London Chess Classic

Originally posted by greenpawn34
Never mind the London Games....Boring.

Game 8543964
During the game the Black Queen makes over 30 moves missing a few
mates while she gobbles up the White army.
Infact between move 17 and move 35 Black makes nothing but Queen moves.

The g8 Knight stays at home for 65 moves then on move 66 it moves
and gives instant mate. A Classic.

Move 19 was quite interesting 🙂

OK there are one or two minor errors but I bet none of the players currently
playing in London have mated on move 66 with a previously unmoved Knight.
I love these games. It's impossible to predict what is coming next.

I know the Black player, he's a good lad. He runs a 2nd hand book shop
in Edinburgh. Chess is just a minor pastime for him but he loves the game
He plays better on a real board when he his is just looking at one game.

I played him when he first appeared on here.
The secret when playing him is not to let him get his g8 Knight out. 😉
Game 8544083

In round 5 i was disappionted in Short's 3rd and 4th moves.

Originally posted by grandmasteryoda
Nakamura vs Anand was one of the best games I've seen. Black looked dead in the water at one point but completely turned it around.

Nakamura - Anand with comments from Andrew Martin

YouTube

It was Anand-Nakamura, by the way. And it was an amazing game, likely much-quoted in future anthologies.

I left to play an OTB game with play having reached c. move 25. My team colleagues asked me how things stood. I called it strongly for Anand, helped in my assessment by Houdini which gave c. +1.5 or better. Returning home later, I was therefore surprised to find Nakamura had won.

So how did it happen? Imperceptibly is how. Anand made a small positional misjudgement with 29. Nc4 that allowed Nakamura a little breathing space. The positional misjudgement is small. But it's crucial. I doubt that either Anand or Nakamura were aware of the tipping of the balance. This is why OTB play at this level is so inferior to that played by the leading players on RHP. Quite simply, the elite GMs struggle to know how things stand.

In the end of course, Nakamura pushed on with the only options available to him; and Anand drifted into helpless defence. Great struggle; great instructive game. But you'd never see such poor error-strewn play from the leading guys in here