After I finished my last game of the Belgium interclubs I was surprised to see in the pub that many players were busy following the ongoing game of Magnus Carlsen. A Belgian FM even showed me on his smartphone how that game finished by a beautiful and surprising mate see 2019 Grenke chess classic round 8. Players seemed (at least temporarily) more interested in Magnus' game than the ones of their teammates.
Unless you were completely disconnected from chess last couple of months, you could've not missed the news about the recent amazing successes of the reigning world-champion. While he defended last year with a lot of difficulty his world-title against Fabiano Caruano, suddenly wins are obtained again very easily. Magnus is again absolutely hot and that creates again speculations about the magical barrier of 2900 elo which can or can not be broken by a human player.
It just proofs to me that elo is relative. We all have fluctuations in our playing-strength. Sometimes there are clear reasons for that like e.g. new responsibilities but we should also not exclude luck (see my article the lucky one) especially in a short timeframe. I guess this last aspect can play here an important role as the gain of 40 elo by Magnus happened in only 31 games.
In the Chessbase-report of the last round in Grenke we can read that Carlsen can today benefit of the analysis made for the last world-championship. Magnus:" I can still use ideas and concepts which we have analysed." We notice this clearly in his shift from e5 to c5 as main-choice against 1.e4. In the last 10 years Magnus used e5 as his preferred weapon in standard-games but since the world-championship of last year he has another favorite. This is clearly shown in the table below which I created by screening the Big database 2019.
You probably wonder what is special about this line. Besides Teimour doesn't choose the most critical test. The answer you can find in the Ultracorr-x. If we select the games played with the position after 12....Rb8 by the very best players in correspondence-chess (both players having + 2500 elo) during the last 10 years then we discover below devastating statistic.
It is the reason why I don't play anymore the mainline of the Svechnikov. So there will be no follow up anymore of a theoretical duel in the Svechnikov and the scientific approach. However what else I will play is something you will need to find out for yourself. I already surprised somebody with it and I hope to do it a few times more. I already share a lot of information on this blog, likely more than what a dozen of players share together so I don't think somebody can blame me of being unfair.
Anyway I still try to keep track of the developments in the mainline. This is new for me as before when I stopped playing a line, I lost interest. Nowadays I do also regression-analysis. So at some points of time I look up if something has changed which maybe makes the line again playable. Since 2015 I've analyzed some recent small discoveries for white but simultaneously there were also some shifts favoring black which cancelled out any possible advantage for white.
Today Magnus has an edge but I am sure his opponents won't rest. Sooner or later people will find anti-dotes which will decrease the scores of Magnus in the Sicilian. Openings are for many players something boring but a few can also enjoy the eternal fluctuations.
Brabo
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