)
"You cannot compare Magnus Carlsen with Fabiano Caruana, they were born in totally different years (1990 and 1992). In these modern times chess evolves so fast. Carlsen had an incredible understanding for the chess of his times but now it's just another game altogether." Quip seen at the leading website chess24.com.
Hyperbole and humour aside, Caruana's chess is more computer-driven than Carlsen's though that could be simply a matter of style and upbringing. But there is a grain of truth in the speed of change. Alfred Silver of Chessbase, recently carried out an interesting experiment.
Silver installed the latest no.1 chess engine, Komodo8, on an LG Optimus Pro smartphone from 2013. He installed Deep Shredder 10, one of the best engines of 2006, on a i7 quad-core desktop. According to Silver, the Shredder 10 was running 50 times (50x) faster than Komodo. The official rating is Komodo8 has 3200-plus Elo and Deep Shredder10 is 2770 on a single-processor system (hence likely to be a lot stronger at multi-pro). In an active match with 15 minutes plus 10 secs increment, Komodo8 won 5-1 (+4,=2). This is a strong indication that the programming has indeed got a lot smarter.
In the Live list, Carlsen stands at #1 with 2862. Caruana has moved from 2801 to 2843 in the space of a month. Below the two "Super Cs", there's a big gap. At three, Veselin Topalov is 2799 while Levon Aronian (2798), Alexander Grischuk, (2796) and Viswanathan Anand (2792) are clustered quite close below. Of this lot, Anand and Topalov are pre-computer era dinosaurs and so is Aronian to some extent. Both Anand and Topalov have struggled to adjust to the "post-computer" era where strong opening preparation is negated to quite an extent.
Caruana has probably had the most incredible month in chess history. It is a huge pity that he failed to qualify for the 2014 Candidates by a whisker but if this big growth spurt is sustained, he has to be a credible challenger.
In the Euro Teams, Socar of Azerbaijan took the open title with a clean sheet and 14 match points (+7), while G-Team Novy Bor (Czech) scored 12 and Malakhite (Rus) scored 11. In the women's event, Nona (Georgia) scored 14 while Cercle D'echecs (Monaco) scored 10 and SHSM (Rus) scored 9.
Caruana played fantastic chess through the Sinquefield and the Euro Teams. The DIAGRAM, WHITE TO PLAY ( Caruana Vs Topalov, Saint Louis 2014) is one of his most attractive demolitions.
White found the spectacular 24.Bxe6!! fxe6 25.Rf3+ Ke8 The key line is 25...Kg7 26.Qh5 Rdf8 27.Rf6! Bxf6 28. exf6+ Rxf6 29. Rxe6.
Play continued 26.Qxe6 Rg7 27.Qh6 Nd4 28.e6! Nxf3+ 29.gxf3 Bf8 30.Qh5+ Ke7 31.Bxg7 (1-0).
Devangshu Datta is an internationally rated chess and correspondence chess player
