The Norwegian super grandmaster Magnus Carlsen brilliantly won the next tournament, the participants of which played Casablanca chess. The former world champion demonstrated excellent knowledge of the classic games of the past and the reduced time control was an advantage for him.
The essence of Casablanca chess is the following: a couple of minutes before the start of the game, a complex position full of battles is set up, the work of the grandmasters of the past, with a computer score of 0.00 (absolute equality of forces). depending on the machine). During these two minutes, the opponents study the recorded and performed moves, after which the game begins in the format of “15 minutes per game with an addition of 10 seconds for each move.” That is, participants do not have the opportunity or time to analyze the established position, unless they simply try to guess what they are playing. After all, the judges simply give them protocols with recorded movements, but do not say in which game these movements were performed.
Carlsen fights for a new championship format and renounces the title:
Carlsen once again abandoned the battle for the crown. What can bring him back to the championship race?
For the experimental tournament, which took place within the framework of the chess festival in Morocco, the organizers invited four chess players: the former world champion Magnus Carlsen and the Indian Viswanathan Anand, the best in the West and the winner of the last two candidate tournaments. , the American. Hikaru Nakamura, as well as the greatest African player of all time and the Egyptian Amin Bassem. It turned out that representatives of four continents were fighting at once.
The first move in one of the games was made by FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, who opened the tournament. In this case, the International Federation actively supported an experiment with a format aimed at maximally avoiding computerization, which implies banal memorization of a large number of options. Fischer’s chess has the same objective: before the start of the game, the opponent’s pieces are shuffled randomly on the first and eighth rows; Our fellow ladies have been avoiding the opening for a long time.
In Morocco, the positions of the players were chosen by titled commentators-grandmasters: the second of Magnus Carlsen and the Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi in the last Candidates tournament, Jan Gustafsson (Germany) and one of the most popular Western streamers, Daniel Naroditsky (USA.). ). They were offered three prepared positions from different eras and generations; They should have given preference to only one for each specific tour.
For six rounds, her choice fell on two fights of the great confrontation between Garry Kasparov* (classified by Rosfinmonitoring as terrorists and extremists, recognized as an individual acting as a foreign agent) and Anatoly Karpov, matches of the battle for the women’s world crown. in the 90s between the first Chinese champion Xie Jun and the Russian Alisa Galliamova, a match of the duel between the first Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine and the Dutch champion Max Euwe, as well as an exciting fight between the first world champion in history, Wilhelm Steinitz and his main rival, the founder of the Russian chess school, Mikhail Chigorin.
The Norwegian even talked about a possible retirement, but continues to play actively:
“I came as close to completing it as I could.” Magnus Carlsen spoke about leaving chess
Different positions were selected. There was also a quiet one with solid positional play (the decisive 24th game of the match in Seville 1987 Kasparov-Karpov), but still preference was given to the “militants”: three tense positions of the Sicilian defense, an irrational version of the The French defense and an initial problem from 1. The 1st round in general became a real test for the players.
There appeared on the board a gambit battle with a pawn sacrifice from the Havana 1889 match! “Wilhelm Steinitz loves to defend himself, but we, due to our inherent weakness, love to attack!” – noted Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin. And the participants in the Moroccan supertournament had to play in the spirit of the masters of the 19th century.
Before moving on to the analysis of the games, it should be noted that the tournament ended with a confident victory for Carlsen, who scored 4.5 out of 6 and went to the end without losing. The Scandinavian not only plays brilliantly with reduced control, has a phenomenal knowledge of classic games, but is also the most versatile player of our time – this format is clearly for him. Nakamura tried very hard to compete with Magnus, but due to the loss in the first round head-to-head bet, he fell behind by one point: he had 3.5 points. The veteran Anand showed a decent game and finished with three points, but Amin, as expected, had an extremely difficult time: in the first round he still had problems and even tied with Carlsen, but in the second he collapsed and scored only one point.
Magnus Carlsen
Photo: FIDE
The tournament was exciting and the competition was meaningful, but of course the format is still underdeveloped and there is no point in doing anything official with it yet. The problem of Casablanca chess is clearly demonstrated in the same game of the first round, in which the historical position of the battle between Chigorin and Steinitz was on the board. The fact is that as computer technology developed, thanks to cooperation with the machine, a person learned much better to know openings and endings, to count, to make positional decisions and to maneuver.
The only thing that still poses a problem for gray cells is protection. Of course, now people defend themselves much more stubbornly than in the time of the first champions or even the Soviet chess school, but they still cannot demonstrate even a tenth of the composure of a passionless machine. This, for example, is what Ian Nepomniachtchi takes advantage of, who at the first opportunity tries to attack the opposing king and create maximum discomfort.
In 1993, a world championship match took place between Garry Kasparov and England’s Nigel Short. Kasparov was at the peak of his career and literally crushed his opponent, who interrupted the big showdown between the two “Kas”, having previously won the match against Karpov. However, along with the main match, a commercial gambit match followed the format of being shown on television. Kasparov and Short were also given positions of the King’s Gambit, the Evans Gambit, forcing grandmasters to play them and thus resurrecting the spirit of the 19th century. Later, Harry admitted that when he first turned black on such a tabia gambit and looked at the position, he simply wanted to give up immediately; yes, there is extra material, but not a single piece really moves!
Something similar happened on the 1st day of Casablanca.
Mikhail Chigorin (Russian Empire) – Wilhelm Steinitz (USA)
Havana 1889
It also happened that in the first round pairings White turned out to be the favorites: Carlsen had to attack Anand, and Nakamura had to attack Amin. I wonder how the situation would change if the partners changed roles. Yes, according to the computer, the score is equal, but it is incredibly difficult for Black to play here: his queen has paralyzed the development of the entire field. Not in vain both Anand and the Egyptian tried to give it away in exchange for compensation to be able to develop in some way, but nothing worked for them… This is modern chess: such a fine line between the evaluation of a whole – computer that sees it and understands everything and sometimes a weak and powerless person.
Steinitz was a talented man, but very stubborn and dogmatic when defending his research. He came up with the Evans Defense with the queen moving along the f6-d6 route and played it like this against all contenders: Chigorin, Gunsberg. Due to his enormous practical strength, he scored many points here, but it must be said that he won the game in which the position was established for modern grandmasters against Mikhail Ivanovich. Although in this version he suffered many painful defeats from the Russian titan. Of course, when instead of the incredibly creative, but extremely uneven Chigorin, Carlsen and Nakamura represented White, things became even more difficult for Black’s defenders.
Portions of Lichess’ study are below.
M. Chigorin – V. Steinitz
M. Carlsen – V. Anand
H. Nakamura – B. Amin
The comments after the match between Anand and Amin showed bewilderment: what were they forcing us to play? The commentators did not raise such positions again, and even in the more dangerous Sicilian, Black developed all his pieces in the following rounds.
Of course, you could feel the enormous progress of modern grandmasters in terms of position interpretation compared to Steinitz (although the transfer of the queen to g6 by Wilhelm, who approves the computer, Anand and Amin did not raise) , Chigorin, Alekhine and Euwe, and it is a bit unfortunate that from the work of Kasparov and Karpov only one position has been given: it would be more interesting to compare the practical solutions of the great modern champions.
But the format is quite interesting and entertaining, and it is quite possible that new chess experiments await down the road.
