Paul the Human

Good evening to all viewers!  Wish that you are having a good day! Today I am going to talk about opening advantages- The current consensus regarding the World Chess Championship 2018 has been that neither of the players are able to get an advantage out of the opening with the White pieces. White having the advantage of the first move is usually expected to have a micro-advantage from the start of the game.   However, that is not what we are able to see from the Match taking place in The College, London. Earlier, an opening advantage was  considered to be one wherein White builds up a clear Initiative or advantage especially against the opposition King. Those were the romantic days, however. With the coming of 13th World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, the focus was on playing strong concrete opening variations in order to put the opponent on the back foot from move 1 and to gain the initiative from both White and Black. The definition of an opening surprise has ho...

Good evening to all! The 6th round of the World Chess Championship will be underway in more than half an hour now! Am happy that the last two of my predictions have been correct and followed the trends I thought would come on board. Carlsen now has two White's in Game 6( today) and Game 7( on 18 November). Carlsen would want to maximise his two White's as that would give him a significant advantage in the match which is of only 12 games in total with tied scores( 6-6) resulting in a Rapid(25+10) 4 game tiebreaker to decide the victor. This is also the first game that Caruana would be playing after the 'Videogate incident' with Caruana's opening files being named by a Youtube mishap by St.Louis Chess Club. I gave my inputs on how this could affect Caruana tremendously titled under ' Game 4- All Draws'. Carlsen has thus far opened with 1. d4 as well as with 1. c4. I do not expect him to open with either of them knowing that Caruana has extensive preparation...

Good evening to all the readers! I am going to commentate on the Round 5 of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2018 which again ended in a draw! It is now 5 draws in 5 games although all of them have been thoroughly exciting! I predicted that Caruana should go for the 3. Nc3 move order while he again stuck to the Rossolimo and did not get much out of the opening today as well! I checked Caruana's games against the 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6. I found that Caruana himself played the Sveshnikov Siccilian with Black(!) from 2003-2005 and played in some very important games in 2010. This time however his decision to avoid it is understandable given the amount of preparation Magnus would have against it. Also worthy to note is that Caruana has played 3. Nc3 quiet some times also in the past although 3. Bb5 remains his most frequently played move( played twice or thrice last year in the Tbilisi World Cup also). Caruana has also played the Open Siccilian (3.d4). However, I understand that Caruana...

Good afternoon to all the readers! Today is Game 6 in more than 5 hours and let's see what the gladiators might have in mind for the opening choices. Yesterday was a rest day and hence Caruana would probably want to strike today as Carlsen has White in Game 6 and Game 7. Caruana must try to strike now also as Carlsen had some unpleasant moments in Game 3(when he last had the Black pieces). I am quiet sure that Sveshnikov is the variation that Carlsen has prepared for this match as it was his mainstay repertoire in 2007-2008. It is also considered very difficult to play against and to obtain any advantage. Am pretty certain Mr. Gelfand to be part of Team Carlsen( which can also reason Carlsen's Game 4 choice of 1. c4). Mr. Gelfand, after World Chess Championship 2012 remarked that it had come to him as a surprise that it is difficult to outprepare someone who has spent the last six months in preparing an opening variation( The Chebanenko Slav for Mr. Anand and the Sveshniko...

Good afternoon to all the readers! The World Chess Championship 2018 is truly living up to it's hype! The 4th game also led to a draw. Carlsen opened with 1. c4 and Caruana replied with 1...e5! I had predicted earlier that this could be a strategy to limit Carlsen's preparations and not to play 1...e6 which would likely transpose to the Queen's Gambit Declined played in Game 2. Carlsen continued with the 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.g3. Here we would have another Rossolimo discussion had Caruana played 4...Bb4 with White being a tempo up as compared to Black!😊😉 Caruana however played 4...Bc5( which he has played recently also) and the game followed Wesley So-Fabiano Caruana Paris GCT 2018. Carlsen came up with the interesting 11.b4!? for which Caruana replied with 11...Bd6. Caruana hence again limitted considerable amount of Carlsen preparations as it would be logical for Caruana to play 4...Bb4 as he has played it more often and has been seeing Rossolimo more frequently dur...

Good afternoon all! As I noted in my previous article, the World Chess Championship is turning out to be very exciting! After today's game, tomorrow is a rest day while the games will again resume on 15th. Carlsen has the White pieces for today's game while they interchange colours for the games on 15th( Carlsen Black on 15th and Caruana Black on 16th). This is again to be followed by a rest day after which Carlsen would again have the White pieces! Hence, for the next four games, Carlsen has 3 Whites! As I noted, it is very much possible that Mr. Gelfand is part of ' Team Magnus' and he has been playing 1.c4 quiet frequently against elite opposite despite not having as positive results. Also important to know is that the players would be relying on using a lot more than just one second for the match and hence it would not be only one player's advice whom they would be following.  It is possible that Team Magnus may have 1.c4 as a surprise for which Fabi howev...

The third game between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana again ended in a draw hence making mockery of my predictions about the 3rd game being a decisive result! Fabi opened with 1.e4 which was replied by 1...c5 which I had completely dismissed in yesterday's predictions. I had not expected Carlsen to repeat the Siccilian as Caruana would likely have prepared quiet a bit in the Rossolimo or the Sveshnikov Siccilian while one of Carlsen's main strategies in World Championship Matches have been to limit opponent's preparations considerably. Seeing Carlsen repeating the Siccilian reminded me however of his two games v/s Vladimir Kramnik in 2014 and the other one in 2011: Carlsen played the Bogo-Indian following both the games till move 10 with Black finally diverging only on the 11th move. He also managed to score 1.5/2 against one of the best prepared players in the world. This also made me think that there may be a possibility of Carlsen repeating the Sveshnikov Siccilian....