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After another 2-2 in their second match, GM Anish Giridefeated GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the playoff to win the Magnus Carlsen Invitational on Sunday. Giri earned$60,000 for first place. GM Magnus Carlsencame third after securing two game points vs.Wesley So.

"Again it was a lottery and this time the winning ticket went to another guy," was how Nepomniachtchi summed up this final. And he had a point because he clearly had chances to win it as wellbut only after Giri had dominated in the first three games.

Again it was a lottery and this time the winning ticket went to another guy.Ian Nepomniachtchi

He took the lead in game two, once again with the wonderful, dynamic play that Giri had been showing throughout the tournament. As it turns out, you can also play the Keres Attack against the Taimanov!

Giri's Najdorf again held up very well in both his black games. Here's game three:

So far, so good for the Dutch number one. However, things changed completely in game four, in which Nepomniachtchi had to win on demand.

"These must-win games are very tense for both sides," said Carlsen the other day. The effect on Giri was that he decided to say goodbye to his dynamic chess and return to a safer approach.

Concretely, this meant choosing 3.Bb5 instead of the Open Sicilian. In hindsight, it's easy to criticize but it does feel that this approach sort of backfirednot because Giri was worse out of the opening (on the contrary) but because it somehow resulted in him playing worse than in the earlier games.

"Of course, the game was bad. I'm disappointed, in terms of chess, the way I played the game," Giri said, before praising his opponent for finding a very nice regrouping with his queen and bishop: "That was very impressive, I thought."

It's often said that the player who comes back from a deficit goes into a playoff with a psychological advantage. How did Giri recover so well?

"What really helped is the match of Ian against Magnus, because there Ian messed up two must-not-lose games and then still won," Giri said. "He did it right there a day ago so I never had any doubt that the match was [not] over once I went to the tiebreak."

In the first game, again as White, Giri chose the Alapin and Nepomniachitch steered the game into a French. At the wrong moment, Giri sacrificed a piece and didn't get much compensation but won anyway as Nepomniachtchi blundered terribly on move 25.

"Considering the comeback in game four and a completely winning position in the first blitz game I would probably claim that I deserved a little bit more," said Nepomniachtchi. "But when you spend one minute on 25Rh7, then you see 25Rh7 is wrong and anyway you play 25Rh7, OK, this is probably karma or something. Perhaps he deserved more or I should have done something better."

The Russian player chose 1.b3 for the second blitz game but didn't get anything out of the opening and then blundered positionally, after which his winning chances were gone.

Giri was surprised to see 1.b3: "Usually, people play 1.b3 because they want to get an interesting position because they are sick and tired of boring openings. But I'm playing the Najdorf, I don't really see why you would avoid the Najdorf in a must-win. It's anything but solid. But I can imagine, he probably felt I was very well prepared and he didn't want to end up in the situation where he ends up in my preparation, he just wanted to get a 'man against a man,' it's fair enough."

As always, the playoff was mostly about nerves and that was also why this victory was so important for Giri. Two months ago in Wijk aan Zee, he was incredibly close to winning his first super-tournament that included Carlsen in the participants' list but in the tiebreak, he stumbled against his compatriot and friend GM Jorden van Foreest. This time, Giri showed that he can overcome his nerves.

It's also a very welcome development for him taking into account that the next big tournament is the FIDE Candidates, which will resume on April 20. Giri reflected:

"Mostly, it's good for the vibes, for the Candidates, for the preparation. It's also good because I am of a firm belief that there is no such thing as 'destined,' or some people say that the champions are made of something, this kind of nonsense, I absolutely don't buy this. It's good, before the Candidates, that I win a tournament like this one and that I know if I get to the very fortunate situation that I will be close there, which is a long way to go, but if I ever get in that situation, I will not have any doubts, despite what many people are trying to create. I know there is no curse, but [now] I will know for sure there isn't such a thing."

Nepomniachtchi was mostly happy that it's over, saying:"The main achievement for me is that I survived these nine days of very intense playing.I got great practice. It's a little bit difficult to play chess never playing your own openings but OK, it was a nice experience."

