Caruana as black made the time control in this position

… and lost 39 moves later.

There is an art in selecting opponents to play a match with. Ideally you want someone with a high rating and an exploitable weakness. The Giri-Shirov Match was a nice example for such a strategy. Having said that, I find the Ivanchuk-Hou Match – organized by China – slightly strange, because on a good day Chucky is a monster. My guess is that they are hoping for a couple of Chucky’s bad days aka variance.

Anyways, the first game was actually quite interesting, because it featured a line that leads to a structure which is very similar to the Scotch Four-Knights, but where white gets rid of the black bishop pair while keeping the better pawn structure.

…don’t switch on the engine. Otherwise you may be in for an ugly surprise.

This is one of the combinations that you can find if you check every forced line to the very end, otherwise I find Rxf4 tough to spot.

After a month of boredom there is finally something to write about.

Ever since the following game we know that two bishops are stronger than two knights:

Today, two attempts at the Shenzen Masters to shake this assessement failed:

It seems that Naka and Grischuk make good cinema. They played an amazing blitz-game a couple of weeks ago and now they produce this gem. Unfortunately Naka missed the final touch and couldn’t convert this piece of art. His preparation was awesome, because he managed to create a position with something left to play for in a variation that was supposed to be a forced draw. This usually happens in positions with material imbalance. Computers give this as equal, but if you move the white kingside pawns up, the evaluation shifts immediately in favor of white.

The official Press Statement is out.

All Masters pairings were made by computer using the Swiss Manager pairing programme, approved by FIDE (the World Chess Federation). Nothing was done to increase (or decrease) the number of female opponents that Miss Hou had to face – her pairings were at all times the correct ones, and the gender of her opponents was therefore a chance event.

The outcome of the computer pairings indicate that something went wrong and from a legal standpoint this is where things get tricky. In case something was indeed wrong with the pairings, then the organizers would have to prove that it wasn’t their fault.

That Miss Hou’s pairings were entirely correct has since been independently verified by at least three FIDE International Arbiters. Chief Arbiter of the Masters, Laurent Freyd (Chief Arbiter of the French Chess Federation, and member of FIDE’s Anti-Cheating Commission) discussed the pairings with Miss Hou a few days before the incident, after she had expressed concern.

Quoting FIDE arbiters is not the way to do it, because these arbiters usually have zero background in computer science. These guys just get their job, because they either applied for it based on their history as referees, or because their national federation nominated them. In other words, an arbiter cannot determine if a horse got injected with performance enhancing drugs. All he can determine is where the horse finished in the end.

Fact is: Computer programs can contain bugs and they can also contain hidden subroutines, but in this case it is not even needed. You can simply press the pairing button again and again and again until the desired outcome appears on the screen. It looks to me that the “clear pairing”-function does the trick. I am not claiming that Hou Yifan got cheated, but I can’t dismiss it either.

I was already planning to make a posting on statistical abnormalities like Hou Yifan playing female opponents in 7 out of 9 rounds. Today she reacted with her form of protest and presented us with another weird coincidence, namely playing the best and the worst game in the same tournament.

For the record, here is her brilliancy again:

On a sidenote, here is a personal observation on the Gibraltar Tournament. Every coverage starts with 15 minutes of Mr. Conquest talking to a bold spanish dude in spanish. WTF? Don’t get me wrong, but wasn’t Gibraltar british for like 300 years? The other thing that really bothers me is Simon Williams and his cover-your-ass-style of commentary. His target audience seems to be roughly 1500 and he spends most of his analysis with either suggesting totally idiotic sacrifices or praising Harry, the h-pawn, and this for 6 hours on average, EVERY DAY, FOR 10 DAYS IN A ROW! If it wasn’t for the charming Jovanka, I would have switched off that commentary 9 rounds ago.

 

Update: They are claiming that Hou Yifan’s pairings came directly out of the computer and it was nothing but some sort of freak event, like the same guy winning a lottery back to back. Ok, that’s one possible explanation, but it is not the only one. It is not even the most likely one. It is much more likely that someone manipulated it. Imagine you are playing heads-up poker and your opponent plays like he knows your cards. Well, it could be an unlikely freak event, but it could also be marked cards. In such a case cheating is a big favorite.

Nepo must have forgotten his prep against Wesley.

Fabi probably mixed up variations against Nigel.

Welcome to 2nd place, Mr. So!

After the game Sutovsky claimed that he was “raped for a draw”. He didn’t want to play the positions after cxd4, but on every other move than 9…b6, which is better for white, white could force the repetition. Well, I know this variation and I also remember know why I didn’t recommend it, so I wonder why the straight-A student Sutovsky didn’t mention Nd7. Maybe Emil was just bullshitting the commentators. Too bad that Miro was in the booth doing the interview. That would have had the potential for internet gold.