2017 Altibox Norway Chess June 5-17

[Roger de Coverly]

Giri played like a beginner today, notwithstanding what the online engine may say about 5...c4.

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Bd3 c5 5. O-O c4


It's a move that only a beginner or a strong GM would play. Chernev's Logical Chess Move by Move would certainly have condemned it.

[LawrenceCooper]

1 Aronian, Levon 6/9
2 Kramnik, Vladimir & Nakamura, Hikaru 5/9
4 Caruana, Fabiano, Giri, Anish & So, Wesley 4½/9
7 Anand, Viswanathan, Carlsen, Magnus & Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime 4/9
10 Karjakin, Sergey 3½/9

[Thomas Rendle]

5...c4 seems reasonably principled to me (because he followed up with ...b5) but just a bad game by Giri afterwards. Black seems to be fine if he finds 10...Qc7, although there are certainly some interesting lines there!

[LawrenceCooper]

Magnus commented after the event that he was lacking in confidence and combined with his opponent's good play and feeling lethargic an hour or so into his games partly explained his result.

[LawrenceCooper]

5...c4 seems reasonably principled to me (because he followed up with ...b5) but just a bad game by Giri afterwards. Black seems to be fine if he finds 10...Qc7, although there are certainly some interesting lines there!

Giri felt that 8 Nc3 was dubious and wanted to punish it rather than settling for a6.
Kramnik questioned why he'd castled as he was planning a b3 set up. Having got into the position he regretted not including bxc4 bxc4 before Nc3.
The consensus was that black was fine, if white doesn't have anything quickly than black is doing well. Obviously the way black played white did get something quickly and the game was over without much of a fight. Bd6 was a step in the wrong direction and g6 worked out very badly.

[Mick Norris]

Live ratings now:

1 Carlsen 2822.3
2 ↑1 Kramnik 2811.5
3 ↓1 So 2809.8
4 ↑3 Aronian 2808.5
5 ↓1 Caruana 2806.5

The race to the Candidates is now very close for the 2nd rating spot:
So 2813, Caruana 2811.6, Kramnik 2811.25

Martin Bennedik

Next up for Vlad is Dortmund next month

[JustinHorton]

Are there any current form charts in chess? Who has the best performance so far this year?

[Mick Norris]

chess.com final report

[Chris Rice]

Chess24 report on the last round but it was this paragraph which struck me regarding Armenia and a possible back door route to the World Ch for Aronian:

"Such ebullience makes him many chess fans’ favourite as well, with the Garry Kasparov quote about the chess world being a better place when Levon is winning never feeling so apt. Aronian is back up above 2800 and into the world top 5 again, though the problem for his World Championship hopes is that he has no clear path to the Candidates Tournament. After a poor showing in the first Grand Prix he probably needs to win the World Cup, though Armenia again funding the Candidates in return for his participation also can’t be ruled out. It helps to be a national hero!"

Also yesterday we had another example of poor sportmanship from Nakamura. I'm not surprised Caruana was irritated when it took Nakamura so long to resign when it was clear he wasn't trying to save the game but was just wallowing in self pity.

[NickFaulks]

I'm not surprised Caruana was irritated when it took Nakamura so long to resign when it was clear he wasn't trying to save the game but was just wallowing in self pity.

I suspected that Naka was being deliberately rude to the organisers rather than to his opponent. I can think of two reasons why he might feel that way, although of course I don't know.