One nice thing about being bed-ridden with a full leg cylinder cast for six weeks is that now I will be able to follow all of the cool chess events going on for the next month or so. Around the time of my birthday the London Chess Classic will kick off, which is one of the best organized events on the calendar and I can’t wait to watch it live with commentary. At the moment though the Tal Memorial is raging on… sort of. The last two rounds have featured draws on all boards, and the comments on chessbomb have been predictably acerbic. Interestingly, today several player’s achieved potentially winning positions, but later slipped back into drawing lines. When top flight tournaments feature so many draws, spectators understandably become disinterested. This phenomenon seems to be more and more common at elite chess events, prompting new rules regulating when players can agree to a draw and forcing players to fight on even in hopelessly drawn positions…(remember that tournament last year where tiviakov repeated moves 27 times?) Perhaps Fischer Random or Seirawan chess is the future of our game. It seems that opening theory is on the verge of suffocating the life out of the game…
In any case. If you’re interested in watching the games live, a live video feed is available here.
Today I watched the game between Aronian and Nakamura most closely.
Here is a picture of my poor leg in a full cast- ugh- shattered my knee in a bike accident and will be bedridden for a while… at least I still have chess.
4 Responses to “Tal Memorial Snooze Fest”
Hey Greg, sorry to hear about your accident. Be well.
PS. These games are actually very well-fought. Anything but a snooze fest really. They just end drawn, and that’s fair.
Yes I agree, but “snooze fest” is pretty tame compared to the things being said in chat rooms about the games and the players. I can say with certainty that a lot of the people watching live are less than pleased to see such a large percentage of the games drawn. But that’s just the inevitable outcome from such a strong field. I’m sure you remember a similar debate from the candidates matches as well. Personally, I like to watch high level chess no matter what the outcome and no matter who it is that’s playing, but it seems that there’s concern that the inevitably of draws may be hurting the popularity of chess (as if it was popular in the first place, right haha). In any case, there were a couple decisive games finally- aronians game today was very interesting, sacking a piece for three pawns and accurately pushing home the advantage.
Thanks for the well wishing- My leg is in pretty bad shape so you probably wont see me back at the marshall for another few weeks.
All this whining about draws sounds similar to what I sometimes hear from Americans complaining about low scoring in soccer- I don’t know, but for myself personally it is enough to appreciate seeing players take their chances, show their remarkable technique, and make their best effort…not a big deal if the end result is goalless, if I have seen the lads running for 90 mins at their maximum speed, hitting the post 5 times and goalkeepers making incredible saves. Similar with chess at this tournament- except for boring Anand games, one can see players aggressively pushing for the win all the time, these games are full of very interesting ideas in the middlegame, and everyone who complains about them should rather sit back and study them a little. But it’s just much easier to complain.
Just last week the European Chess Union just voted and accepted anti-draw rules… the debate is in the air even if it is a silly debate it is topical. I’m not sure how american it is, it seems that europeans are more concerned with it- if anything I’d say it’s bulgarian