This is an incredible WILD game, Shirov style. But Carlsen is not afraid to get into severe complication. Very exciting!
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Looks dead drawn to me.
I’m depressed for the young phenom.
Who can help him?
Wild game, but I will be shocked it doesn’t end drawn. Hard to coordinate the three pieces against the queen enough to win.
I would actually bet that this is checkmate in about 300 moves for Black. Shirov is trying to get his Knight to d3 and dark-square Bishop to the a7-g1 diagonal to win the f2-pawn, but it seems that White’s Queen can always prevent the Bishop from going to d4, and attempts to route it to c5 via f8 allow White to cover enough central squares to defend by pushing f2-f3.
Thus I believe Shirov must allow the exchange of his e-pawn for White’s f-pawn, either as above or by pushing e4-e3 himself. This changes White’s target to g2. Now that pawn is easier to attack because the Knight can anchor at f4, and White’s g2-g3 break usually leaves h3 hanging. Thus it comes down to whether White can tie Black up with checks and pressure on the g5-pawn. Here’s where I would wager that there exists a 100-or-so-move sequence by which Black’s King manages to dance with his Bishops until White’s Queen runs out of squares. Then g2 falls, albeit with White being able to trade a pawn, leaving K+B+B+N+P versus K+Q. That’s a 7-piece tablebase, and since it has a Pawn I believe it has not been run yet—but I would expect it to have wins typically in the 50-100 move range.
Of course, in a time-control game nothing like this will happen :-).
Looks like what Carlsen is doing is using the N on f6 as a shield so he can get his Bishops to d5 and e5. They still don’t threaten anything, however—to double up on any square requires the Knight. So then the battle will become whether Shirov can keep the Knight from wheeling around to f4, say via h5.
If the Knight does get to f4, then the idea becomes to play …e3! discovering an attack on g2. The reply f2=f3 would leave Black with a probably-winning passed pawn, while Blocking by Qe3 would probably leave White’s Queen too passive. So still things to play for…
I enjoyed the Anand v Kramnik game but Shirov v Carlsen is just very boring! I don’t see the excitement? I was hoping with the scoring system being used in Bilbao to see some Sicilian Najdorf’s or Sveshnikov’s! But no, Ruy Lopez all the way (yawn)! Shame, all of these players can play exciting sharp chess if they want. This makes Major League Eating look like an exciting sport!
These two would sure need the rest day tomorrow!
The move 103…g4?! did a refresh on the 50-move rule, but IMHO was not the break to play. Now White has a compact g2,f2 structure while Black has 2 isolanis to cover, so White should be able to exert enough pressure to prevent any progress. The only chance I see now is a surprise attack on the White King via …h3 and planting the Bishop on f3, but I don’t see it succeeding. White will have too much room to hassle the other Bishop and the Knight and Black’s King.
The idea of …Bd5 and …Kf5 and …Be5, then …Ke6 and …Bd6, however, seemed to have a better shot.
what about Qg5+ where they stopped? was time the problem?