Carlsen vs Nepomniachi

[do.ob]

I think people are exaggerating the draw complaints on this one. Weve had four games and I feel like in three of them players were making a genuine effort that resulted in interesting games. If I remember correctly it's miles better than the matches against Caruana and Karjakin.
Personally I'd also rather not have time controls reduced, I want to see both players get the time they need, rather than to stress them into blunders and if they want to play for a draw they will probably find the lines that will accomplish it, even with less time.
I think they need to look for other incentives that make draws less appealing. An extreme version would be to give the title to the defender in case of a draw, but that wouldnt exactly be perfect either.

 

[Desert Eagle]

Very interesting end game in game 6. Carlsen with 3 minutes left on the clock.

Both players under 5 minutes now. Back n forth game going down to the wire

 

[Samid]

That was high octane stuff

Draw problem is easy to solve. Reduce the time. You don't need 2 hours for 40 moves.

 

[Kasper]

That was high octane stuff

Draw problem is easy to solve. Reduce the time. You don't need 2 hours for 40 moves.

Just said to my mate: let the time run down to 10 minutes for these super GMs and the engine bar finally goes yolo

 

[do.ob]

I'm watching the Svidler and Kramnik stream, both amazing players themselves, and their brains are completely fried, from just commentating for 7 hours. Yet Nepo always seems to find answers that those two completely miss.

edit: ...and Nepo's next move was inaccurate

 

[Samid]

This has been so intense!

 

[sullydnl]

My expert opinion is that these guys are pretty good at chess.

I'm tired just following it all day, they must be shattered.

 

[Kasper]

Now the longest game in World Chess Championship history (by number of moves).

 

[Motorman]

This is great stuff.

 

[do.ob]

You know it's a long game when the commentators have given up on deep analysis and switch to hard alcohol.

 

[Samid]

Vintage Magnus. Torture the opponent to death from a completely drawn position

 

[do.ob]

Couldn't even make it to 8 hours. Boo!

Hopefully Nepo can recover from this. Mentally and in terms of energy this game must have been brutal. Amazing accuracy from Magnus after the 40th move.

 

[VanDeBank]

Haven't been following these at all. Where was the decisive mistake for Nepo? One moment I tune in to commentators saying: "it's a tablebase draw", few moves later, he resigns.

 

[Jack-C20]

I remember browsing Twitch months ago and seeing Chess featuring Carlsen. I didn’t know what was going on but was still pretty entertaining somehow. Just see this thread so went to look at Twitch again. Something really weird about two genius minds going at it and at the same time on the same screen, twitch chat being the complete opposite. Thousands of people posting mindless crap. I’ll understand top level chess before I understand Twitch chat on a high viewer count channel.

 

[do.ob]

Haven't been following these at all. Where was the decisive mistake for Nepo? One moment I tune in to commentators saying: "it's a tablebase draw", few moves later, he resigns.

It wasn't necessarily one huge blunder. The evaluation went back and forth when the clock ran down before the 40th move and after the 40th Carlsen ended up with two rooks for a queen and a better pawn structure/king, Magnus with the better position, but Nepo with counterplay. The super GM commentators thought it was incredibly difficult to hold, perhaps won, but engines showed equality. Magnus could pose one question after another to Nepo without really comitting and the latter had to find the correct answer literally a 100 moves in a row. When both ran into time trouble again Nepo made an inaccurate move or two and Magnus didn't and so he eventually made progress.

 

[Kasper]

Haven't been following these at all. Where was the decisive mistake for Nepo? One moment I tune in to commentators saying: "it's a tablebase draw", few moves later, he resigns.

A tablebase draw only means that a computer would draw a position with perfect play. Once the position in the endgame had been simplified down to two pawns, rook and knight vs queen, a human wins this more often then not. The further these pawns got pushed up the board, the more accurate Nepo had to be, at some point he had only two correct moves that would've kept it a tablebase draw at which he blundered. Magnus also didn't play 100% perfect at the end but his position allowed him to make more "okay" moves without finding the best one while Nepo had to constantly stay near perfect.

 

[Amar__]

Eventually he did make a mistake with moving the queen to the right I think, not having the opportunity to go for check and stop Magnus' pawns moving forward.

 

[17Larsson]

I watched that but I'm going to need to watch about five different reviews to barely understand it

 

[sullydnl]

Haven't been following these at all. Where was the decisive mistake for Nepo? One moment I tune in to commentators saying: "it's a tablebase draw", few moves later, he resigns.

It changed from tablebase draw to white win when Nepo brought his queen to e6 on move 130. It needed to go on one of two other squares, apparently.

 

[pillory]

Yeah, he played Qe6 here:

For some mysterious reason Qb1 and Qc2 were the only drawing moves.

 

[sullydnl]

Yeah, he played Qe6 here:

For some mysterious reason Qb1 and Qc2 were the only drawing moves.

From what I remember on the commentary those moves kept the diagonal alive for checks against the king or something.

Though there were earlier turning points too:

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[berbatrick]

easy-to-understand analysis of the whole game

 

[pillory]

Though there were earlier turning points too:

Another amusing thing Giri pointed out on Twitter was that Nepo's 31... Bb2? was a blunder only because 37. Rc6! is completely winning in the position below, despite black's connected passed pawns and white's doomed knight.

Not surprising that both players missed it, escpecially considering the clock situation.

