Vladimir Kramnik Number of games in database: 1,927 Years covered: 1987 to 2008 Current FIDE rating: 2759 Highest rating achieved in database: 2811 Overall record: +486 -136 =784 (62.4%)* * Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games Based on games in the database; may be incomplete. 521 exhibition games, odds games, etc. are excluded from this statistic.
Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik was born in Tuapse, on June 25, 1975. On December 28, 2008 his daughter Daria was born (her mother is Vladimir Borisovich's wife Marie-Laure, marriage in February 2007). In 1991 he won The World Under 18 Championship, and began a string of international success. At the Manila Olympiad 1992, he achieved a gold medal for best result on reserve board. Major tournament triumphs were soon to follow, such as Dortmund 1995, Tilburg 1997, and Wijk aan Zee 1998. Dortmund became a favorite stop, as Kramnik would go on to win seven more times, either as shared champion, or clear first. In 2000 Kramnik won his first Linares tournament, completing his set of victories in all three of chess's "triple crown" events: Corus, Linares, and Dortmund. Kramnik would later capture additional Linares victories in 2003 (shared) and 2004.
In 2000 Kramnik reached the pinnacle by defeating long-time champion Garry Kasparov for the World Championship in London by the score of 8 1/2 to 6 1/2. Kasparov was reported as saying, "He is the hardest player to beat in the world." The year 2002 saw Kramnik play an eight-game match against the program Deep Fritz (Computer) in Bahrain. The match ended in a 4-4 tie, with Kramnik and the computer each winning two games and drawing four. In 2006 the German organization Universal Event Promotion (UEP) would stage a return match of six games, which Kramnik lost, +0 -2 =4.
In 2004, Kramnik successfully defended his title by drawing a 14 game match against Hungarian GM Peter Leko in Brissago, Switzerland. His next title defense was in 2006, in a reunification match with the holder of the FIDE world title, Veselin Topalov. As part of his preparation for the match, Kramnik played first board for Russia in the 37th Chess Olympiad (2006), where he won the gold medal for best performance rating of all participants (2847). He also took part in the Dortmund Sparkassen (2006) supertournament, tying for first place with Peter Svidler.
The $1 million Kramnik-Topalov World Championship Match (2006), was played in Elista from September 21 to October 13, and drew record numbers of online followers on most major chess sites. After much controversy surrounding a forfeit in round 5, Kramnik won in the tiebreak phase, thereby becoming the first unified World Chess Champion since the schism of 1993.
Kramnik lost the unified World Champion title when he finished second to Viswanathan Anand at the Mexico City FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007). In October 2008, Kramnik exercised his entitlement to a match as a challenger to World Champion Anand in Germany, but lost by the score of 4.5 - 6.5.
grkoste: "As it's quite difficult to win tournaments if you aren't capable with winning with Black, it also forces you to be able to do more than just draw with the Black pieces."
The job of the WCC cycle is to identify as nearly as possible the player who can sit down and win a long match with any player in the world. And there's obviously no requirement for such a player having to win even a single game as black.
KingG: <And there's obviously no requirement for such a player having to win even a single game as black.> I didn't say it was, but I think it's preferable if he can. That's why I listed it as an advantage of the round-robin format. Even Kramnik who was more of a "win with White, draw with Black" player than any other world champion in history seems to have realised it was a mistake after his match with Anand. Perhaps if he had had to win a candidates tournament, his repertoire would not have become so limited in the first place.
<The job of the WCC cycle is to identify as nearly as possible the player who can sit down and win a long match with any player in the world.> I'm not sure I agree with this. The job of a WCC cycle should be to determine who the best player in the world is, otherwise what sense does it make to be world champion? As such, a player should be tested in as many different areas as possible.
Even if we take your definition of the WCC cycle, the WC match is only 12 games these days. I hardly consider that to be a long match, and certainly not any match with less games. So a candidates cycle of mini-matches of 4 games is pointless in that regard.
