than we can predict where Chess will be in a century from now - my guess as a game it will go the way of checkers - unless draw rules are resolved. I admit to having a personal bias which suggests that Chess must return to its origins in geometry for it to continue to evolve. But then again - tennis will still be played in the same way in a hundred years....some things just are what they are.... |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: < it is probably the only meaningful basis for comparison> but then there is the question: is it meaningful to make these comparisons to begin with? imho, no. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | znsprdx: while I'm on a roll:)
<goodevans:"Until someone can come up with a scoring system that distinguishes between hard fought draws and dull safe draws"> The easiest way is NOT to reward White with an equivalent score as Black for the draw. For that matter this might even be applied with respect to wins.
In single round robins or Swiss systems there could be further adjustments in terms of rating differences. The justification is simple: Since the rules of Chess do not permit Black to reply to White's first check with a check in turn - which might be mate:)- then in terms of pure logic [having the first move odds]then a Black draw (or win) has to be worth more. It is great to see that several posts support this concept- some of the ideas are even quite wild to say the least... This certainly will remove the 'dull safe draw' problem - but isn't perhaps as satisfactory with respect to hard fought draws - as long the right to offer a draw is eliminated: positions must be played at least to the end of the maximum allowable time controls. The natural synergy of the unfolding chess positions allows for unforeseen opportunities for attack or resources in defense. |
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| Oct-12-11 | | frogbert: <I guess you will argue that today's decade is the strongest, and that Carlsen being top rated is the strongest player in history?> i will argue that it's virtually impossible to make these comparisons, and that the typical debate (whether about "strongest player" or "strongest decade") only presents anecdotal evidence at best. the typical arguments are shallow and cherrypicked. i've said elsewhere that professional chess has changed a lot over the last 3-4 decades, making even a comparison of 1990-95 with 2006-2011 a near-impossible undertaking. and finally, it's probably better to ask rather than assume what my view on something is, vbd! :o) |
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| Oct-12-11 | | znsprdx: @frogbert: < it is probably the only meaningful basis for comparison>: for those who wish to make the comparison - because it is a fundamental part of the human story.... Personally I would actually argue that we are far from evolving in many areas of greater significance that Chess (hard to imagine for we fanatics)- but that is a whole other matter.... |
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