World Chess Champs start tomorrow

I'm going to have to go with FViktor Navorsk for the win. Viktor hails from the country of Krakozhia and hasn't lost a match since he was seven.

As Mr. T would say "I pity the fool who bets against Viktor Navorsk".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhXz8vDGEjc

It's available on chessbomb.com but I don't understand how to provide a link that goes to the game directly.

theohiostate wrote:

Thanks for the link, Avocado's Number. It takes a bit of courage to risk $70,000 to uphold your principles.

Is there a record of this entire game?

Avocado's Number wrote:

theohiostate wrote:

Thanks for the link, Avocado's Number. It takes a bit of courage to risk $70,000 to uphold your principles.

Is there a record of this entire game?

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1731205

Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i66fUoqMYq4

dkny64 wrote:

curiousitea wrote:

Question for you chess observers:

Why is there a separate World Championship for men & women in chess?

Honest question, not trolling. It seems like this is one of the few "sports" where there could be a level playing field... and I was just wondering 1) why it was seperate; and 2) is there any reason they couldn't compete on the same level in the same tournaments?

If you're trolling, well, you're trolling.

If not, google "Judit Polgar" and you'll find answers to both your questions.

Thanks for the google suggestion. Interesting reading about Judit. It was listening to her sister, GM Susan's commentary during the Anand/Carlsen games, that made me wonder.

I still don't have a great answer to my question #1. (As I suspected), women can compete. Judit demonstrated that over a decade ago by winning several tournaments with men, and achieving top 10 ranking, and a "2772 rated performance level" in the 2000 Olympics.

There were even some quotes from Judit in the 1990s that women should be playing with the men.

So why, in 2013, are the World Chess Championships still separate?

I feel this is a little unfair to Carlsen. He almost always blitzes his openings. Part of the reason he is great at endgames is that he is a great time manager. He prefers to have more time for complicated calculations in the middle and endgame.

Also, he has not accepted an offered draw in this tournament--all the draws have been inadequate material or repetition of moves. Oh, I guess he did accept a rook and pawn v. rook in a dead drawn endgame. Today did not really have an alternative. In any case they were clearly not "grandmaster draws"

There is some speculation that Anand will retire if he loses this match. We will see how much fight he has left. I do think matches sort of lend themselves to a high percentage of draws and more conservative play in general regardless of player.

I can barely even play chess, but the culture is fascinating so I've been trying to follow it. The similarities on the message boards between letsrun and chess.com are amazing.

Topics include:

The commentators are horrible.

These draws/tactical races are killing the sport.

These guys need to have more personality in their press conferences.

Anand/Solinsky etc. is DONE.

Can someone link to a live feed?

What if Fisher/Pre played in this era?

You can't critique him with such a low ELO/PR

Houdini found a draw/Ventolin's pace smoother.

Avocado's Number wrote:

I was hoping for more from Carlsen, who has spoken out against "grandmaster draws" that cheat the spectators.

If Anand, in a match-losing position, plays into a draw, it's not Carlsen's job to sac material to liven things up!

As champion, I hope Carlsen uses his position to do away with this "tradition" of match play for the world title. Computers have completely changed match preparation, anyway. We should return to a tournament, and the reigning champ should have to play on equal footing with the other top eight or ten.

If women refused to participate in a women's championship it would cease to have any public meaning. I mean sure some 1500 woman could be crowned the official world champion but nobody would recognize it as valid. Why don't most women chess players do this? Well women's events including but not limited to the women's championship have tremendous economic value. Hou Yifan with a peak rating of 2639 would not be invited to the Tata Steel A group if she was a guy. She would get invites to Chinese tournaments and would not be able to make a living as a player (so she would either improve or be a part-timer). Koneru Humpy would be in even worse shape as far as career viability.

AS to what causes the lack of women who would be able to compete here are some preliminary thoughts--

1. There are far more serious male chess players than female. I have seen quotes that less then 5% of tournament players are female. I don't know if that is accurate as it seems a little high in my experience but certainly 85% or more are men. There are tremendously long arguments on here (search Title IX discussions) that men participate in higher levels in a large variety of competitive endeavors so it may be that this is a sex linked characteristic which cuts across many fields.

