Go Aronian!!
Why Svidler played against Aronian the Grunfeld Defense. It's hard to do against top GM such as Aronian. Even for Svidler. A year ago in London Svidler avoided the Grunfeld and played draw.
I just noticed the conversation in here about the relative strength of top players on this site and the players at the Candidates tournament.
Two things are quite clear:
1) Players can be quite disproportionately strong at fast time controls relative to slow time controls. It makes sense to assume, as many people in this thread have, that a player who is strong at fast time controls will also be similarly strong at slow time controls.
For many, many chess players this is indeed the case. There are always players who deviate from that, though, for all sorts of reasons. There are strong OTB, standard time control players who are relatively weak blitz/bullet players, and there are the blitz and bullet specialists.
Ulf Andersson is a good example of the former. On ICC he can barely maintain 1900-2000 in the 1 minute pool, and he still performs 2550 or so in slow tournaments. He's just very slow for bullet.
Andrey Kalinichev is a good example of the latter. Both on chess.com and ICC (Leverage on ICC), he absolutely destroys in the blitz and bullet pools players who are significantly higher rated at standard time controls (he's 2414 FIDE).
Farther down the food chain there's still room for big discrepancies. I know, and I'm sure most of us do, a master or two who are quite bad at blitz/bullet, and Class A/weak expert players who have quite the knack for speed chess.
What really matters are ratings under the same conditions, and there's a reason players like Matetricks have the ratings they do in OTB, standard chess relative to players like Kramnik and company: he's a much weaker player in those conditions. In bullet his chances probably improve noticeably.
2) To flesh out the "probably" from that last sentence, it is also true that with the exception of Nakamura, none of the top 10 players have consistently played blitz/bullet at sites like ICC publicly or for any long period of time. It's also quite possible that these Candidates players would simply destroy the top players at this site (and other sites) even at blitz/bullet.
Naka's ratings at ICC in the pools are still not even close to being broken by all the other blitz/bullet specialists on there, and we know from the occasional high-level blitz events that he doesn't just bully the other top players around, so they are very likely equally capable of destroying the occasional disproportionately strong blitz/bullet specialists as he is.
Either way, conversations like these are always entertaining :)
Two things are quite clear:
1) Players can be quite disproportionately strong at fast time controls relative to slow time controls. It makes sense to assume, as many people in this thread have, that a player who is strong at fast time controls will also be similarly strong at slow time controls.
For many, many chess players this is indeed the case. There are always players who deviate from that, though, for all sorts of reasons. There are strong OTB, standard time control players who are relatively weak blitz/bullet players, and there are the blitz and bullet specialists.
Ulf Andersson is a good example of the former. On ICC he can barely maintain 1900-2000 in the 1 minute pool, and he still performs 2550 or so in slow tournaments. He's just very slow for bullet.
Andrey Kalinichev is a good example of the latter. Both on chess.com and ICC (Leverage on ICC), he absolutely destroys in the blitz and bullet pools players who are significantly higher rated at standard time controls (he's 2414 FIDE).
Farther down the food chain there's still room for big discrepancies. I know, and I'm sure most of us do, a master or two who are quite bad at blitz/bullet, and Class A/weak expert players who have quite the knack for speed chess.
What really matters are ratings under the same conditions, and there's a reason players like Matetricks have the ratings they do in OTB, standard chess relative to players like Kramnik and company: he's a much weaker player in those conditions. In bullet his chances probably improve noticeably.
2) To flesh out the "probably" from that last sentence, it is also true that with the exception of Nakamura, none of the top 10 players have consistently played blitz/bullet at sites like ICC publicly or for any long period of time. It's also quite possible that these Candidates players would simply destroy the top players at this site (and other sites) even at blitz/bullet.
Naka's ratings at ICC in the pools are still not even close to being broken by all the other blitz/bullet specialists on there, and we know from the occasional high-level blitz events that he doesn't just bully the other top players around, so they are very likely equally capable of destroying the occasional disproportionately strong blitz/bullet specialists as he is.
Either way, conversations like these are always entertaining :)
@bishop_rope-dancer: I believe Svidler is a Gruenfeld expert.
It's true, I know. I just think that Svidler did not have to play the Grunfeld against Aronian. Yesterday I was a little upset because that Peter lost.
But today... Svidler bravo!
I still have not watched today's games.
But today... Svidler bravo!
I still have not watched today's games.
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF RES. IN THIS POINTS TABLE?
http://candidates2014.fide.com/standings/
http://candidates2014.fide.com/standings/
As nearly as I can tell, the Res. column is that players results against the other players with whom that player is tied (which is one of the tiebreaks). So at the moment, Anand and Andreikin have 0 in that column, because no one is tied with them, while Aronian as 1.5 against Svidler and Kramnik, and so on.
Black day for Russian players.
At a press conference Topalov alone spoke excellent Russian.
At a press conference Topalov alone spoke excellent Russian.
At a press conference Kramnik said about the move 3.Qb3 in the game Aronian vs. Anand literally in Russian language: "Ну, я, я могу лишь сказать, что ферзь b3 я тоже мне пришла в голову идея, но такая ересь! Что даже мне не было, я даже в Рапид ее не сыграл бы! Хахахаха... Извиняюсь конечно." English translation: "Well, I, I can only say that Qb3, I, that thought has crossed my mind (short pause), but this heresy! Even I was not (short pause) Even in Rapid I will not play it! Hahahaha... Excuse me, of course."
What an amazing tournament!!
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