Chess World Championship

[David Ottosen]

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King Loek?

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Since his previous posts make reference to spending time in Costa Rica, and I've never heard any of the chess people around here mention having heard from him in any way, I doubt it. If he's down here, I'd love to meet him.

[WaimanaloSlim]

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Does anyone have a link to the match?? (english I hope)

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Here's Game 1, a very good match: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1430918

Gotta love Topalov's style.

[Lori]

The accusations against Kramnik listed here are fascinating.

Also, game 7 live here

With live text commentary on the original link.

Lori

[Ortho]

This is just awesome...it has everything, the permanently 9 year-old chess prodigies, surveillance by the KGB, corrupt officials, $500k tax-free each, and because it's all about bathrooms, that touch of the scatological to excite the popular imagination.

Whether they like it or not, this match is going to fit perfectly into the lineage of previous world championship matches.

[Ortho]

Also, this quote from Karpov on Susasn's blog is equally awesome:

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[In my matches], there were protests. But the Appeals Committee was comprised of people who could be trusted, and were of unimpeachable reputation...

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And this other article is just killer:
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You might think, given the celebrated eccentricity of chess grandmasters, that the Kofi Annan of the international game would need to be as sane and balanced as any man alive. You would be wrong. The president of the Fédération Internationale des Echecs (Fide), Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, astounded reporters five years ago by revealing that he had been temporarily captured by aliens: "The extraterrestrials put a yellow spacesuit on me. They gave me a tour of their spaceship and showed me the command centre. I felt very comfortable with them."

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Ok, I'm getting off-topic and will stop. [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

[Lori]

I'm mediocre at best at chess, but I love the circus that seems to follow the world championships everywhere.

The comments on the blog are simply brilliant.

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OPEN LETTER TO SILVIO DANAILOV

In the name of the chess-programming computer world we would like to thank Mr. Danailov for his important contribution. His analysis proves clearly that Fritz 9 is already 78% as good as reigning classical world champion Vladimir Kramnik! In fact, Kramnik's play in Elista - i.e. the remaining 22% of moves that Kramnik played and Fritz 9 was not capable to consider - teaches us what still has to be improved in our computer programmes to make them as good as possible to come at least close to Mr. Kramnik's strength.
Mr. Danailovs worries that go along with his analysis also make us especially proud of Fritz 9, since they imply that a player of Topalov's kind can be defeated by Fritz 9. Mr. Danailov, as soon as you think that Veselin Topalov has improved his play to be able to compete with Fritz 9, let us know, so we can arrange a match! As long as Mr. Vladimir Kramnik plays that strong, it is him who will be considered as the worthy candidate to play a match man-machine as he will do in the million-dollar-match in the fall of 2006 in Germany.


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Lori

[David Ottosen]

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The accusations against Kramnik listed here are fascinating.

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They are ridiculous and insulting. Here's a good source:
Mig on chess

First, Danailov makes no explanation of how he came up with 78% as his number - chess analysis engines will consider a variety of moves during their analysis, and a variety of moves will at one point or another appear as the #1 choice. Kramnik has also made several atrocious blunders in the match that are utterly impossible to make a computer replicate. In the end, I agree with Mig's comment:

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98% of what Danailov says correlates with the first line produced by his ass.


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Topalov is losing. They are trying to upset Kramnik enough to make him possibly even abandon the match. The huge majority of grandmasters are praising Kramnik and condemning Topalov:

GMs support Kramnik

Edited to add: Kramnik is winning today.

[NajdorfDefense]

Topalov knew he had zero shot after game 2. He isn't remotely in Kramnik's class, remember, Kasparov himself said Kramnik would eventually take his title, like 15 years ago.

[MicroBob]

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If you know anything about the top players, isn't betting on this stuff almost impossible to lose? The ball doesn't take funny bounces in this game. I see nothing to randomize the outcome. Shouldn't the favorite win just about every single time?

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It's probably closer to that in chess than other championship sports.
But there is still the human factor.

When Fischer played Spassky in 1972 he made a bad error in game 2 that lost the game.
I believe it was in that match that he surprised everyone in a different game by opening with white with his queen's pawn when he had previously ALWAYS been a king's pawn player.


The Karpov-Kasparov match of 1984 is another example.
Karpov has a big lead and is on the verge of winning.
Kasparov battles his way back and closes it to 5 wins to 3 I believe (with about 9-zillion draws) before the chess federation president called it.


Simple things like the format of the match can favor one player over another (just like making hockey higher scoring can be to the benefit of one team more than another).


I don't follow chess at all anymore so I don't know about this particular match.
Just addressing the idea that handicapping this would be as straight-forward as some people might think.

[Ortho]

I couldn't bet on chess. What if Kramnik gets upset that he's not allowed to use his favourite potty again or that he's upset that Topalov's second has accused him of cheating today, and he quits with an unassailable lead before the match ends? Does your Kramnik bet win? Lose? Push? What's to stop Topalov from walking out with Kramnik needing 1/2 point to sew up the title and claiming that there was no result. Remember the guy who is deciding these things this is the "Aliens took me into space" arbiter.

And none of this is unique to this match. For betting, I'm sticking to sports where they can just show up, play the game, and have a result. This is like holding a glass up to the wall and betting whether the husband or the wife next door is going to win their domestic dispute.