Sinquefield Cup 2014

"Still, let's not forget all the positions Caruana did convert, which is of course the vast majority. And the fact that he could always be the one in control"

Indeed, I was more questioning the implied idea that any pronouncements about Nakamura going wrong might be refuted by the eventual result of the game.

Caruana not only won seven of his nine games, he had winning positions in the remaining two as well.

I suppose you could look at the lineup and say that 2 out of the 6 players had absolute shockers...Aronian said himself he played terribly...and Nakamura was hopelessly out of form too. Carlsen lost his game with Caruana trying to force the issue...probably could have easily drawn.

This is a difficult and long tournament.  I'd be more surprised if they didn't show signs of fatigue... not that I know much about this level of play, but I'm tired after just 2 day tournaments   I can't really imagine one this long.

Aronian has had a terrible event. +1-3=5 is one thing, but he won from a lost position and was lost also in the last game even if his opponent missed the win. But if things had been going very much against him it could have been +0-5=4, even if such a resourceful player like Aronian always will save some lost positions.

"This is a difficult and long tournament"

Yes, many very long games and only one rest day. I was looking at the discussion at chessgames.com and the pronouncements concerning what a talentless endgame bungler Carlsen is compared to the greats come by the dozens and are a bit amusing to read :-)

No doubt the same idiots who were screaming it was a win 20 moves after it was a dead draw because stockfish was telling them +5

It's fun to read GM Akobian's post game annotations at Chessbase. He states that the endgame at move 36 should be a draw and only give Aronian several exclamation mark moves after that. Still Carlsen did miss a win after that (so how could the endgame have been drawn to begin with if Aronian played excellently and still was lost?), but maybe it wasn't as trivial a win to find after six hours as the other post game comments suggest.

Knowing the vancura position myself, I thought it was a textbook draw too.  And when Finegold announced a win on air he seemed to think it was a hard to find idea exclaiming "we had lots of help to find this move" e.g. the run-of-the-mill GMs didn't find it on their own.  At least that was my impression.

So it was my feeling this was a hard to find idea.

Interestingly though in the post game interview Carlsen was very critical of himself.  He said he saw 46.Kc2 and thought he'd play h6 first, and then immediately realized he'd blown the win.  I tend to believe him and I'm pretty impressed he saw it all.

These online jokers with SF running on TBs don't know anything  Or at least I think they show too little respect.

Hehe, some examples of real expert comments:

"Can't even win a basic rook endgame"

"If Smyslov was alive to see this he would turn in his grave"

"a shame for chess ever since he luckily became WC"

"Complete lack of endgame understanding"

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I tend to agree GMs show a surprising lack of understanding of basic endgames.  But I don't think this was one of those times.

Here's a video I recently came across by chance.  I like Alejandro Ramirez, and I'm sure this is a bit embarrassing to him.  Anyway the video starts in a basic position taught to kids and beginners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnFt527Zspw

I know right? The more I think about it... I mean even if you've played 3 or 4 great games you're still so far from the finish line. And there was only one rest day. You just can't relax. That's another thing I appreciate about all these guys here. They (with the exception of naka maybe) are putting so much into these games with so little break time in between, and we get to watch it.

You really don't think this was just alejandro letting off some steam? I actually do kind of admire that competitive spirit, even if it's irrational! It's as if he's just too engaged with the game to stop playing.

lol when you linked the video, I was thinking, how on Earth does Lenderman mess this up? I just assumed if they would post the video it would be one where one guy screws up really badly.

Today the short time controls and lack of adjournments make comparisons difficult, but I often think about what John Nunn wrote about the old Masters every time it is talked about how much stronger Rubinstein et al were in the endgame than Carlsen et al. He analysed a tournament around Rubinstein's peak and found missed piece losing knight forks on the endgame and failures to win rook up positions etc. His conclusion was that people tend to think about the really classical endgames of the past greats and ignore all the blunders. People tend to be more critical today, and if someone with little time on the clock makes some subtle mistake he is quickly declared to have nothing on Rubinstein, Smyslov et al.

What I mean is it's embarrassing to not find a way to promote to a queen.

Playing the rook and knight vs rook at the end of a G/10 game is fine.

"I think the reference is in context of a player losing but playing the best they can where the opponent misses the winning opportunities"

But if a strong GM after the game can declare that the endgame is drawn and the player that is worse doesn't make any mistakes still gets a lost position the endgame was maybe not all that simple.

That's an excellent point fabelhaft.

Oh... is it weird that I forgot about the initial position when they were playing on the rook and knight vs rook?

Too late at night I guess. Anyway GM Gserper has written about this recently. Still let's keep in mind that under huge samples rare occurences will happen. They might not seem rare if you keep searching for the exceptions, but in reality they probably are quite rare.

Interesting, I'll keep that in mind.  I guess we do tend to romanticize the past greats whose games we learned from, and our authors elivate them to god-like status in certain aspects.