jueves, 16 de diciembre de 2010

Carlsen Wins London Chess Classic


December 15, 2010, 4:00 pm

Carlsen Wins London Chess Classic

Carlsen and Short The start of what turned out to be the deciding game on Wednesday.

Game Replays

Win

Magnus Carlsen

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Loss

Nigel Short

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Draw

David Howell

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Draw

Luke McShane

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Draw

Viswanathan Anand

vs
Draw

Vladimir Kramnik

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Draw

Hikaru Nakamura

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Draw

Michael Adams

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Magnus Carlsen won the London Chess Classic by beating Nigel Short on Wednesday. Carlsen, a Norwegian grandmaster, has now won the tournament both years it has been played.
All the other games in the final round were drawn, though two of them were hard fought.
Carlsen finished with 13 points, using the Bilbao Scoring System, in which wins are worth 3 points and draws are 1. He had four wins, two losses and a draw. Viswanathan Anand of India, the world champion, and Luke McShane, an English grandmaster, tied for second and third, each with 11 points. They both won two games and drew five.
If the more traditional scoring system of 1 point for a win and 0.5 points for a loss had been used, Carlsen, Anand and McShane would all have tied for first.
Carlsen earned 50,000 euros for first place (about $66,000 at current exchange rates), while Anand and McShane each received 20,000 (about $26,500).
Hikaru Nakamura of the United States and Vladimir Kramnik of Russia tied for fourth and fifth with 10 points each, with Nakamura taking fourth on tie-breaker. Each won 10,000 euros (about $13,250).
Three English players finished at the bottom of the score table: Michael Adams with 8 points, David Howell with 4, and Short with 2.
Short put up very little resistance against Carlsen and looked over matched for most of the tournament as he lost five games and drew only two. He is 45 years old — which is old for an elite player — and age may have simply caught up with him.
Nakamura had White against Adams in the last round and fought until there were only kings on the board. If Nakamura had won the game, he would have finished in sole possession of second place. He had a good position early on, but missed a couple of his best moves and Adams was able to generate enough counterplay so that he was never in any real danger of losing.
McShane had a great tournament and seems to be finally fulfilling some of his early promise as a prodigy. He was tied for the lead before the last round and played Howell. Howell, another former prodigy, (he is 20 years old and 16 days older than Carlsen), had White and gained the upper hand. He actually missed a couple of winning moves at the end, but, after a disappointing tournament, he may have just been happy to draw.
The game between Anand and Kramnik was anti-climatic. Though there was potentially quite a bit at stake (both had a chance to win the tournament, depending on what happened in the other games), the old rivals (who played a world championship match in 2008 that Anand handily won) played tepidly.
Anand opened with the e pawn and Kramnik chose the Berlin Defense, which he showed in his 2000 match against Garry Kasparov is a very tough opening to crack. Nevertheless, there are interesting ways to play it. Neither player seemed inclined to fight, however, and they rapidly traded off pieces to arrive at a clearly drawn endgame.

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