To be honest I don't think matches have any greater objective merit than tournaments anyway. The reasons I prefer matches for determining the world championship are to do mainly with tradition. If we had been playing WC tournaments for a 100 years, then I would be fine with that as well. Although I have to admit I think matches also have more drama and tension, but some of that has been lost by reducing the number of games to 12 or even 14. I think 16 games should be the absolute minimum.
percyblakeney: It's strange that nothing has been said about what rating list will be used to pick the rating player. It's quite even around the crucial third spot at the moment:
followed by another three players in the 2750s. It could be of some importance to plan the events just before the list that is to be used. Vallejo gained over 20 points on the previous list just by beating players with a low rating, a dozen of them between 1623 and 2106. A few games against such opposition could be the difference between a spot in the Candidates and waiting for the next cycle.
"As such, a player should be tested in as many different areas as possible."
Doesn't make sense.
To find out whether Tyson or Holyfield is better you put them in a ring for 15 rounds. Who the hell cares how either of them would do in one-round bouts with a handful of lesser fighters?
Akavall: The problem with "tail enders" that I see is that they can be highly unstable, say, Morozevich or Ivanchuk. They can take a point from one on the leaders on a good day, but hand the point to another leader on another day, thus skewing the overall results.
I am not saying that a tournament is a bad format for a qualifier, mainly because other formats have other problems, but I think the above point should be kept in mind.
Jim Bartle: Certainly true, akavall. But it's true in other sports as well. Tennis has a number of powerful but inconsistent players who are capable of knocking off a big name in an early round. Especially guys with huge serves like Ivo Karlovic.
A controversial solution would be to only include those players who lie within some threshold rating of the top ranked player, e.g., within 50 Elo points. In that case, the number of players in each cycle would vary, and in fact if someone became sufficiently highly rated, they would not need to face a world championship defence. Of course, with Elo there's always the problem of sitting on one's rating through inactivity, but that could be gotten around by also requiring a minimum level of activity. Also, players would need to be informed of their inclusion in the cycle sufficiently far in advance to begin preparations.
KingG: <grkoste><To find out whether Tyson or Holyfield is better you put them in a ring for 15 rounds. Who the hell cares how either of them would do in one-round bouts with a handful of lesser fighters?>
I don't think comparing chess to other sports makes much sense either. Boxing has no tradition of round robins, and even if they did it wouldn't be practical in a sport where there risk of injury is so great.
In chess it's not clear whether a match or tournament is a better way of determining who the best player is, as there are drawbacks to both. Therefore I'm simply proposing that's it's better to have both formats at different stages of the qualifying cycle.
I don't even know anymore why we're having this discussion. Even though I do prefer a candidates tournament to candidates matches, I don't mind that much which format is adopted as long the candidates matches are of a serious length. Considering what's been proposed are matches of only 4-6 games, it's a no-contest in my view, the candidates tournament should be prefered. After all the ones in San Luis and Mexico City were quite successful.
square dance: and in a surprising development topalov bites off a portion of world champion vishy anand's ear. later claims he would like to eat anand's children, but that he would of course split the meal 50/50 with silvio danailov.
SmotheredKing: you know, I´m certainly not disputing Kramnik´s abilities as a top grandmaster here, but doesn´t he seem to have an excessive number of draws?
It means that in a tournament such as Wijk aan Zee, with 13 rounds, Kramnik and Leko would on average play 9 draws each (rounded up), while Kasparov and Anand would play 8 (rounded down).
It will depend on what you mean by excessive, and compared to what. A player like Morozevich has only 42%. Compared to him, you could say that almost every top player draws "excessively".
Personally I don't think draws are any worse than decisive games, and I keep trying to understand why people are making such a big deal about them.
For any individual player, a draw is certainly better than a loss. If player A has a similar style to player B, and they are about equally good except that player A is better at defending, he will probably have a draw percentage a bit higher than player B simply because he draws games that player B would lose.