(31... Bb2 32. Rc5 Qd6 33.Rcc2 Bxa3 34.Nf4 Qxb4 35.Rdd7 e5 36.Nxh5+ Kg6)

 

[do.ob]

Yeah, he played Qe6 here:

For some mysterious reason Qb1 and Qc2 were the only drawing moves.

That's kind of the downside of engines. You're looking at the 130th move. After over seven hours of play and three minutes on the clock Nepo picked the "wrong" move. I've watched Svidler and Kramnik, two elite world class Grandmasters commentate and they were convinced this was won for white long before. In an academic sense it's important to analyze the intricacies of the position, but under a realistic scope of events this wasn't a blunder, it was a reasonable human inaccuracy. I think Nepo will be far more frustrated with his decision not to take the b_4 (feck you Redcafe censorship) pawn before the 40th move.

here you see Anish Giri, world #6 put down the curcial "mistake" in an entirely different position:

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Engine evaluation switched from 0.0 to 0.2.

 

[pillory]

Yeah, there were tons of top players saying "this is a nightmare for black" while the engines were bleating on about 0.00.

 

[donkeyfish]

Dull draw, perfect for Carlsen

 

[VanDeBank]

From what I remember on the commentary those moves kept the diagonal alive for checks against the king or something.

Though there were earlier turning points too:

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Ha, I once played Giri in a local swiss tournament many years ago, before he was a GM (yeah, he was practically a baby).
My position was lost by move 30.

 

[donkeyfish]

Trying the chess.com stream today, gotta say Caruana seems like a very good commentator so far

 

[Kasper]

Trying the chess.com stream today, gotta say Caruana seems like a very good commentator so far

Caruana and Hess are great, for me it's the best coverage of the event. It only has two downsides:
- Danny Rensch can be quite annoying and cringey with his over the top entertainment attempts.
- They're having a ridiculous amount of breaks. I understand that no one will want to commentate straight for 6 hours but they definitely are overdoing it, sometimes feels like 10 minute breaks then 10 minutes commentary and back to 10 minutes break. Even in critical moments of the match.

 

[donkeyfish]

Caruana and Hess are great, for me it's the best coverage of the event. It only has two downsides:
- Danny Rensch can be quite annoying and cringey with his over the top entertainment attempts.
- They're having a ridiculous amount of breaks. I understand that no one will want to commentate straight for 6 hours but they definitely are overdoing it, sometimes feels like 10 minute breaks then 10 minutes commentary and back to 10 minutes break. Even in critical moments of the match.

Yeah agree it's a break now already ffs! Polgar and Giri takes a break after several hours first.

I also don't like Danny Rensch, he's too American if that makes sense

 

[Kasper]

Nepo in meltdown it seems, something plenty of people predicted might happen once he goes a game behind. Spending barely time at the board and blitzing out moves but his position keeps getting worse and Carlsen seems comfortable.
(I'm obviously a clueless 1300 who's basing this purely at what Caruana and Hess are saying and what the engine bar tells me )

 

[donkeyfish]

He might've had a chance if he reacted well after blundering Qa3, but he just made a mistake on every move after that for a while until the engine gave +5 or something.

So meltdown does appear to be the case.

 

[do.ob]

Unfortunately I have missed most of the broadcast, but the timing of Nepo's meltdown seems a bit strang, doesn't it? It would have been logical to me if he collapsed last game, still exhausted from his marathon and maybe trying to force things too much with white. But why now? And out of a relatively boring (?!) Petroff position as well!?

You can see the pain in his face right now.

 

[sullydnl]

Felt quite sorry for Nepo afterwards. Losing like that and then having to brave a press conference is rough enough in any sport but particularly when you know you're only 8 of 14 games through the actual match. Would be like Ole having to give a press conference at half time in the City game.

This isn't a good place to be:

 

[do.ob]

Nepo just missed a chance to pose quite a few questions to Carlsen by not playing 15. b 4, the move seems a bit "computerish", but probably not impossible to find if he thought more about it either. Carlsen ran into it with a quick move as well.

 

[do.ob]

Another HUGE blunder from Nepo. I feel sorry for him, but this is getting truly embarrassing. Positively Brazilian.

 

[Samid]

Nepo has lost the plot. One of the worst challengers ever?

 

[do.ob]

These last two blunders aren't even about chess anymore. A 1200 player would feel like an idiot committing them. It's just a huge mental implosion.

Magnus looks like he feels like shit being part of this. He basically just eliminated any kind of lingering doubt abut the title and it looks like he's the one who blundered.

Magnus isn't leaving the board (maybe expecting resignation?) and Nepo not returning to the board either anymore.. so brutal...

 

[Kasper]

No idea who in Nepos camp thought it was a good idea trying to put Magnus in time pressure in so many matches. He blitzed out so many moves without a reason and now walks into this blunder, even with Magnus low on time this has completely backfired.

 

[do.ob]

No idea who in Nepos camp thought it was a good idea trying to put Magnus in time pressure in so many matches. He blitzed out so many moves without a reason and now walks into this blunder, even with Magnus low on time this has completely backfired.

Giri thought it was sort of reasonable, saying Nepo, failing to gain an advantage on the board, was pushing his time advantage to put Magnus under pressure that way.
And this blunder has nothing to do with quick moves either, in my opinion. When you take these b2/b7 pawns (or the rooks in the corner behind them) it's one of the most basic of patterns that the piece will be trapped.