Chess World Championship 2014

[Skybird]

And the moment I fantasize about a draw, Anand tightens his grap around Carlsen again (26.Rc6), a move that completely evaded my attention although it is a quite obvious one, now that I look at it.

I assume that illustrates the reason why Anand and Carlsen are sitting at that table, and not me.

Carlsen now has 20 minutes for 14 moves left, in a dangerous position. Time to get that supermove out of the box.

From the commentation in the live coverage:

VC: Carlsen is World rapid champion and also World blitz champion and he is getting to a point where his fast chess skills will be needed. Time trouble is ahead.

[Skybird]

Drama unfolding? 7 minutes for 12 moves left for Carlsen. Anand still has 40 minutes, and plays precise so far, showing by that the lack of a plan for Black.

Anand now moves fast, trying to keep the time pressure up for Carlsen, I think.

P.S. Carlsen finally manages to take that pesky pawn on c7. But the engines' evaluations immediately spike high in favour of White, from +1.9 to +3.3. I wonder what the cost for Carlsen will be?!

P.P.S. Now I see it. Blacks must accept an exchange loosing a bishop for a pawn. That should decide the match. The game is close to Anand's first victory in the competition.

P.P.P.S
Fast moves, 100 seconds for Carlsen for 8 more moves. Wild exchange of pieces, Carlsen is far behind, Bishop for Rook. Considering the skill level these two play on, I wonder whether he will continue for much longer.

[Skybird]

30 seconds for 7 moves... Carlsen with his back against the wall...

[Skybird]

An d its over! Time ran out for Carlsen. O h dear, what an ending. Long-lasting stubborn defence by Carlsen, but as excellent an upkeeping of pressure by Anand, who reminded people of why they nicknamed him "the tiger". The victory is fully deserved.

3. Anand : Carlsen 1 : 0
total 1.5 : 1.5




A very exciting, very theory-heavy match that was a joy to watch (like the first two already were as well), continuing the very high standard of this competition so far.

Next match tomorrow at 12:00 UTC.

[Skybird]

Get your boards out and the pieces ready - they are about to begin any moment! It's match 4 of the world championship with last match's winner Anand this time playing with Black and Carlsen opening with the white pieces.

P.S.
And we have the Sicilian Defense on the board. A challenge announced by Anand. That could become a very aggressive match.

P.P.S.
When going into the Steinitz variation, Carlsen maybe wanted to head for some closed kind of position, but what there is on the board after ten moves looks more open than anything to me.

P.P.S.
Anand has no real worries currently. Carlsen still searching a plan apparently. A first tactical yearning of him could be for securing the bishops' pair for himself and denying it to Anand (move 12).

[Skybird]

Trying to assess the position and to calculate it - 15th move - gives me a headache. To me it looks very complexy and sharp, full of aggressive potential for both players who still stalk each other and sharpen their claws in the hidden. Personally I hate such positions, I always found them to be extremely dangerous and difficult top play. The first mistake - or even just weaker move - could easily be the last mistake deciding the game.

It seems they are determined to continue this championship's tradition to present sharp play to the audience.

Carlsen tries to exchange light figures. Anand will try to avoid that.


P.S.
the focus had been on the isolated black pawn on d5, and with Carlsen now opening the center, that remains to be the centre of gravity. Both sides have their rooks on e- and d-file, and both sides managed to maintain their pair of bishops. I still do not see a decisive plan for White, while Black plays flawless. It seems to me that the balance is shifting by a minor, little bit in favolur of Black, somehow his figures look to me as if they have more freedom, range and activity. Anand seems to add tiny bit to tiny bit, improving with babysteps. White to me just manages the position.

P.P.S.

And there was the exchange in the centre, the black isolated pawn is no more. Black now has pawns on a- and c-file, and white on a- and b-file. Here could be Carlsen's plan: to take advantage of that pawn structure that in theory is slightly more advantageous for White.

---

Unfortunately, real life is now catching me, and I have to leave here. Will post the final outcome and diagram later this night. Enjoy the rest of the game!

[Skybird]

So Carlsen again ran short on time, and passed the 40th move with less than 1 minute on the clock. But the match turned into a Queens-only endgame, and both sides's attempts to turn one of their pawns into an advantage, failed. In the end both players controlled the final positions of the match to a degree that the resulting draw was inevitable. Fair deal.

4. Carlsen - Anand 1/2 : 1/2
total 2 : 2



That finishes the first third of the championship, again an exciting game and good play by both players. After this opening of their duel, they face the remaining 8 games from a state of total equality in points. Anand is in much better shape than last year. The duel is of much more intensity and quality, I would say. It is two equals fighting it out so far. Anand benefits from his known pedantic preparation, something where Carlsen lacks maybe, which maybe is the reason why the clock does not love him. When Anand won game 3, he admitted at the press conference that he had prepared the game's moves until 24th move at least. Carlsen must have known the matches that were copied ion that game, too - I wonder whether he "forgot" them or had not cared for them during his theoretic studies, and for that reason had to waste so much time while Anand could play fast? In the end, time pressure was what broke Carlsen's neck in game 3.