Number of games in database: 1,927
Years covered: 1987 to 2008
Current FIDE rating: 2759
Highest rating achieved in database: 2811
Overall record: +486 -136 =784 (62.4%)*
* Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games
Based on games in the database; may be incomplete.
521 exhibition games, odds games, etc. are excluded from this statistic.
B33 B30 B90 B52 B58
King's Indian (89)
E97 E92 E94 E81 E86
English (81)
A15 A17 A14 A16 A10
Slav (75)
D17 D15 D11 D12 D19
Queen's Gambit Declined (66)
D37 D31 D38 D30 D35
Queen's Gambit Accepted (53)
D27 D26 D24 D21 D25
B33 B30 B31 B65 B57
Semi-Slav (99)
D45 D47 D43 D44 D46
Petrov (81)
C42 C43
Ruy Lopez (71)
C67 C65 C88 C78 C84
Slav (52)
D12 D19 D17 D10 D11
Sicilian Richter-Rauser (51)
B65 B62 B66 B63 B67
NOTABLE GAMES: [what is this?]
Kramnik vs Leko, 2004 1-0
Kasparov vs Kramnik, 1996 0-1
Leko vs Kramnik, 2004 0-1
Gelfand vs Kramnik, 1996 0-1
Kramnik vs Kasparov, 2000 1-0
Kramnik vs Kasparov, 1994 1-0
Leko vs Kramnik, 2004 1/2-1/2
Kramnik vs Anand, 2004 1/2-1/2
Kramnik vs Kasparov, 2001 1-0
Kramnik vs Morozevich, 2007 1-0
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: [what is this?]
Kasparov-Kramnik World Championship Match (2000)
Kramnik-Leko World Championship Match (2004)
Kramnik-Topalov World Championship Match (2006)
FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007)
Anand-Kramnik World Championship Match (2008)
GAME COLLECTIONS: [what is this?]
Match Kramnik! by amadeus
Vladimir Kramnik - Immortal masterpieces by Karpova
Vladimir Kramnik's Best Games by KingG
Interesting Kramnik games by acirce
Volodya versus Vesko by Resignation Trap
Attacking and deep games by Kramnik. by fgh
Kramnik! by larrewl
new by samikd
Alluring Kramnik games by positionalbrilliancy
A 1. Nf3! Repertoire (Version 1.0) by danielpi
Vladimir Kramnik by capybara
kramnik by randejong
Search Sacrifice Explorer for Vladimir Kramnik
Search Google® for Vladimir Kramnik
(born Jun-25-1975) Russia
[what is this?]
In 2000 Kramnik reached the pinnacle by defeating long-time champion Garry Kasparov for the World Championship in London by the score of 8 1/2 to 6 1/2. Kasparov was reported as saying, "He is the hardest player to beat in the world." The year 2002 saw Kramnik play an eight-game match against the program Deep Fritz (Computer) in Bahrain. The match ended in a 4-4 tie, with Kramnik and the computer each winning two games and drawing four. In 2006 the German organization Universal Event Promotion (UEP) would stage a return match of six games, which Kramnik lost, +0 -2 =4.
In 2004, Kramnik successfully defended his title by drawing a 14 game match against Hungarian GM Peter Leko in Brissago, Switzerland. His next title defense was in 2006, in a reunification match with the holder of the FIDE world title, Veselin Topalov. As part of his preparation for the match, Kramnik played first board for Russia in the 37th Chess Olympiad (2006), where he won the gold medal for best performance rating of all participants (2847). He also took part in the Dortmund Sparkassen (2006) supertournament, tying for first place with Peter Svidler.
The $1 million Kramnik-Topalov World Championship Match (2006), was played in Elista from September 21 to October 13, and drew record numbers of online followers on most major chess sites. After much controversy surrounding a forfeit in round 5, Kramnik won in the tiebreak phase, thereby becoming the first unified World Chess Champion since the schism of 1993.
