chivasia - notes on the drawn game in the final

I went through the game move by move and made a note of chivasia's comments and votes, comparing then to the moves that were eventually played. I only got as far as move 21, but I may as well post my notes here. In my opinion, chivasia had a significant influence on the moves that were played by our opponents, and his justifications were not entirely convincing. If he was on our team I would be concerned. The notes also include a few other comments on other aspects of our opponent's play that I found interesting for one reason or another.

Move 2. They are studying our semi-final games v OCD and looking a long way ahead to identify where they might diverge. (Move 17!)

Move 5. They are getting only 3 or 4 votes per move. One regular voter (Bogor) never comments.

Move 6. 3 votes

Move 7. Unmaster joins. Hadn’t realised it was on the go. 5 votes

Move 8. Torkil proposes a line through to move 11, which they go on to follow.

Move 11. Torkil is the dominant voice on the team to this point.

Move 13. First appearance of chivasia. He is the first to comment and proposes Rc1, which ends up being the choice. But it is just following the Judit Polgar game that both they and us were aware of and had been previously mentioned in their comments. 3 votes, not including chivasia.

Move 14. Still following the Polgar game. 5 votes. Chivasia didn’t comment or vote.

Move 15. This was where they diverted from the Polgar game. They considered 15…e4, which would have followed that game, but they were talked out of it by sarrat who said it was weak and proposed Nd3. The vote was 3 to 2 in favour of Nd3. Chivasia’s comment was meaningless, saying first he liked e4 but now he likes Nd3. The only interesting thing he says is that he has been playing very badly recently. Possibly he’s been losing due to trying to play without assistance, and he feels he needs to justify himself to his team mates? In the end he didn’t even vote.

Move 16. Finally, chivasia gets involved in the discussion. Proximo (Danny) finds a line that they all agree with. Chivasia basically supports it but without going into much detail, just saying he can’t find anything wrong with it. 5 votes. Chivasia does vote this time. His first vote.

Move 17. Now chivasia is fully involved. Danny’s plan was 17. Nac5 with a double attack on our bishop. They are aiming to win the b4 pawn. Torkil suggests that 17…Qb6 would enable us to keep that pawn (In fact we never even considered 17…Qb6). Unmaster isn’t worried about 17…Qb6. Chivasia chips in with a diagram ignoring 17…Qb6 (“Nxc5 looks more normal”). There’s much more. He has a lot to say but all of it is to do with 17. Nac5, which was not originally his idea. He does say that if 17. Nac5 Nxc5 then they “ought to consider” 18. Nxc5 rather than the original suggestion 18…dxc5, and that is what they play in the end.

Move 18

Some of the team had forgotten that 18. dxc5 had a question mark over it from the last move. chivasia is one of those to remind them (also Sarrat). They end up unanimously voting for Nxc5, but chivasia fails to vote. I have checked on chess.com’s Stockfish and it gives dxc5 as -0.49 and Nxc5 as -0.02. There is something a bit fishy here, though. Sarrat suggests that 18.dxc5 doesn’t work because Black has 18…Bxd3, winning a pawn. He is wrong, according to Stockfish, which rates the position -0.21 after 18…Bxd3 (Black’s best move is just to retreat the DSB to c7.) 18...b3 is also rated very slightly better than ...Bxd3. Now chivasia doesn’t give any rationale on this move for preferring Nxc5 except that it was discussed last time. So I looked at his diagram for last time. After 18. dxc5 he says “… they will not go Bd7 but Bc7.” (He meant not Be7). He’s right: Bc7 is about 0.30 better, per Stockfish. Chivasia then gives the Stockfish line exactly (in his diagram for move 17), sacking the DSB on h2 and then the Q fork winning back the minor piece. OK. It’s not the hardest tactic to spot, but what I don’t like is that his support for Nac5 on move 17 is sort of conditional on 18. Nxc5, and he is SO certain about this! My impression is that Chivasia’s contributions on moves 17 and 18 were an important element in getting them to play the two moves that they did. Danny (Proximo) was the one to suggest 17. Nac5 but he was going to follow up with 18. dxc5. It was definitely chivasia that put them straight on that, from the point that he said on move 16:

Chivasia  

Aug 8, 2017

Trying to find out what is wrong with your line Danny...it is actually quite interesting ...at least the first moves

Till he put them straight on move 18 and got them to vote for the “correct” move. Nothing conclusive, obviously, but I find his interventions a bit fishy at this point.

