2014 World Chess Championship Closing Ceremony

This is the first time a head of state attends the World Chess Championship. Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, giving a speech at the closing ceremony in Sochi. Followed by handing Magnus Carlsen the World Championship trophy.
 

SCID + Stockfish

I was interested in finding open-source chess tools for analysis, study and preparation. Last time I checked, I wasn't too excited, but this time I am happy to find about SCID. SCID is an open-source chess database that has a lot of the options available in commercial databases. It has also a reasonable UI and can run on Windows, Linux and Mac. Running on Linux and Mac is a big advantage in itself, as most commercial database and playing software are only for Windows. This was always a challenge for me, as I prefer Linux or Mac for most of my work, and getting chess software on them required some work-around. Let me first say that the last commercial software I had was Fritz 8 and ChessBase 8, which are quite old now (the current versions are Fritz 13 and ChessBase 12), so any comparison will be based on that.

Doing some research, I found that there's a fork from SCID, called SCID vs. PC, that was recommended as more up-to-date and better maintained. I haven't verified that myself, as I went to SCID vs. PC directly without trying the original SCID. In the downloads, they already have a Mac DMG and once I installed that, it worked directly without the need for any tweaking. I was happy with the easy installation and the UI was also reasonable, although not very intuitive initially and might take some time to get used to it. For example, to save my first game, I had to try several times, initially I got confused by the Clipbase which turned out to be only in memory and not saved to disk. Then, saving to a newly created database didn't work as expected and I had to try different ways. Also, comments and annotations required some trial to figure out.

SCID installed with a few engines that can be used for analysis and also to play against them. One thing I like in SCID compared to ChessBase, is that you can start a game against any of the engines directly. In ChessBase, you had to switch to Fritz interface in order to do that. The engines installed didn't look so strong, so I decided to search for the strongest open-source engine and here I came across Stockfish.

If you follow chess programming or computer chess competitions, Stockfish is known as one of the strongest and highest rated along with Houdini, Komodo and Rybka. After downloading Stockfish engine and its book, it required some work to get it to work with SCID. First step is to compile and build the engine, then putting the generated binary file and the book in the same directory. In my case, I used the 64-bits file as it matches with my Mac. Then from SCID, open the engine analysis window from the menu and select to add a new engine. Enter the directory where you put Stockfish binary and book then save. Now, you should be able to see Stockfish on the list of engines and if you double-click, it should start showing analysis for the position.

The combination of SCID + Stockfish so far looks like a great tool for analysis and you can also add other strong engines to it, as I will present in later posts. Next thing required for this to become a complete preparation tool, is to include a recent opening book and large database of games. I haven't checked how up-to-date the book that comes with Stockfish and other sources of games available online, which will also be a topic for further investigation.

Carlsen new Chess World Champiom

The 2013 World Championship Anand-Carlsen match ended with Magnus Carlsen as the new World Champion winning over Viswanathan Anand 6.5-3.5. The last 2 games saw some fighting chess (that were missing from earlier games!), especially from Anand who was in a must-win situation. 

In game 9, Anand played d4 and the Saemisch variation against Nimzo-Indian getting a strong attack, but then he blundered with 28. Nf1?? and resigned directly. In game 10, Anand played a Sicilian against Carlsen e4, and after a long game that saw mistakes from both sides, Carlsen secured the draw and the title.

Draws in Games 7 and 8

After the two decisive games, we are back again to uneventful draws in games 7 and 8 of the 2013 World Championship Anand-Carlsen match. Anand looked cautious after his two losses and Carlsen seemed satisfied to get closer to the title. Both games were Ruy Lopez, Berlin variation, where both players tried it in black and white!

Carlsen wins Games 5 and 6

After starting with 4 draws, Magnus Carlsen wins two games in a row to take the lead in the 2013 World Championship match. The wins are typical Carlsen play, where he enters the endgame with a minimal advantage, but then keeps digging for his opponent inaccuracies, using his great endgame skills to eventually get the point. The current world champion Viswanathan Anand is now in a tough position to come back with 6 games remaining. Anand will need to find a way to confront this strategy and play more actively to reach positions that he can be more successful at.

Exciting Draws in Games 3 and 4

After the quick draws in the first two games, the 2013 World Championship Anand-Carlsen match is getting more exciting. In game 3, Anand with black took the initiative and had winning chances after pushing Carlsen queen to the corner. The game eventually reached a dead drawn position, but they kept playing till the last pawn, maybe due to fans complaints about the earlier short draws!

In game 4, it was the opposite! Carlsen with black had the winning chance, after a pawn sacrifice from Anand that had little compensation. Anand defended well and was able to come with some smart moves to reach a drawn ending.

Second Game also Quick Draw

The second Anand-Carlsen game in the 2013 World Championship match also ended in a quick 25-move draw. This game started with a sharp opposite-side castling Caro-Kann, but then also ended in repetition. Anand had a chance in move 18 to play for an attack with 18.Qg4, but instead exchanged queens and simplified the position to an equal ending.

This was the critical position of the game, where white could have played for a win.