Chess (#1191)

The Candidates started this weekend in the historic Central Telegraph Building, Moscow. The main sponsor is Tashir Group. The prize fund of €420,000 is secondary, since the winner becomes the challenger in a title match.

The event is mired in controversy. The organiser, Agon, announced an embargo on moves being broadcast, with 72 hours to go. The decision to prevent live video being broadcast is in accordance with normal sports practice. But an embargo on broadcast of moves (until two hours after finish) is hard to justify legally. Moves are treated as news, which can be discussed/ broadcast like football scores, or election results. It is likely that several websites will break the embargo, relying on free speech protection while worldchess.com will carry moves officially.

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• Chess (#1190)
• Chess (#1189)

By the live ratings, the line up is Fabiano Caruana (World#3 at 2794), Anish Giri (2793), Hikaru Nakamura (2790), Levon Aronian (2786), Veselin Topalov (2780), Viswanathan Anand (2762), Sergey Karjakin (2760) and Peter Svidler (2757). The draw for the double-rounder was released a month ago.

Caruana, Giri and Nakamura are playing their first Candidates. Anand won the last Candidates but his form is erratic and age is against him (and Topalov). Magnus Carlsen says he expects one of the younger players to win. Although the heart backs Anand, the head says Caruana has the best shot at knocking Carlsen off.

Peter Heine Nielsen, who has worked as a second for both Anand and Carlsen predicts the winner will score around +4 - that is 9 points from 14 games. The inventor, James Jorasch, along with software engineer, Chris Capobianco, wrote a software program and ran a million-run simulation of "possible tournaments", as described in Chessbase. This predicts Caruana wins 19 per cent of the time followed by Nakamura (17.1 per cent), Giri (16.8), Aronian (14.7), Topalov (13.1), Anand (6.7), Karjakin (6.7) and Svidler (5.8). It's a slight variation on the rating list (Giri and Nakamura swap). The internet bookies see Nakamura as the favourite.

Meanwhile the Women's World Championship match in Lviv, Ukraine, is going as predicted. Hou Yifan leads 4-2 versus world champion, Mariya Muzxychuk. The Chinese GM picked off a sharp win in game 2 and she scrambled a second win in game 6 after being in some trouble early on.

The Diagram, White to Play (White: Hou, Yifan Vs Black: Muzychuk, Mariya, Women's World Championship).White has a big initiative to compensate for the poor structure.

25.f5 Bd6 26.Ra6! Rg7 27.fxg6 Bc5? [White has some edge after 27...Bxg3 28.Qxg3 Qe7 29.Kf1 hxg6 30.Re1 Qb7 31.Raa1- better minor piece and more control of open lines]. Play went 28.Kg2! hxg6 29.Rxd5! Bxf2? White finished with 30.Bb3! Ne6 31.Rd6 Bc5 32.Qxe6+ (1-0).

Devangshu Dattais an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player