MTEL 2006 WRAP UP

Tis in the history books now!

Kamsky's lack of determination in the end proved fatal... had he played for wins in some of the games that he accepted draws in he might have shared or possessed first place in this event. Be that as it may though, Kamsky is well on his way back to being a major force in the chess world and we can all look forward to seeing how he does in the candidates matches and in the really big tournaments that I am sure he will now be invited to.

If we look at the tournament as a series of mini-matches then we can see that Kamsky won all of his matches except for the one with Veselin Topalov. Had he even drawn just one of those games he would have had first place. Kamsky is not quite playing up to his full potential but he is almost there!

Topalov pulled off another one of his late comebacks... seems that he does poorly in the first leg of the double round robin events and then he comes out swinging in the second half of the tournaments. Granted he has a lot more distractions these days... the giving of simuls, promoting of F.I.D.E., photo sessions, celebrity dinners, etc... so one can only imagine what level his game will reach when all of considerations become secondary. Kamsky and Topalov both had an amazing run at this tournament and I look forward to more clashes between these two titans of the chess world.

OPENING BELL!

We had a Queen's Indian, a slav and another Ruy Lopez in the last and final round of MTEL 2006. See the opening survey down below.

FINAL BOARD POSITIONS Rd# 10

The round ten games...

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OPENING SURVEY:

RUY LOPEZ:

Played thirteen times out of a possible thirty games. Almost half of all games in this event were in the Ruy Lopez opening!

SICILIAN:

Sicilians of all sorts were featured in this event... we had some Najdorfs (2) & Scheveningens (3) and even a Paulson (1). There were the three Sicilian variations featured in this event and out of a possible thirty games the Sicilian was only featured in six of them.

QUEEN'S INDIAN:

Three Queen's Indian games out of a possible thirty games.

GRUNFELD DEFENCE:

Two games were played that featured this opening.

ANTI-MERAN:

Only one game played.

CARO-KAN:

Only one game played.

NIMZO-INDIAN:

Only one lonely representative of this opening system in this year's edition of MTEL.

SLAV DEFENCE:

Three Slavs were played this year.

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How did Kamsky fair with the openings that he played? Let us take a look...

KAMSKY AND THE RUY LOPEZ:

Gata played either side of the Ruy Lopez during this event and scored quite well with it:

Wins = 3

Two with the White pieces and one with the Black pieces

Losses = 0

Quite a feat against players of this caliber!

Draws = 3

Two of the three were from the Black side of the board. Simply an amazing result with the Black pieces in this tournament.

What are the percentages?

With White? +2; -0 & =1
With Black? +1; -0 & =2

75% in this opening overall!

With the White pieces?

We can only marvel at his 2.5 out of 3 and his percentage of 83.33%!

With the Black pieces?

Won one, and drew two hence his percentage of 66.67%

Gata did quite well within the Ruy Lopez opening systems from either side. He did very well overall against 1. e4 but seemed to have problems facing 1. d4 as he only scored a draw and a loss using the SLAV DEFENCE in the two games that he faced 1. d4. When playing against the Sicilian he scored fifty percent as he won a game (versus Svidler) and lost a game (versus Topalov). Gata had a stellar performance in this tournament and we can reasonably expect to see more invitations for the amazing Mr. Gata Kamsky to high category chess events.

Gata is very dangerous with 1. e4 but we fans of Mr. Kamsky know how dangerous he can be... with any opening move! Now let us all watch and see how well he holds down board one for the American team at the CHESS OLYMPIAD in TURIN ITALY!

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Have a good one ~Mr_Theory.