20 November 2018

Carlsen - Caruana Match: Balance Maintained After Game 8

The score is 4-4.


The eighth game of the World Championship Match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana took place in London on November 19. The challenger played with the white pieces. Caruana stared the game with the e-pawn, like in his three previous "white" games, and Magnus replied with the Sicilian Defence with 2...Nc6. However, an opening dispute in the Rossolimo system did not follow - White played 3. d4, and the Chelyabinsk/Sveshnikov Variation appeared. 

Caruana chose not the most popular (although it is not so rare) line, where White gets a pawn majority on the queenside, while Black has it on the kingside. The World Champion started to think a lot from the very beginning and after the opening he probably played unprecisely - as some experts suggested, he had forgotten his analysis. Black's position looked dangerous, but Caruana didn't manage to find a precise way to get an edge. Soon the situation simplified, and an endgame with a symbolic advantage for White appeared. The grandmasters agreed to a draw on move 38. 



The score is 4-4. The ninth game is to be played on Wednesday, November 21. Magnus Carlsen will have the white pieces again. 

Sharing his impressions with our website is grandmaster Boris Gelfand:

– Today Fabiano has changed the opening record. How expected was the Chelyabinsk variation in the match?  

– The Rossolimo system has not worked out quite well for Fabiano, and after 3.d4 there was a high probability of the Sveshnikov variation appearing on the board, it being the mainline for Black after 2...Nc6.  

I myself had to deal with 7.Nd5, the move employed against me by Hikaru Nakamura and more than once by Grigoriy Oparin in the Nutcracker.Although well-studied, this line is rather tricky. The latest Olympiad saw Vladimir Kramnik using it to defeat the Serbian chess player Roganovic. Magnus’s lengthy thinking in the opening has come as a surprise to me. Kramnik’s choice of an opening line tells your instinct to take it seriously! 

All in all, the game turned out to be full of events. I did not look up the engine and cannot tell if White had anything substantial. The game was a real battlefield, and it felt like White could have got an edge.  

– There was a moment when the engine was giving White a substantial plus…

– I cannot say anything definite about it. Engines’ evaluations are to be taken with a grain of salt, sometimes... It shows a big edge, followed by a forced line leading to a draw, which is especially true about the Sveshnikov variation. The engine's initial evaluation might be an edge, but when you start going down the line you find nothing as it ends up in an opposite-colored bishop ending with up a pawn for one side, in which the engine displays +1, but it is high time a draw be agreed. Let's recall game three, in which the engines were giving +1, but there was no real advantage anywhere. Indeed, White could have grabbed the open line, but then the comments noted (including those on your website) that Black was gradually equalizing. 

Let me add that 12.Bd2 (also used by Oparin against me) has entered the tournament praxis via correspondence games. I know Fabiano's respect for them. If my memory does not fail me, the move was championed by the Israeli correspondence player. Such is the modern chess: Caruana's preparation relied on correspondence games, and he did get the edge, but Carlsen’s meticulous defense held his position together. 

– How interesting is the match from the viewpoint of different approaches and concepts? 

– A lot more was expected of it in this respect, of course. It is for the first time in many years that the crown match sees a rivalry of such antipodes in terms of style! However, a meticulous home prep should neutralize all such stylistic imbalances. I have a feeling that Fabiano's preparation is higher, but he puts his opponent up against no problems as White at that. 

– Sergey Karjakin shared in a yesterday's interview to our website that the world championship matches are looked forward to for certain theoretical breakthroughs. He even recalled the Kasparov – Kramnik match that has fashioned the Berlin line for as many as 18 years now. Should we expect anything similar or does it belong to times well past?

– Do you, perhaps, need to be a Kramnik to come up with such deep concepts? I do not know anyone of Kramnik’s caliber making such a contribution to the theory of openings. Well, Kasparov did advance the theory significantly, but Kramnik has achieved event deeper results in certain areas. 

Carlsen seems to have a karpovian approach to the openings - just somehow getting past this unpleasant stage to start playing real chess! His team is definitely numerous, but if a player neither lives by it, nor puts his heart into the study of openings, the team will never fully compensate for this lack of attention. As for Fabiano, he does his best and is solid in the opening as a second player, which is not as true as when he is a first player, however... Generally, since these lines belong to my repertoire, I mean the Sveshnikov and the Rossolimo systems, I am happy that they are not so easily refuted. It confirms my right choice of this opening, which is an integral part of my repertoire.   

It is clear that getting an edge out of the opening is hard nowadays. Some lines seem unpleasant, but powerful engines help sand off the rough edges, giving rise to positions that you just need to play.  

– Do you see many parallels between the current match and that of yours with Anand of 2012?

– I do not see many similarities, which is also true about the openings that we played. The only thing in common is that we switched to testing the 3.Bb5 line towards the end of the match. Anand and I share many things when it comes to the style play, at least with the Anand of the year 2012. He was a renowned opening expert back then, and we treated the opening prep seriously. Magnus is also serious about his opening prep, but it is rather a necessity than a pleasure for him. 

–  A couple of days ago Grischuk voiced his wish to see 12 draws in the classical section of the match. What are your expectations? Do you think all classical games will be drawn or will there be any decisive ones?

– Alexander is known for a great sense of humor! Once we mentioned Grischuk, let me cite him as well. He told, "In chess they like to build a statistical model just after several games, whereas in poker the statistics is drawn up beginning with 10 thousand cases.” That's a very spot-on remark, in my opinion! There is no statistical basis for any generalizations just yet. It is clear that any game can be decisive. Were it game one, or any other game for that matter, the match would have taken a different path. The struggle is tense, and heats up with each subsequent game, as well as the likelihood of a mistake. Anything can happen. I am not a fan of giving forecasts, we will know everything before long! 

Questions by Vladimir Barsky


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Photos: Press service of the World Chess