2. Take as a given (it is not but the point may stand regardless) that intelligence is correlated to success in chess. Then take as a given that women and men ave the same standard IQ scores (which they do but that is because the tests are designed to achieve this, this stuff is complicated). Men still perform better in spatial relations and mental rotation sub-test scores which are exactly the area that would be important for the pattern recognition and problem solving imoportant in chess.

3. Even if men and women have the same IQ that does not mean the distribution is the same. Men as a gender seem to have a much wider distribution with many more extremely intelligent males then females. Epidemiological studies also show the incidence of intellectual disability is higher in males than females throughout the world. This wider distribution is seen in other traits as well where men display much great rates of aggression, criminality, and other traits, so that even if the averages were the same in traits related to chess the players at the top may still end up being overwhelming male. Part of that may be a sex based differential in competitiveness (or OCD or perfectionistic tendencies if you want to state it less positively) which leads to the participation numbers listed above.

None of that means that a women couldn't be highest ranked or world champion or that they couldn't competitive on a level playing field if the chess world was structured differently but it is just not so easy to say there shouldn't be a gender based difference. Anyway those are just a preliminary stab at something I think is an interesting discussion. If none of that makes sense it is doubtlessly because I am on heavy narcotics at the moment which is why I am writing this at 3 AM. Please forgive the misspellings.

Goodness me - an intelligent, well-reasoned post on LR? Whatever next?! :-)

Mr. Obvious,

Good stuff - thanks for taking the time to write that up! Very helpful.

I didn't realize how fewer women played serious chess. From watching the commentary, there were two main male, and two main female commentators, and all 4 were very knowledgable... with at least 2 GMs (Susan Polgar being one), so I incorrectly assumed the numbers were more evenly distributed.

Just so your new thread about the injuries over the weekend. Didn't post on that thread because I don't have any expertise to offer but did want to take a minute to say how much I've appreciated your posts on this thread + to wish you a speedy recovery.

Fantastic game today. Some fireworks at last. Anand really went for it - a big, ballsy attack that looked like it might just work and then he blundered right at the critical moment. A shame - he deserved to win that game on guts alone.

curiousitea wrote:

So why, in 2013, are the World Chess Championships still separate?

I agree that there shouldn't be a separate women's championship--Judit Polgar always pointedly refused to play for the women's title, even though she was by far the strongest woman in the world.

For the record, there are not "separate" championships--there is an open championship, in which men and women can play, and a women-only championship.

Judit is still the only woman to have played in an open World Championship match or tournament, however. She was one of the eight players in the San Luis tournament in 2005, where Topalov won the FIDE title.

Not just for geeks wrote:

Fantastic game today. Some fireworks at last. Anand really went for it - a big, ballsy attack that looked like it might just work and then he blundered right at the critical moment. A shame - he deserved to win that game on guts alone.

It looks like Carlsen was still holding even if Anand had played Bf1 instead of Nf1 at the end, but it would have been nice to see them play it out--there were still chances for Carlsen to go wrong. As it is, the match is effectively over now.

Women deserve their own championship matches, which is the reason for having them.

Sure, there are lots of men who don't want women to play chess, but that should not be a factor.

The women's championships are for women, not for men.

My point is not to discourage women from playing chess--far from it. But now that the Polgars have shown that women can play on an equal footing with men, I think it will help the development of women's chess if we don't have segregated tournaments. Particularly at the junior levels, girls should get used to playing against boys, and not set their goal as only being the best girl.

Ol Grumpus wrote:

My point is not to discourage women from playing chess--far from it. But now that the Polgars have shown that women can play on an equal footing with men, I think it will help the development of women's chess if we don't have segregated tournaments. Particularly at the junior levels, girls should get used to playing against boys, and not set their goal as only being the best girl.

I think in Junior and open levels the best girls and women do often play against the best guys.

I think it is a little disingenuous to use the Polgars as proof that women can play w/ men at the highest levels. Really only Judit can hold her own w/ the best guys. The other two cannot. Women are not lacking the opportunity to play guys.

Not just for geeks wrote:

Fantastic game today. Some fireworks at last. Anand really went for it - a big, ballsy attack that looked like it might just work and then he blundered right at the critical moment. A shame - he deserved to win that game on guts alone.

Anand should have played like this from the beginning. It seems like Carlsen was obviously more prepared for the match, and simply better.

O/T Has anyone been listening to the commentating by the young Indian woman and the (British?) guy? They are flirting nonstop. I thought it was funny at first but then it just became a bit annoying.