Candidates Tournament 2020

[Nick Ivell]

A surprise for sure. I don't like a3 at all.

[Paul Cooksey]

I didn't think wimpy. I assume Giri was offering Ndb5 d6 Bf4 e5 with a Sveshnikov transposition, avoiding 3 Bb5. That would have been critical, but given the drawish reputation at the top level 6 a3 probably counts as aggressive. I suppose Fabi was hoping to outplay Giris based on his greater sicilian experience. But Giri really did make it look second rate.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Talking of which, can anybody tell me when there was last a round of a candidates tournament (and I mean strictly tournament) in which all the games were decisive?

(I think I know the answer to this but am very prepared to be wrong. I would say "no looking it up" but obviously that is precisely what I did myself.)

I thought that happened in 2013, but I was wrong (there were some rounds where there was only one draw from 4 games).

Depends if you count the San Luis tournament in 2005, that Topalov won (scoring 6.5/7 in the first cycle of the double-round robin) - there were all-decisive sets of four games in each of rounds 3, 4 and 7.

https://en.chessbase.com/post/san-luis- ... and-second

I did check the 2007 Championship Tournament (Mexico City), but that didn't have any all-decisive rounds.

So I think round 7 of San Luis (September to October 2005) is the answer?

[Mick Norris]

My first thought was the dramatic last round of the London Candidates but that wasn't right

Given there have been lots of Candidates matches, I will be interested to see what Justin has as the answer

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Yes, you have to go back a fair way before you get a Candidates Tournament proper (i.e. tournament not matches). Something like Montpellier 1985, but it is difficult to find round-by-round reports and it is not clear from the crosstable when each game was played.

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.p ... &tid=83304

(And San Luis and Mexico City were to decide the champion of their championship cycles, not the challenger, but are similar enough that I looked at them anyway. I suspect Justin has a different event in mind.)

[JustinHorton]

Depends if you count the San Luis tournament in 2005

Not especially, no Candidate emerged

[Leonard Barden]

From Doggers in Chess.com:

The spectacular 12th round in Yekaterinburg was also somewhat historic. As Chess.com's IM @Rakesh Kulkarni pointed out, today is the first-ever round in the history of the Candidates without a draw.

Later: I had no idea who was right, but remembering from long ago that 1959 was fairly brutal, I took a chance to glance at chessgames.com and found (assuming their information is correct) an immediate bullseye: Round 2 Fischer 0-1 Petrosian Olafsson 0-1 Benko Smyslov 0-1 Keres Tal 1-0 Gligoric.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Depends if you count the San Luis tournament in 2005

Not especially, no Candidate emerged

Yes, so it seems that the answer is none (see above).

But I stand by my comment that both San Luis (2005) and Mexico City (2007) are good examples of high-level (double)-round robin tournaments that are similar to the Candidates Tournament (in the sense that the participants sometimes need to play all-out to win as coming second gets you nothing). Incidentally, some earlier Candidates Tournaments have a crucial difference, namely that more than one person qualified from that to a matchplay part of the cycle. I believe it is only the modern incarnation of the Candidates that is winner-takes-all.

[JustinHorton]

1962 Candidates Curaçao. Round 13.

Fischer 0 Petrosian 1
Tal 0 Geller 1
Benko 0 Keres 1
Filip 0 Korchnoi 1

[Mick Norris]

From Doggers in Chess.com:

The spectacular 12th round in Yekaterinburg was also somewhat historic. As Chess.com's IM @Rakesh Kulkarni pointed out, today is the first-ever round in the history of the Candidates without a draw.

Later: I had no idea who was right, but remembering from long ago that 1959 was fairly brutal, I took a chance to glance at chessgames.com and found (assuming their information is correct) an immediate bullseye: Round 2 Fischer 0-1 Petrosian Olafsson 0-1 Benko Smyslov 0-1 Keres Tal 1-0 Gligoric.

Pete Doggers has corrected his report to mention both 1959 and 1962

Off topic, but why was Curacao chosen as venue in 1962?

[Chris Rice]

Off topic, but why was Curacao chosen as venue in 1962?

I could only find this article which is a great read involving Benko giving Fischer a slap! The relevant para is:

"Going back to 1956 the chess community in Curacao was small, about 150 members, but they wanted to organize the candidates tournament. At the time they were unsuccessful because it turned out to impossible to arrange for the financing in such a short time. However, FIDE did agree to hold the 1962 Candidates there; it would be the first to ever be held outside Europe."

[Christopher Kreuzer]

From Doggers in Chess.com:

The spectacular 12th round in Yekaterinburg was also somewhat historic. As Chess.com's IM @Rakesh Kulkarni pointed out, today is the first-ever round in the history of the Candidates without a draw.

Later: I had no idea who was right, but remembering from long ago that 1959 was fairly brutal, I took a chance to glance at chessgames.com and found (assuming their information is correct) an immediate bullseye: Round 2 Fischer 0-1 Petrosian Olafsson 0-1 Benko Smyslov 0-1 Keres Tal 1-0 Gligoric.

Pete Doggers has corrected his report to mention both 1959 and 1962

I can only see a mention of 1962 here:

https://www.chess.com/news/view/2021-fi ... t-round-12

Oh, I see. 1962 is mentioned in the main text. It is the correction statement at the bottom:

Correction: an earlier version of this report erroneously stated that this was the first day in Candidates' history without a draw but this happened in Bled 1959 and Curacao 1962 as well.

The history of that is in the comment, where "robertspartner" and "Spektrowski" both picked up on Bled 1959, and then Pete Doggers posted in the comments to say:

Double-checking now and there is also round 13 of Curacao 1962!

[linking to the comment is proving difficult]

That was "five hours ago" (as of time of writing) so whether Pete Doggers reads this forum and saw Justin's comments, who knows?

[Oh, I see, someone who may be Justin also posted there as well. Enough of reading the chess.com comments, my eyes are starting to bleed...]

[JustinHorton]

Well I also tried to reply to "robertspartner" in the comments, I don't know if I succeeded

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Well I also tried to reply to "robertspartner" in the comments, I don't know if I succeeded

Yes, these new-fangled websites with their fancy commenting set-up.

[JustinHorton]

I can find my comment, I can find a link to my comment but I don't know that the link then finds my comment