http://www.hikarunakamura.com/main/...

In the fourth round, I faced my first major test as I had Black against the current World Champion, Viswanathan Anand. Many people have asked me if I felt nervous before the game. Having played against Carlsen and Kramnik in London certainly helped me as this felt like just another game. I think that once you play against anyone who is top five, you inevitably realize that it is just a name and they are still "only human." As such, I did not feel nervous at all and enjoyed the moment instead! Regardless of what happens, I can certainly tell my children in the future that I played a World Champion! That in itself, is more than enough!

The game itself started off as a Leningrad Dutch. Recently, I have started playing the Dutch frequently as it is an opening which is unbalanced and gives both sides chances. I also felt that as Vishy is not a native d4 player, something off the beaten path would yield me better chances. The opening was fairly tame, as I avoided several chances to go for serious complications. Eventually we reached the moment of truth.

In this position, the obvious trump for White is the better pawn structure with only one potential weakness in the pawn on a3. During the game, I actually felt mildly nervous as I had overlooked 19.Rac1 Nb5 20.Rxc6! after which White is close to winning. However, during the game I noticed the nice safety moves 19...Nf7 contending for and eventually preparing to play e5. Vishy chose a much less testing continuation in the more natural 19.Ne5 after 19...Bxe5 20.dxe5 I had the nice tactical shot in 20...Qa5! after which the position is almost completely dead equal. This led to a draw shortly there afterwards. Once again, I went in there with a goal and held my own with Black.

Round 5: Nakamura-Carlsen

In the fifth round I was White against another opponent who has become a bit too familiar. Having played Magnus so many times recently, (Norway,London) I have become extremely familiar with his style. This time around, I decided to deviate early and play the exchange Ruy Lopez. I felt this was simply a practical choice as I avoided any deep analysis by Magnus or Garry. In many ways, when I play against people such as Magnus, I try to play simple chess and just outplay them instead of playing a different game called memorization.

In the game itself, my plan worked out nearly perfectly as Magnus lashed out with the dubious 10..b5 which was a novelty. After this error I certainly had some initiative although, much to his credit, Magnus was able to alleviate the pressure and simplify into an ending where he had three pawns for a piece. During the game, I felt I did not miss any clear wins, although the following position is where many people thought I had winning chances.

In this position, I chose to play 47.Ne6. Many people seemed to be of the impression that 47.h4 was winning, but upon further analysis 47...b2 48.Nf5! g5! 49.Rxf6 Ke8 50.Rb6 gxh4 51.Kxh4 Kd7 followed by b1 leads to a simplification and a draw. After the game, I was rather disappointed that I could not win but sometimes chess is simply a draw.

Stay tuned for Part II shortly! Have a great Superbowl weekend, everyone!

Cheers,

In the second round I had White against another Dutch man albeit it, one who is a bit older and stronger! Shockingly Loek was playing in Wijk for a 19th! straight year. The last time we played in Amsterdam, I was White in a Najdorf, but blundered in a completely winning position and he was able to escape with a draw. This time around, we played another Najdorf although I decided to play the 6.Bg5 variation against him. Unfortunately for Loek, I was very well prepared and he walked right into my preparation.

This is the position after 15.Nd5. Unlike the game against Smeets, the knight on d5 is actually an intentional piece sacrifice. Prior to the game, I had prepared this variation with Kris and we concluded that the position might be holdable for Black, but it would be extremely unpleasant for a human to play. As it turned out, our assessment was correct since Loek went wrong almost immediately and simply got blown off the board. It was after this second round game that I realized I would at least have a chance of putting together a good showing in the tournament.

Round 3: Short-Nakamura

In the third round, I faced another familiar opponent in Nigel Short. Having faced Nigel only the month before in the London Chess Classic, I had become fairly familiar with his style. During the tournament in London, Kris and I both lamented having White against Nigel and not Black as we felt Nigel was significantly more solid with Black than White. This time around, I decided to surprise everyone by playing the Classical Sicilian. Having played it in Turkey during the World Team Championship, I felt like giving it a whirl! Nigel deviated from prep very early on by choosing to play the Boleslavskij variation. At which point the following critical position arose.

http://www.hikarunakamura.com/main/...