Kramnik lost the unified World Champion title when he finished second to Viswanathan Anand at the Mexico City FIDE World Championship Tournament (2007). In October 2008, Kramnik exercised his entitlement to a match as a challenger to World Champion Anand in Germany, but lost by the score of 4.5 - 6.5.
2008 Chess Book of the Year
The job of the WCC cycle is to identify as nearly as possible the player who can sit down and win a long match with any player in the world. And there's obviously no requirement for such a player having to win even a single game as black.
<The job of the WCC cycle is to identify as nearly as possible the player who can sit down and win a long match with any player in the world.> I'm not sure I agree with this. The job of a WCC cycle should be to determine who the best player in the world is, otherwise what sense does it make to be world champion? As such, a player should be tested in as many different areas as possible.
Even if we take your definition of the WCC cycle, the WC match is only 12 games these days. I hardly consider that to be a long match, and certainly not any match with less games. So a candidates cycle of mini-matches of 4 games is pointless in that regard.
To be honest I don't think matches have any greater objective merit than tournaments anyway. The reasons I prefer matches for determining the world championship are to do mainly with tradition. If we had been playing WC tournaments for a 100 years, then I would be fine with that as well. Although I have to admit I think matches also have more drama and tension, but some of that has been lost by reducing the number of games to 12 or even 14. I think 16 games should be the absolute minimum.
Carlsen 2764.2
Radjabov 2762.5
Kramnik 2759.0
Aronian 2757.8
followed by another three players in the 2750s. It could be of some importance to plan the events just before the list that is to be used. Vallejo gained over 20 points on the previous list just by beating players with a low rating, a dozen of them between 1623 and 2106. A few games against such opposition could be the difference between a spot in the Candidates and waiting for the next cycle.
"As such, a player should be tested in as many different areas as possible."
Doesn't make sense.
To find out whether Tyson or Holyfield is better you put them in a ring for 15 rounds. Who the hell cares how either of them would do in one-round bouts with a handful of lesser fighters?
I am not saying that a tournament is a bad format for a qualifier, mainly because other formats have other problems, but I think the above point should be kept in mind.
A controversial solution would be to only include those players who lie within some threshold rating of the top ranked player, e.g., within 50 Elo points. In that case, the number of players in each cycle would vary, and in fact if someone became sufficiently highly rated, they would not need to face a world championship defence. Of course, with Elo there's always the problem of sitting on one's rating through inactivity, but that could be gotten around by also requiring a minimum level of activity. Also, players would need to be informed of their inclusion in the cycle sufficiently far in advance to begin preparations.
I don't think comparing chess to other sports makes much sense either. Boxing has no tradition of round robins, and even if they did it wouldn't be practical in a sport where there risk of injury is so great.
In chess it's not clear whether a match or tournament is a better way of determining who the best player is, as there are drawbacks to both. Therefore I'm simply proposing that's it's better to have both formats at different stages of the qualifying cycle.
I don't even know anymore why we're having this discussion. Even though I do prefer a candidates tournament to candidates matches, I don't mind that much which format is adopted as long the candidates matches are of a serious length. Considering what's been proposed are matches of only 4-6 games, it's a no-contest in my view, the candidates tournament should be prefered. After all the ones in San Luis and Mexico City were quite successful.
http://members.aon.at/sfischl/class.
Kramnik 69%, Leko 69%, Kasparov 63%, Anand 62%.
It means that in a tournament such as Wijk aan Zee, with 13 rounds, Kramnik and Leko would on average play 9 draws each (rounded up), while Kasparov and Anand would play 8 (rounded down).
It will depend on what you mean by excessive, and compared to what. A player like Morozevich has only 42%. Compared to him, you could say that almost every top player draws "excessively".
Personally I don't think draws are any worse than decisive games, and I keep trying to understand why people are making such a big deal about them.
For any individual player, a draw is certainly better than a loss. If player A has a similar style to player B, and they are about equally good except that player A is better at defending, he will probably have a draw percentage a bit higher than player B simply because he draws games that player B would lose.
Would that be a bad thing?