17.01.2005 The best games of January 2005

Procedures of selection of games that were described in my opening address are finished. With such tournaments as Wijk-aan-Zee one of the main difficulties is not to fall under the magic of names. After a rough screening a number of games came up to 50, 15 of which were played in the first super-tournament of the year. At the second stage the number of the selected games was reduced to 20 (I've coped with this task on my own), approximately a half of them were elite duels. I began agonizing over the further reduction of the list of pretenders and I turned to Sergei Shipov for advice. With his priceless help I came to the decisions, which would probably be called "unpopular" by politicians.

In the final list there are no such much-talked-of games as Kramnik - Topalov and Anand - Leko, as well as Anand - Ponomariov, which as far as I know, pleases Anand himself. We came to the conclusion that in the game Kramnik - Topalov, which is of great theoretical importance, everything that is of value is left offscreen. If Kramnik had taken the risk of one of those conceptual variants which he thought to be dangerous, the game could have been very interesting, but there took place an opening catastrophe, and it's remarkable that the injured party was the world champion. Certainly, this is a spectacular event, but it's not creative enough for our column. Approximately the same considerations can be applied to the game Anand - Leko. 20 theoretical moves, then a miss, an elegant, but not complicated blow and an efficient realization, though Peter had seen more difficult technical work. The examples are not far to seek: included in the top-list victory of Leko over Svidler is obviously more interesting. As for the victories of Anand over Ponomariov, Ruslan was playing in a very unconvincing manner in a critical moment of the middle game, which resulted in a position where there were various means for White to win. The one chosen by Anand was not the quickest, though its final part cries out to be described in a manual of ending strategy. However it's not a cat-and-mouse, but the best creative achievements.

Thus, everything was settled quite fairly. Slightly rounding it's possible to say that a half of the games of the main tournament Wijk-aan-Zee were sifted out, and in the final list they make up also a half. I would be very grateful, if somebody of the readers wrote on this basis an arithmetical problem for junior school, not to make children count apples.

In the concluding review we will discuss in more details the games that had successfully passed all the tests, let the experts choose the winner first.

Maxim Notkin.

The best games of January
Hastings
1. Belov - Socko
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2. Leko - Svidler
3. Ponomariov - Kramnik
4. Bruzon - Topalov
5. Kramnik - Grischuk
6. Anand - Adams
7. Polgar - Sokolov
8. Adams - Topalov
Wijk-aan-Zee, tournament B
10. Stefanova - Nijboer
14. Mamedyarov - Cheparinov
13. Nikolic - Mamedyarov
Gibraltar
11. Nakamura - Hennigan
12. Shirov - Erenburg
9. Gormally - Sutovsky
Drammen
15. Lie - Stefanova