Wijk aan Zee Recap Part I
Feb
6 Written by: Hikaru Nakamura
2/6/2010 11:22 AM

Hello once again to everyone out there in the blogosphere. Before I dive right into talking about Wijk, I would like to clear up a certain rumour from the online world. I am not playing in Aeroflot, nor did I ever seriously consider it. Any suggestions to the contrary are simply not true. Now that this is out of the way, onto the tournament recap!

Round 1: Smeets-Nakamura

In the first round, I had Black against Dutch GM Jan Smeets. Like quite a few other European GMs, I have seen him at several tournaments over the past few years but not had the opportunity to play. Overall, Jan seems to be a very solid player with a pretty good general knowledge of openings. In our game, he surprised me by playing the 6.Bg5 variation against the Najdorf. As fate would have it, the tournament seemed to be a referendum on whether the Bg5 variation is good for White or not. I picked a mild sideline which surprised Jan, and he played a tame variation.

http://ca.video.yahoo.com/watch/690...

<just like timothy richman though considered a genius but still human>

and as nak said....

"Have a great Superbowl weekend, everyone!"

A few people critizes some polemics that he has had playing blitz online with a few fans that dont understand that ICC is fun but i havent seen most of them critize other player who has refused to shake hands with his opponent after losing a game in a tournament, or players who has tried to cheat repeating a move after having played another, or players who has not known how to recognise his opponent victory, etc.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/g...
This interesting link explains how Kris has build a special super fast computer, running day and night, weeks and months in advance of important tournaments. It provides Naka with opening novelties, tailored for each opponent. Kris accesses his computer through remote desktop/internet, enabling analyzes from his hotel room, simultaneously with Naka playing downstairs.

Kris himself is a chess teacher and seems to be a product of his mother, who is a high grade computer specialist. Read her interesting story here: http://www.debshinder.com/

This americans used technology to their advantage.

naka got no sponsor like magnus got, got no millions at his disposal but he got a sound judgement to lure things in his advantage.

< a soldier once reported to his general that their lacking machinegun and that their opponent in the field got plenty of it, the general barked back then go grab their machine gun and shoot them!>

actually the general is general erwin rommel.The man i find as shrew as naka!

Some chess players are deeply into technology; others, not so much. Many of today’s young champions are in their teens and twenties. They are “digital natives” — part of the generation that grew up with computers. They tend to be comfortable with using high-tech aids to help them prepare for games and hone their tactics and techniques. Many of the players at the top layers hire someone else to handle the data analysis and assist them in planning strategies — after all, two heads are always better than one, and it helps to have different perspectives.

My son Kris Littlejohn works many tournaments as “second” to U.S. Chess Champion Hikaru Nakamura. He handles much of the data gathering and analysis and works closely with Hikaru in planning for tournaments. Kris built a computer for that purpose — a Nehalem i920 3.2 GHz processor-based tower with 6 GB of RAM and a fast Intel x25 M SSD. It runs Windows Server 2008 R2, a 64-bit operating system that, like Windows 7, takes advantage of TRIM, a technology that allows the operating system to pass information to the SSD controller about data blocks that are no longer in use. This helps the SSD maintain its high speed over its lifespan, instead of slowing down after too many cells have been written to. (MSDN has more information about SSD optimization in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.)

Kris performs some of his work weeks or even months before a tournament, as soon as he knows which players are entered. He starts gathering information from the databases about the moves those players like to use. Once he knows which players Hikaru will be going up against and finds out the “colors” (who will play white and who will play black in each game), he analyzes the openings commonly used by Hikaru’s opponents. Then he tries to find a “novelty” — a responsive move that has never been played before. He uses branching to predict all the possible moves that a given opponent could play, and which moves that player would be comfortable with, given his historical games. Branching each move, he eventually comes up with a report in the format of game notation, but with all the branching possibilities included.