BTW, dalephilly was still playing for us at this stage. People in glass houses?

Move 19

Bd2 is proposed as one of several moves by Proximo. Sarrat supports it.

Chivasia  

Aug 21, 2017

Yes, Bd2 is what we earlier talked about, but that was after the exchange on a8 I believe

They do indeed opt unanimously for the rook exchange and play Bd2 on the next move, but the above is chivasia’s only contribution. He again fails to vote.

Move 20

Proximo opens the discussion with “Qd2 was Sarrat’s plan here” and Sarrat himself supports this. Then Chivasia chips in:

Chivasia  

Aug 24, 2017

To me Bd2 feels more natural. Qd2 restricts the queen a bit, and at least restricts the bishop. 

I think one of their plans is Qb8, and if we go f4 we have opened a diagonal for the queen.

Bd2 is indeed stronger (0.00 according to Stockfish) and is the top move up to about depth 22, after which maybe e4 is stronger (I got different results! Seems odd.) Qd2 would have given Black about half a pawn advantage. So again, Chivasia’s intervention was crucial.

3 votes for Bd2, unanimous. Chivasia did not vote.

Move 21

21. f4 is the best move by a distance and is proposed. Chivasia chips in early:

Chivasia  

Aug 28, 2017

f4 was mentioned. I think Torben was not too happy with it. g3 is an alternative. h3 is not working due to Bg3

This time, in fact, his suggestion would probably have lost them the game. Unmaster spots the flaw and Chivasia backs down quickly. This time they have 6 votes, all for f4, but once again chivasia does not vote.

You've put some work in there Joe. I agree that they diverged from what remained of the single, Polgar game at move 15 & everything before that can be disregarded. When performing engine-match analysis, book moves plus a couple more should be excluded because they're useless for the analysis.

The one thing we know for certain is that Chivasia had his account (as 'Chivas') closed for reasons of Fair Play violation & as far as I'm concerned, it's once a cheat, always a cheat. I wouldn't want to play any team in which I knew a retread was playing.

Having said that of course, it didn't help them much in the second game!

Good point. I haven't looked at the comments for the second game yet (nor indeed at the rest of the first game). My problem with what I have seen of chivasia so far is similar to how I felt about keighley on our team (though k was a more extreme example). It's not exactly the moves they propose that make me suspicious, it's the way they are so certain that what they are proposing is correct. We are not talking about GM's here, and chess is a complicated business. I am very suspicious when a player's comments betray their absolutely certainty that they have got this right. To me, on the evidence of what I have seen so far, chivasia fits that profile.

Either way, he definitely "influenced" the team's choices, which answers the question we originally posed.

This is in confidence but I've had a few terse words with Danny (Proximo/DEATHW1SH), the SA of OCD & Lewis, about this subject. I collaborate with him on a few things such as Knockout & TMCL & I'm also an admin in OCD but we don't see eye to eye on cheating. He's much too relaxed about it even now, although he says he wants to get his groups clean of engine users.

Trouble is, he finds that easier to say than to do. When Chivas's account was closed originally for Fair Play violation I thought that would be an end to it but then Chivas told Danny it had all been an error & the staff had suggested he open a new account, which he then did as Chivasia.

Now at that point I'd have been cautious because you should never take what a banned member says at face value but Danny accepted him back immediately, in both groups. Why he didn't wait a while is beyond me. Of course when I checked with some of the guys on the cheat detection group, they confirmed that accounts only get permanently closed when there's been demonstrable engine-use taking place but staff sometimes allow such members back despite this. There's no question that Chivas was using engine assistance.

I think Danny's craving for high calibre players, to bring in the silverware, sometimes overrides his desire to keep his groups free of cheats?