Tomorrow they have a break again. Game 5 will be held on Friday, 12:00 UTC.

[Skybird]

Today'S a break, and I take the opportunity to introduce some chess apps on Android OS.

I use a Samsung Galaxy 10.1, so all screenshots I took represent that huge display, not small telephone displays.

Skill and difficulty is no argument for the ordinary chess player anymore when choosing chess engines - almost all of the better contenders are of a competence by now that they will be able to pose a challenge to almost everybody. You need options indeed that do not optimise but tune down the engine's skill levels without letting it look like intentionally fumbling.

The chess program I play most with on tablet, is SHREDDER. That is for three reasons. The important one is that Shredders offers a self-adapting skill mode. That is the more games you played, the more stabile the software's estimation of your skill level becomes, by your scoring. After each match it adapts its own skill level, and the more matches you have played, the closer to your skill level it becomes, and the smaller the later changes will be. Especially for the occasional players, this is a very convenient and useful feature, for it makes the computer opponent more accessible and guards against too much frustration. The second reason is that Shredder is one of the former top titles on PC, winning the world championship for chess engines several times. The code of the Android version bases on earlier versions of Shredder, still comes from one of the most skillful and knowing chess coders out there, so you deal with an engine that you can really set to play quality chess, if that is desired, both on tactical and strategical/positional level. The third reason is that Shredders includes several options for the visual appearance of the board and symbols, and amongst them is a set of pseudo-3D pieces that different to many other chess apps indeed is accessible and playable, I like to play with using that set. Just a recent update finally added the landscape (widescreen mode) to the Android version (ipad version had it for longer time already). The amount of secondary information displayed, as well as the huge bars on top and at the bottom, are a bit sub-optimal. Still, the app does what it should do, and it does that very well. It is payware, but imo absolutely worth its price. As an additional gimmick that allows some "chessing" when there is too little time for a whole game, it includes a library of I think one thousand chess problems.


Shredder Android



And a closer look at the set with pseudo-3D pieces



The second chess-playing app I introduce, is FREEWARE (!), and it is great, also one of the best chess apps around. DROIDFISH CHESS offers some features for serious analysts that most other chess apps on Android are missing. It comes free with an earlier version of Stockfish, which in its latest version on PC currently is ranked on the SSDF list as the world's strongest chess engine is (means: it is one of the very best there are ). Visually, board and pieces are less fragile and detailed than Shredder, but it offers plenty of additional data at the bottom on the screen that other apps often lack. Also, the app allows export of played games, import of opening libraries in the much-used chessbase-format as well as polyglot and internal format standard, allows PGN import and export, the program also offers the usual range of edits and tunigns for visual appearance of board and pieces and what info additionally gets displayed, it allows blind chess by using either checker pieces or no pieces at all (!), you can add third party UCI engines (haven't tried that though) and even edit their parameters, as well as additional table bases. Considering that all this comes for zero cash, this app is not only a steal - it is a must-have.


Droidfish Chess



And a third engine I introduce because it is a legend, was done by a legendary programmer, (Richard Lang), and should be included if only for the fact that it still features a very high standard for playstyle quality: CHESS GENIUS. There is not much to say about it, it comes with the usual standard options and the way they sorted the elements on the display reminds of the other two apps above. It is payware, but still costs only half of what Shredder costs. Genius is around since long, but still the program gets updated, which shows that the author really cares for it. It is offering skill adjustment by traditional, somewhat old-fashioned skill-levels, of which there are ten. I would not say it is a must have like Shredder and Droidfish, but still it plays a chess that has so much quality that one should give it serious consideration. I got it mainly because I know Lang-programs since so long time now, since the golden age of chess computers in the 80s. How I miss that time of promise and magic!


Chess Genius



All three apps can be found in appstores, where you can also see more screenshots showing other board and pieces graphics and colours, and how the display is arranged on smaller and telephone displays.


Chess computing is not complete without Chessbase. The German company is global market leader for chess databases and promotion of chess-related software. Their Android app accessing their game database is a bit steep in pricing (for Android standards), and costs more than any chess engine for Android, but for me finally with their latest update became stable and reliable. This is no engine,k, but only a GUI for accessing their database of played tournament matches. You can search and filter the database, to find the match(es) or players that you want, the game then gets presented via the well-known Fritz-graphics which imo set the standard for chess software in beauty and detail, on PC their 3D sets are fully usable, indeed I use them frequently instead of a board, or additional to a board when doing analysis. I just like them nice graphics. Most games in their database from daily and ordinary tournament practice are without comments, but highlights, classical games and high profile-matches come with comments and options. Then it could look like this, for example ( I still think the interface needs more optimization, I do not need the list of available entries constantly displayed on the left).


Chessbase App



And that's it for today. In one of the coming days, I will lose some info on free chess options on the PC. Play on, and if the king has the wrong colour: mate him! LOL