He works right up to (and often through) the night before a game, taking into consideration changes based on an opponent’s performance in previous games during the current tournament or tournament conditions (such as the position/ranking Hikaru is in at a given time and whether he needs a win or just a draw at that point). Since the tournaments are played all over the world, Kris uses his laptop and the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to connect to his Nehalem computer back home and perform all these tasks. He also has a backup laptop available that runs the chess engine and database, albeit more slowly, in case of Internet outages.

<Kris and Hikaru go over the report together, and Hikaru memorizes the 500-1000 moves that it includes, reciting it back to Kris without looking at the board to ensure that he has all the information in his head when he goes into a game. And that’s when computational power ends and human skill and talent take over.>

not everybody got millions to spend in their training, the way magnus does.. with few thousand bucks naka was able to utilize resources available to him in its fullest. i hope this serve as a lesson to other young upstarts who worry about not having sponsor nor cant afford to hire a GM for a second.

fischer dont have the luxury that the russian masters got, no pension no, no nice dacha to spend vacation,no armies of assistant to correct his error, but still he achieved his goal.

if carlsen is enjoying his training having the best technology could offer him and could affored to hire the russian GM with his millions, their is always a way to even the playing field.

fischer did it once, naka is showing it now.

to all juniors whos aiming for the world crown but dont have the magnus luxury. dont be intimidated by his money and what it can buy.The will to achieved the goal matters.

Otherwise piss your pants because magnus got gary.>

The United States is a big country, and despite some recent heavy recession, still holds the largest economy in the world.

And yet, nobody is willing to sponsor their top chess players or organize top tournaments to improve their experience?

Chess players are not Hollywood stars or professional sport players. They don't demand millions.

Pay same amount of money as you would pay to freshman in some investment bank, and they can afford to hire their coach and take part in strong open tournaments around the world.

And now envying Magnus Carlsen's environment? (which, as far as I know, is nothing special, and their parents paid for everything until he got global recognition)

LOL, go to 9:34 of this video to see Magnus piss his pants, and soon after rush away from the table shaking his obviously wet leg.

as always, same in the case of bobby fischer before.

thats why i stated naka is shrewed enough to turn things into his advantage.

<Naka turned into a monsterplayer with this Kris fellow and his computer thing. Magnus only got himself and Garry >

thats my answer to the sarcasm of your post, let you all guy piss your pants if you want because he got gary.

The problem is that chess lacks of professional organization and democracy in his main strucure The Fide. Fide needs to be refounded to have a solid organization running away from the personalism and political interest from the past.

well not everybody is previleged to have certain things in life, if some private sector in norway choose to help magnus in his quest to become a world champion its not his faulth.

my post just concern others who dont have the same previlege in life.

this is from a us citizen and book writer, so maybe it's not entirely weird that some foreigners are "confused".

thanks for the link, soldal.

is barbara ehrenreich "anti-american", or is she simply a person that isn't unwilling to ask and ponder some critical questions? from what i read, she was also involved in the anti-vietnam war movement - does that make her "anti-american" too?

usa is vast and despite the "2 party political polarisation" seems to foster about any point of view about any subject there is, on the individual level. on the macro-level, however, there are a number of tendencies, movements, philosophies, characteristics etc. that are more dominant than others. and of course, much of the time dominant movements result in some counter-movement and opposition; with the diversity in such a big nation that's almost inevitable.

however, the existence of internal opposition and disagreement does hardly remove some ideology/philosophy's role of representing something typical or significant for (a notable amount of) american people. still, that doesn't make criticism of some ideology or philosophy present in the usa a criticism of usa or america as such - it's still (only) a criticism of that ideology/philosophy. implying otherwise, trying to avoid taking a stand on the entire critical perspective by using ad hominems based on accusations of "anti-american sentiment" and such, remains simple and simplistic strategies of a dishonest nature.