The main event that continues to excite the chess community these days is the match in which world champion Vladimir Kramnik tries to recoup by fighting the latest version of the Fritz computer program. In order to reduce the match in a draw, Man seems to need quite a bit: to win, as chess players often joke, “one game in a row”, but to do this when meeting an opponent who never allows tactical miscalculations is not easy ...
By the way, simultaneously with the end of this match in Moscow, another major event started in the Central Chess Player’s House - the super final of the 59th championship of Russia, which, against the background of the similar tournaments of the previous two years, doesn’t look, because there are no such luminaries among the grandmasters participating in it, like Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Grischuk, Alexander Khalifman and Yevgeny Bareev, and indeed, by all external signs, the current superfinal has a pronounced youth character. As if justifying themselves about the assembled, or rather, not assembled composition of the participants, the officials of the Russian Chess Federation - the Russian Chess Federation - laughed off, pointing to the non-anniversary number of the tournament, they say, a year later, during the sixtieth championship, the brilliance of stars of the first magnitude will simply blind your eyes ... However at least in part, the insufficient brightness of the competition is associated with a very simple, and by no means opportunistic, but purely sporting circumstance. The fact is that qualifying tournaments brought quite definite results, first of all, the Major League of the Russian championship. And it was her winners - still very young grandmasters - who were able to argue for the title of champion of the country.
Is it good or bad?! The fact is that a whole series of failures, the most striking of which is the failure of the Russian national team at the last two World Chess Olympiads, willy-nilly put the issue of generational change on the agenda. And such a change began to occur, as they say, in an explicit order.
Of course, I would not dare to talk about the debutants of the championship as already held or, if you want, about the lighted stars, but there is no doubt that at least some of them will go “up the steep sports ladder” very far, especially since the average age of the participants (except for the highly experienced Sergei Rublevsky and Peter Svidler) is some 20 years ...
And the most striking and popular among them, of course, is the sixteen-year-old international master from Moscow, Jan Nepomnyashchy, who not only was included in the championship last on the candidate list, but also pulled out the first number in the standings during the draw.
Seriously speaking, the main favorite of the championship is, of course, the four-time champion of Russia - Peter Svidler.
When the conversation touched on the most burning match - Man against the Supercomputer, the multiple champion of the country noted Vladimir Kramnik’s magnificent play in essence. And if it were not for the famous yawn of the mat in one move, then the score in the match would have remained the same with the man’s advantage in the game that was obvious enough for all qualified spectators.
Another thing is that when meeting with a supercomputer it is very easy to get a good position, but it is extremely difficult to win a game. The fact is that the computer never yawns, does not allow any - even the most insignificant - miscalculations in the options, while a person (any person!) Sins this in any - absolutely any party.
Developing the topic, I’ll add from myself that it’s petty tactics (numerous calculations regarding relatively simple options) that make up the real fabric of the game of “protein” chess players, and the grandmasters usually manage to prevent the most dramatic consequences of this or that oversight literally at the last moment - at the cost of more or less a significant deterioration in their position, which is why what happened remains surrounding (and often a rival!) simply unnoticed.
By the way, for this case, in "folklore" has its own saying, according to which "the most important thing in chess is to successfully yawn."
Vladimir Kramnik in the second installment yawned in the most unsuccessful of all possible ways, but this proved only that nothing human was alien to him.
And although the victory of the world champion could only delay the event for several years, it still becomes very sad at heart. Because it is always very sad to part with illusions ...
SERGEY MAKARYCHEV, international grandmaster, NTV + Sport columnist