Sunday, 13 September 2020

Champion Of Champions: Challenge

VLADIMIR Kramnik won my Champion Of Champions tournament, in which the 16 classical world champions faced off in a knockout format.
'Games' were decided by choosing each player's most-popular move in any given position in ChessBase's 2020 Mega database.
There is no reason why such an event should be restricted to world champions - anyone can take part as long as there is a reasonable number of a player's games in Mega20.
I have 923 games in Mega20, so here I will be taking on the Champion Of Champions in a two-game match.

Vladimir Kramnik - Spanton
Pseudo-Chigorin
1.d4 d5 2.Nf3!?
There are 157 games with this move by Kramnik in Mega20, compared with 152 for 2.c4.
2...Nc6!?
Kramnik has not faced this move, so this is as far as we can go
The analysis engines Stockfish11 and Komodo11.01 give White an averaged advantage of +57.5, which means I have it all to do in the next game.

Spanton - Vladimir Kramnik
Spanish Four Knights Rubinstein
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nd4
I have not faced Rubinstein's 4...Nd4 in Mega20, so again the 'game' comes to a quick conclusion
The analysis engines give me an averaged advantage of +25.5 - not bad, but not enough to overcome Kramnik's game-one advantage.
So Kramnik wins with a score of +32 - closer than I feared.

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