Σκακιστικά νέα

Komodo MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search) is the star newcomer to the Top Chess Engine Championship league. It has won Division 4, and qualified from Division 2 and 3 to enter the elite group of the top 16 engines in the world.

American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura defeated Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in the London Chess Classic and Grand Chess Tour Final by the super-slim margin of 15-13 – the win of a single blitz game – after a nail-biting sequence of seven draws.

After several rapid and blitz games where the difference between the two players hardly ever threatened to become of decisive proportions, in Blitz Game 4 Nakamura repeated a line of a hybrid Grunfeld-English they had played earlier in the match.

Milunka Lazarević, Woman Grandmaster, journalist, International Arbiter, Honorary FIDE member, passed away on 15th December at the age of 86.

She learned to play chess in the family, adding the game to a wide range of high school interests, including acting, guitar, poetry and singing in a choir. Soon she became champion of Novi Sad and at the age of 18 started playing in the Novosadski Chess Club.

Gawain Jones on Monday ensured his victory in the British Knockout Championship with 2 Rapid wins over fellow English GM Luke McShane, taking him to an insurmountable 17-3 lead without any need for points in the Blitz portion of the match.

Accurate defensive play and good endgame technique once again featured in the second Classical Game of the London Chess Classic Final, with Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave drawing after 53 moves of an evenly-contested Ruy Lopez Berlin Wall variation.

Gawain Jones on Sunday stormed into a 6-point lead in the British Knockout Championship Final, dispatching Luke McShane with a neat combination starting with 25 Bxf7+ that left his fellow English GM a pawn down with a hopeless position.

Out of an equal French Tarrasch, Jones as White banked on a well-placed central bishop to counteract McShane’s bishop pair. After an awkward rook placement by McShane (21…Rc5?!), Jones was in the driving seat, and the unfortunate 24…Bd6 set up Jones’s killer blow.

• France’s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and American Hikaru Nakamura split the honours in a keenly contested Main Line Grunfeld in Game 1 of the London Chess Classic Final, the concluding event of the Grand Chess Tour, which was played at the Olympia Conference Centre.

• The result ratchets up the tension for Game 2, which will be broadcast live from 14:00 UTC on Sunday, as a win would give a lead of 6 points going into the Rapid and Blitz portion of the match on Monday.

• Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave qualify for the London Chess Classic Final, the concluding event of the Grand Chess Tour, after a pulsating day of Rapid and Blitz, beating Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian, respectively.

• Nakamura and MVL both take the lead in the Rapid games, then clinch their places in the Final with blitz victories.

Written by Guy Haworth and Nelson Hernandez
Reading, UK and Maryland, USA

This is the first in a new series of analytical articles on TCEC events. The full text can be read below on this webpage, and at the bottom you will find a link to the full layouted article in pdf format, including the important tables, graphs and images.

TCEC is very grateful to the authors for their kind permission to publish these substantial and scholarly analyses of its events!

• World Championship challenger Fabiano Caruana is held to a draw by Hikaru Nakamura in the first semi-final game of the London Chess Classic, the final leg of the Grand Chess Tour, despite coming close to a decisive kingside attack on multiple occasions.

• The result leaves Caruana still just short of World Champion Magnus Carlsen’s No. 1 spot on the live ratings.

• Levon Aronian presses Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in an endgame but is also held to a draw in 74 moves.