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Two interesting games

In the first game Caruana caught Naka in a memory contest.

The second game is a draw in a sharp line between comrades.

At least he tried

Ok, after making some not so friendly remarks on Svidler, I have to give him credit for fighting in this time. For a reason that only he knows, he didn’t go for the critical line with e3, but went for something fresh in a well known line. He pretty much dumped a pawn for nothing and couldn’t prove compensation. Svidler’s game is all about tactics and since there were no tactics, he couldn’t find ’em.

Another pointless game

Yesterday Peter “nice guy” Svidler played his good old friend Gelfand, whom he drew like 100 times before, and the result was as expected. Today he and Danil “not so young anymore” Dubov repeated the game of two “amateurs” and managed to draw in 21 moves. Why play chess if a draw is the expected result?

Drawing for a Living

Here is a recent example how to be successful in chess without playing chess at all. One of my biggest idols, Peter “nice guy” Svidler, follows a blitzgame from a chess.com match. Dominguez, who analyzes his own games too, plays the computer improvement and Svidler immediately forces the draw. That’s how you do it, boys and girls! Why play chess if a draw is the expected result?

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Actually there is a funny point to it. Gustafsson did the presentation together with Dorfman and it seems to me that he learned something as well. I am curious about his next tournament. The thing is that such lessons stick in your memory, even if you are not aware of it, and you start to recognize patterns, if you want or not.

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Ranked 7th, finished 7th

The last game was nothing to write home about either. Conceptionally I find it rather weird to play 1…d5 if you have the Sicilian in your repertoire, but apparently he likes his d5-systems. The resulting variations lead to Slav/Caro Kann structures and should not suit a dynamic player at all though. Here is how such positions in the Oberliga between a veteran GM and a FM usually play out: Black gives up the bishop pair, white slowly impoves his pieces, gains space, creates a weakness, wins a pawn and converts.

With a performance of 2430 Keymer sadly showed once again that he is currently not underrated and that is exactly the problem. Now let’s assume he went for the Drawmeister (Qc2-Nimzo etc.) except against the unknown dude instead. It would/could/should have resulted in +1 against an average of 2588, which should be a 2600 performance. If his opponents play for a win and overpress, he could have scored even better. Tournament strategy is key!

Note: This is not some wiseguy comment from an armchair quarterback. There is a clear difference in going for dynamic imbalanced positions and keeping things under total control. Nobody prevented him from playing the Berlin and the Ragozin as recommended by Leela. Nobody prevented him from going for forced draws with white either. It was a concious decision to go for positions where the onus is on him to prove something.

As expected…

Radjabov and Duda got elminated. If you follow the match strategy of a complete idiot, you can hardly expect to be successful.

Match Strategy

What do you do when a draw is sufficient and you have the Petroff in your repertoire? You play the Dragon of course!

On a sidenote: Vitiugov lost to Svidler as expected. At least it was a strong novelty, which they had most likely prepared together.

Suggestion!

Since they obviously don’t want to play the regular games, why not allow them to skip everything and just play the tie-break?

Drawmeisters of the Day

It’s a knockout event, therefore match strategy does play a role.