Tricklev wrote on 12/17/11 at 22:29:54:
...
Nakamura - No, like I said, his strength was in openings. You look at middlegames or endgames and I’m quite convinced there are other players who are better than he was, but he was able to get advantages out of the openings so that was his main strength, and when he wasn’t able to do that, that’s why he lost his title to Kramnik.
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imo some of his remarks look quite venomous, esp. "I'm quite convinced" in the passage above and also in "Nakamura – There's something to be gained. Mainly it’s the opening preparation he did
with his team over the past 20-25 years of his chess career" and in the way he makes Kasparov look vs. Kramnik. At first I thought that maybe this was not necessarily a deliberate attack, but looking now at Kasparov's reply (clever, but also politically correct), one can tell that they have problems with each other.
On the other hand, going back to the passage I quote again above, we should be reminded that these players (Nakamura, Carlsen etc.) are super-GMs and do not need just another trainer that excels in some aspects of the game (of course they may indeed have a not-that-strong-as-a-player trainer helping them with their core training schedule).
So I suppose they hire Kasparov because they are looking for the absolute best in some areas of the game or some fresh ideas, - this little extra that will help them score points vs. contemporary super-GMs.
Having said that,
if I was Nakamura (could use some extra ELO points
), I would have not expected Kasparov to show me a new approach to the game (if he knew one he would have used it in his WCh matches and not keep it secret for so many years!). I would have hired Kasparov, well ..for opening ideas!
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Nakamura splits with Kasparov (Read 32085 times)