The players can get back to their training for next month, where preparation will be of great importance. Giri said that, preparation wise, he benefited from the fact that the second half of the tournament was postponed twice as he organized several training camps already.

At the same time, he didn't agree that his tournament victory was based on his preparation for the Candidates:"Working on chess is like a continuous process. This process is lasting from the beginning of your career. It's like accumulating more and more knowledge. I've started preparing for the Candidates since I'm seven."

I've started preparing for the Candidates since I'm seven.Anish Giri

Having won the first match on Saturday, Carlsen only needed to score two game point to secure (at least) 2-2. He did, with two draws and the following win in the first game. The opening went well for So but the American GM missed a nasty knight move and it all turned around:

All Games Day 9

The Champions Chess Tour's Magnus Carlsen Invitational ran March 13-21 on chess24. The preliminary phase was a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advanced to a six-day knockout that consisted of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advanced to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks if a knockout match was tied after the second day. The prize fund was $220,000.

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Anish Giri Wins 2021 Magnus Carlsen Invitational - Chess.com

Quantification is taking over the world of sport. Ruben Saavedra, a Catalan neuroscientist who runs Metrica Sports, is part of the data revolution in football. He explains why and how data matters in football to Pinaki Chakraborty

Can data help you to measure the brilliance of a player?

No. I always make the comparison with chess. Football is similar to chess in a lot of ways. If you move a piece it has an impact on other pieces. You can analyse all of that. Not everything can be done with data, when they scout, they also scout their personal lives. Not everything can be measured. The more information you have the better decision you can make.

How has game evolved with data sciences?

We saw while watching games what media were doing with heat maps and we thought it was very basic. A player ran 5.2 km, but then when did he run, at what speed, with ball, without ball? I am talking about 2012-13, there were no clubs in the world that had proper data science departments, none. Some were starting in England, mainly Liverpool, and in the US because there is a culture in sports of data analysis. It comes from baseball, basketball etc.

Didnt big clubs have data analytic teams then?

Barcelona was starting, they had only one person. All top clubs nowadays have data sciences department. But if you go below those, they dont have it yet. Clubs like Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad are now building data science teams. We think we are in the middle of a revolution.

How is the data used at different levels?

Top clubs have a data science department and they use the data for whatever else they want along with football. The data can be used for scouting. You can get data from any video. If they upload a video from Brazil, then they can see his (players) workload, physical speed and high intensity runs. They also use the data for opposition analysis: where they shift the ball, the transitions.

Thats pattern recognition.

Yes, but it is also for analysing your own game. Clubs have their own philosophy and they have their own way of going through the game and they take their time to analyse the game. These are very fine details, for example, in some situation the players should not be further away than 5 metres. In the lower leagues you dont have data scientists, it is all based on videos. Now these clubs can add data to their video analysis.

How does data impact football philosophies of clubs?

Data can be used to see if the philosophy is actually happening. Clubs, reportedly like Barcelona and Ajax, have a fixed philosophy. They can build algorithms to detect those very specific movements: if we lose the ball here, we press for three seconds and step back, a certain player will instantly move to a position. Data will instantly tell you when this happens and when this does not. You can specify algorithms for positioning. For right backs and wingers there is a set of patterns. This enables them to compare a player who is playing u-17, u-19 and u-21 to those in the main team. They did it in the past by watching players, now they do it with data and scouts.

Can all clubs afford this?

For sure, this is not a cheap department. It also needs a change in culture. That is why the top clubs are leading the revolution. We believe that in a few years every professional club will make decisions based on data. When we started, the data trackers were bought by broadcasters and then in some clubs and leagues the broadcasters would try and sell this data. Now, it is the clubs that are buying the data directly.

How do they use the data for scouting?

Twenty years back all teams had a crew. They had 20-50 people travelling around the world watching games. They would send a report and then if the player was interesting, they would send another analyst. Now, data is used to support the decision. A club once told me that they were scouting a player in Brazil and all videos that they had was that he was superfast. Until we got the data. He was fast compared to Brazilian average, was low compared to our average. Now, its come a lot further. Data can tell you whether the player will fit into your team. So you buy a defensive midfielder and look at the data and find how many tackles he makes, how many recoveries and where he sprints. Then you put that data in your model and take out your defensive midfielder and put this one in. The more information you have, the better decision you can make.

