Anyone watching the World Chess Championship?

[CerebroDragon]

Greetings IW Chess fans!

Finally the match to reunify the world chess championship is upon us, between Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik and FIDE World Champion Veselin Topalov.As a keen player, I'm pretty ecstatic - fans everywhere have been waiting for this reunification match to happen for some time now to hopefully quell the confusion as to who is in fact 'world champion'.
I've been keeping track of the progress of the games, which so far have yielded some fantastic chess 2.5 to 0.5 in favour of Kramnik, who at this stage has managed to positionally outlast the ever confident and energetic Topalov in two fascinating games. Despite game three being a draw, it also contained some nice tension and hidden tactics, with Kramnik sacrificing a rook for perpetual check.

The mistakes humans make are alarmingly obvious to everyone now using chess engines like Fritz to analyse the games - Topalov for example missed a chance to capitalise on a blunder in the second game with Rxg4+ which would have brought the match back to a tense kind of equilibrium. [img]smile.gif[/img] But such is the fallibility of the human condition, particuarly under stress and time-trouble!

Some fine reports, analysis on the games and indeed the world chess scene in general can be found at ol' chessbase.
www.chessbase.com

So is anyone else following the match? I recall Black Baron being a very strong player (rated above 2000 - you still around mate?) and I'm sure there would be others following it more casually in the news and internet media. There are an abundance of options to view the games live, but the most popular are either playchess.com or the Internet Chess Club (ICC) which requires the software blitzen to be downloaded from www.chessclub.com. You can get a trial membership for a week in order to view the game and to even play some games against members and training bots whilst you're there.

Topalov has to regroup his forces in order to challenge Kramnik now and will most likely push again for the advantage with white in game four tonight. Will he stick with 1.d4 or go for more forceful tactical chances with 1.e4 and risk facing a sicilian? (Although Kramnik has used the Petroff as an equalising weapon aswell...) Regardless, it should be powerful stuff!

Chequered squares and rook forks to you all,
CD

[ 09-27-2006, 04:33 AM: Message edited by: CerebroDragon ]

[Target]

Not seen any in ages, the last time I watched was Garry Kasparov against some English man, can't remember his name, but Kasparov won quite easily IIRC.
What happened to that IBM computer that beat everyone, will this winner get to play it. Deep Blue was it called?

[CerebroDragon]

Mmm, that most likely would have been Nigel Short and his challenge for the title against Garry Kasparov back in '93. When asked by the media who he thought his challenger would be that year, Garry is famously quoted as saying "It'll be Short and it'll be Short". Truth be told the games were tough slugfests, even though Kasparov won pretty handily in the end. Garry officially retired from competitive chess last year, ironically losing his final game to...none other than Veselin Topalov! But he will be remembered as one of the greatest, definitely. [img]smile.gif[/img]

However, the chess world hasn't quite been the same since the Kasparov vs Short match, since it was when the infamous split from FIDE occurred, resulting in the current bizarre situation of having two world champions, thus arguments reigning world-wide as to who it really is. Whilst Vladimir Kramnik is the classical champion in the long line of champions since Steinitz, having defeated Kasparov in 2000, Topalov is FIDE champion, an impressive winner of their large round robin world championship.
Hence, we have the idea of 'reunification' for the present match! (Although the story really is much more complex than this...)

As for Deep Blue and Deeper Blue, that's quite a controversial matter. Both have been retired by IBM after both defeating Kasparov back in 96 and 97. There's a quick report about it at wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue

Man Vs Machine matches are happening, usually with a humbling defeat for humanity. However, Kramnik obtained a 4-4 draw with Deep Fritz back in 2002, so perhaps not all hope is lost!

Game Four of the current match was a hard fought positional grind of 54 moves in which Topalov had a massive space advantage in which he sacrificed a pawn. 3-1 is the score to Vladimir's advantage. The tension can only increase as Topalov needs to find a win very soon!

Cheers,
CD