He might be cracking up like Morphy.
Carlsen choking?!
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Jerry,
At this rate, Nakamura might end his shutout by finally beating Carlsen in classical competition!
Mcmodern,
I agree, but it goes a long way toward shattering the myth of his invincibility.
The loss of a tournament will bring him back down to earth. But im a Naka fan 100% and have been happy about his playing lately.
Facts are facts but providing explanations for them is risky business.It all started with a magnificent game against Topalov,where,in a winning position Carlsen lost on time.From there on Carlsen's performance has been suboptimal,convincingly losing to Anand and Caruana and drawing with Giri.It makes sense therefore to assume that the psychological shock of losing a well played won game on time(in which he probably overexerted himself),took its toll on him.Now in itself there is nothing wrong in losing to 2800 players like Anand or Caruana but when you are Carlsen...it's different!Whatever the case I wish Carlsen a quick recovery with classic Magnus wins.He is a worthy champion,quite down-to-earth and likable as a person,and arguably plays chess at the level of super champions like Capa,Fischer or Kasparov.Let's see if he can regain his composure and start kicking some...
Carlsen's had it. Chess has caught up with him. He's reached his limit. He should take a vacation.
mcmodern wrote:
One bad tournament, big deal.
Its not just a bad tournament but a disaster . A bad tournament for a world champion in their prime is not finishing among the first 3 , or losing more than one game .... not even scoring 50% is a disaster on a level that I dont believe has ever happened before to a reigning WC in their prime ..
This took me some time to find, so I thought it would help people just glancing at this thread to see one of the games being discussed. I am new to following chess and I don't quite understand the big deal, but I figured I will.
As a general question, where can I find some good annotation for games like these ones? As in, PGN which as added annotations by grandmasters. At my chess level, I often don't fully understand what is going on and I will be much more interesting in studying and spectating GM level chess if I had good annotations and commentaries to follow the games with. In addition, do players ever add their own annotations after the game is over to explain what they were thinking during the game? It would be great to know how to find either of these things.
Oh yes, I study old chess games and have found them much more concrete and easier to understand. I almost don't need them annotated anymore (almost). I do not study games by people like Carlsen or Nakamura because it all goes straight over my head! I'm not sure if the GMs of the past were weaker, but it seems like with players even as recent as Fischer the ideas are more concrete. I'm glad that I am not crazy for thinking that. Thanks for linking me to the books as well.
I think the difference is that often with modern GMs, you can see the effects of their thoughts but not the thoughts themselves. An entire game might be played with both sides preparing for a move that never actually gets played or a threat that never actually gets executed. This is very frustrating when I am trying to learn from the game. A simple example of this is a GM that makes tons of moves to prepare a pawn push, and then by the time he is done the dynamics are different and he moves on to another idea. It leaves me wondering why he made all those moves. That kind of stuff rarely seemed to happen with the old GMs.
"IIRC in Kramniks last tournament he lost 3 games... they said that was a career FIRST for him (wow, what a guy)"
If they said that they were wrong, he lost three at several occasions (Tal Memorial 2013, Candidates 2014, Norway 2014 the most recent examples before Shamkir 2015) and even four in Sofia 2005, but it was the first time he lost three in a row.
This might be his worst tournament start since achieving GM status.
Four rounds into a strong tournament in Norway(!), and Carlsen's has only scored half a point (0 wins, 3 losses, 1 draw), and stands dead last in a field of ten players. Perhaps we should hold off the Canonization until after he's risen from the dead.