Tell me what doesyour firm do?

We provide video and data analysis to football clubs. We provide it at all levels. The idea is to provide video and data analysis to football coaches, players, analysts, fans at all levels. We have an AI based tracking technology. We can track any football video whether it is training, from broadcast, from a hand held camera, anything. The data that is generated is the difference. We provide clubs like PSG or other clubs with highly sophisticated data, event data i.e. all ball events like passes, shots, tackles, all events during a game.

Is it because the so-called not well off clubs cannot afford expensive softwares like yours?For sure, this is not a cheap department. It is not just the people, but the data is very expensive. It also needs a change in culture and like any innovation there are early movers. Thos early movers are those who have enough money to waste or give . That is why the top clubs are leading the revolution. It is a matter of time when the low clubs in Spain, England and Germany, Holland now have the budgets to have such a department. When we started the data trackers were bought by broadcasters and then in some clubs and leagues the broadcasters will try and sell this data.

You spoke about democratising football. What is the Tesla model that you follow?What I meant was Tesla launched a very expensive product in the beginning, which only some privileged customers could pay and with that they financed some of the lower versions of the product. This is our model. When we founded the company in 2014, we only had the elite plan. We only worked with big clubs like the Reals, the Valencias, the Spanish national football team and covered the MLS, the American soccer league. That was our company back then. We wanted to democratise access to these kind of solutions for everyone now.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Football is similar to chess. Clubs have their own philosophy, algorithms can detect those specific movemen - The Times of India Blog

This week's Titled Tuesday saw a surprising winner. The Belarusian FM Denis Lazavik (@DenLaz) clinched the first prize as he edged out GM Jeffery Xiong (@jefferyx) on tiebreak. Both scored 9.5/11.Only 15 years old, Lazavik was the first FM to finish atop a Titled Tuesday in over a year.

This week's Titled Tuesday tournament had a total of 402 participants. It was an 11-round Swiss with a 3+1 time control.

Lazavik seems to be especially strong in online blitz. Although only an FM, he was the 25th seed in this tournament.

In the eighth round, he beautifully outplayed GM Dmitry Andreikin (@FairChess_on_YouTube):

The absence of regular participants such as GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Alireza Firouzja, and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (all involved in the Magnus Carlsen Invitational) helped, but there was even morefortune involved with Lazavik's tournament victory.

In the final round, no move appeared after 1.e4 as the Azerbaijani GM Vugar Rasulov (@vugarrasulov) disconnected and couldn't get back to the game at all. Before that,GM Sam Sevian (@Konavets), Lazavik's opponent in the penultimate round, seemed to have resigned in a winning position.

Xiong, the runner-up on tiebreak, played a remarkable game in the second round. Due to what was most probably a mouse slip, the American GM blundered a fork on c7 as early as move five but ended up winning anyway:

March 16 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Lazavik won $750 for first place, Xiong $400 for second, Sarana $150, and Bluebaum $100.

The $100 prize for the best female player again went to GM Alexandra Kosteniuk (@ChessQueen) who scored 7.5/11.

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (19:00 Central Europe).

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15-Year-Old Denis Lazavik Stuns At Titled Tuesday - Chess.com

Chess.com teams up with Susquehanna International Group, LLP (SIG) to present the 2021 Bullet Chess Championship. The event's qualifiers will happen on March 31 and April 1, while the main event will run from April 5-April 7. The All-Star event will be held on April 8. During the championship, top players will face each other in 1|0 matches to compete for their piece of a $32,000 total prize fund.

This year, reigning champion GM Hikaru Nakamura will fight to defend his title against elite players.

Chess.com will broadcast the event and provide live expert commentary on Chess.com/TV and Twitch.tv/Chess.

Defending champion, Nakamura, gets the highest seed. Seedings for the remaining players will be determined by their ratings after the qualifier stage.

Below is the schedule for the 2021 Bullet Chess Championship presented by SIG:

Qualifiers:

Main Event:

All-Star:

The championship has a total prize fund of $32,000 which will be divided as described below:

Main event: total prize fund of $25,000

All-star event: total prize fund of $7,000

Qualifiers:

Main event:

All-star event:

Main event players:

All-Star players:

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2021 Bullet Chess Championship Presented By SIG: All The Information - Chess.com

An otherwise meaningless game during Mondays preliminary stage of the $200,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational left a pair of grandmasters in stitches while thrusting one of chesss most bizarre and least effective openings into the mainstream.

Norways Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura of the United States had already qualified for the knockout stage of the competition with one game left to play between them. Carlsen, the worlds top-ranked player and reigning world champion, started the dead rubber typically enough by moving his kings pawn with the common 1 e4. Nakamura, the five-time US champion and current world No 18, mirrored it with 1 e5. And then all hell broke loose.

Carlsen inched his king one space forward to the rank where his pawn had started. The self-destructive opening (2 Ke2) is known as the bongcloud for a simple reason: youd have to be stoned to the gills to think it was a good idea.

The wink-wink move immediately sent Nakamura, whos been a visible champion of the bongcloud in recent years, into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Naturally, the American played along with 2 Ke7, which marked the first double bongcloud ever played in a major tournament and its official entry to chess theory (namely, the Bongcloud Counter-Gambit: Hotbox Variation).

Dont do this! cried the Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko from the commentary booth, looking on in disbelief as the friendly rivals quickly settled for a draw by repetition after six moves. Is this, uh, called bongcloud? Yeah? It was something like of a bongcloud business. This Ke2-Ke7 stuff. Please definitely dont try it at home. Guys, just forget about it.

Why is the bongcloud so bad? For one, it manages to break practically all of the principles youre taught about chess openings from day one: it doesnt fight for the center, it leaves the king exposed and it wastes time, all while eliminating the possibility of castling and managing to impede the development of the bishop and queen. Even the worst openings tend to have some redeeming quality. The bongcloud, not so much.

What makes it funny (well, not to everyone) is the idea that two of the best players on the planet would use an opening so pure in its defiance of conventional wisdom.

This bongcloud has been a cult favorite in chess circles since the dawn of the internet, a popularity only fueled by Bobby Fischers rumored deployment of the opening in his alleged series of games with Nigel Short on the Internet Chess Club back in 2000. But its origins as a meme can be traced to Andrew Fabbros underground book Winning with the Bongcloud, a pitch-perfect parody of chess opening manuals and the purple, ponderous language that fills their pages.

Thats not to say, like, say, Michael Changs underhand serve against Ivan Lendl in the 1989 French Open, theres no place for it at the elite level. Carlsen used it last October in the first game of a speed chess final win over the American grandmaster Wesley So, who confessed to its psychological effects in the aftermath: Its hard to forget the game when someone plays f3 and Kf2 and just crushes you. Thats so humiliating.

Then later: If you lose a game against 1 f3 and 2 Kf2 its just very psychologically draining.

Of course its Nakamura who has become the player most associated with the bongcloud. The 33-year-old most recently won a rapid game using it against the American grandmaster Jeffery Xiong last year during the $250,000 St Louis 27-round Rapid and Blitz. Hes even streamed a speedrun series where he attempted to reach a 3000 rating with a new account using only the bongcloud.

The combined visibility, culminating with Mondays viral moment, have lifted an obscure meme opening out of the shadows. As of Wednesday, its been added to the opening databases at lichess and chess.com. Of course, not everyone will be a fan: no less than Short himself appeared to describe the bongcloud as an insult to chess this week.

Chess will return to Serious Business once again in the next few months. The eight-man candidates tournament to determine Carlsens challenger in this years world chess championship will resume in April in Yekaterinburg following last years abrupt suspension. Then in November, Carlsen will embark on the fourth defense of the title hes held since 2013. The stratospheric stakes of those events all but preclude scenes like Mondays, which as commentator Tania Sachdev put it amid the delirium, is too bad. After all, its only a game.

Its kind of nice, Sachdev said, to see these two players having a laugh like this.

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Double bongcloud: why grandmasters are playing the worst move in chess - The Guardian