Archive for the ‘Chess’ Category

Winning On Demand, Carlsen Clinches Clutch Chess International – Chess.com

GMMagnus Carlsenwon theClutch Chess International. In the second half of the final, played on Sunday, the Norwegian grandmaster was on the verge of defeat after losing the first clutch game to GMFabiano Caruanabut then delivered in the second.

Carlsen was back to "sssh'ing," holding an index finger in front of his mouth when he was sure of victory in the last clutch game. Used by many NBA players to demonstrate their dominance, Carlsen had shushed prematurely in a game against the same opponent in the 2018 Sinquefield Cupwhere he failed to convert a promising position and admitted his gesture "kind of backfired."

Almost two years later, Golden State Warrior fan Carlsen was sure this time and delivered. He won a must-win game.

"I've been advocating doing the shush when you got a good chance to win because I feel like when you do it after you won you don't actually risk being humiliated," Carlsen said. "Why would you try and do this... there should be some skin in the game. But this time I felt like it was an appropriate moment to do it. But I promise next time I do it when I have something to lose!"

The final saw an incredible run of score. After two draws at the start, the next 10 games were all decisive except one! Carlsen used another basketball analogy there:"There were no consecutive wins in the whole match which is pretty sick so it was really like both teams scoring on every possession."

The final day saw Carlsen starting with a good win, but he admitted that his opponent was playing better chess in the next four games. After a draw in game eight, Caruana leveled the score in game nine, but Carlsen took the lead again in game 10 (see the game viewer below).

We'll pick up the match with the first clutch game. From 6.5-5.5 down, Caruana jumped straight to 7.5-5.5. It was the first time he was leading, and his fourth(!) comeback in the match, after a game where he took full control in the early middlegame:

"That was an important game, and I also thought it was quite a good game," Caruana said.

Carlsen wasn't too stressed when this happened."To be honest I was fairly calm," he said. "I knew I would have one more chance and the way game 11 had gone I had sort of reconciled with the fact that I was probably gonna lose that game for a while so at that point I just relished the challenge."

The final game couldn't have gone better for him: "The way it went was a dream since everything worked just out very well and I didn't really have to squeeze it out, I could go for the jugular at an early point and that was it."

"I didn't believe I would lose the last game but yeah, something just went very wrong," said Caruana. "To be honest I didn't expect him to repeat this. The first day I saw that 6...b5 is supposed to be a decent move and I'd take it from there, which was probably a bit too casual because I obviously misplayed it.It wasn't a very good final game; I was blundering everything. I'm sure he played the game well but from my side, it was just like I wasn't there in the last game."

Carlsen complimented his opponent and agreed with the commentators that Caruana's reputation of not being great at faster time controls is outdated:"I gotta say that Fabi has made incredible strides in rapid and blitz chess. Judging by the way we played today he was as deserved a winner as I was. He deserves credit for a very good match."

And what about that shushing? "At the very least I've given my opponents more ammunition and I'm sure I'll see a lot of shushing when I lose games, not only by GM Anish Giri!"

Games final, day 2

The Clutch Chess International Champions Showdown was an eight-player knockout event that ran on lichess June 6-14 in association with the Saint Louis Chess Club. The prize fund was $265,000 with a first prize of $50,000.

The time control was 10 minutes for all moves with a five-second increment after each move.Each match consisted of 12 games with six games played each day. The final two games of each day were "clutch" games that were worth double the points on day one and triple on day two, as well as a $2,000 bonus per game on day one and $3,000 on day two.

Previous reports:

Excerpt from:
Winning On Demand, Carlsen Clinches Clutch Chess International - Chess.com

The Grandmaster Who Got Twitch Hooked on Chess – WIRED

League of Legends streamer Albert Boxbox Zheng adored chess in elementary school, but stopped playing when he was around nine. One day, after hearing about some grandmaster chess guys stream popping off, he dropped into Nakamuras channel to watch him play blindfolded. I wrote in his chat afterwards, like, That was amazing. Then he saw my name in the chat, and was like, Is that the BoxBox? Nakamura fished Zheng out and asked him to come on stream and play against him.

He blew my mind with how deep chess goes, says Zheng.

Nakamura challenged Zheng to a game, but Nakamura would start without a queen. Zheng thought, Theres no way he can beat me without a queen. Of course, Nakamura crushed him. Nakamura began removing more pieces, starting the game with fewer and fewer, until, Zheng says, I finally won when he basically had nothing. I was hooked.

Nakamuras impressive, lightly trollish chess gimmicksblindfolded matches, matches without queens or rooks, solving as many puzzles as he can in five minuteshave spurred Twitchs top personalities to try the game for themselves. Instead of looking down his nose at these pro gamers who come to him for guidance, he exudes respect for Lengyel (legendary character), who has three million followers, or Saqib Lirik Zahid, who has 2.6 million followers (honored by his visit). Now, top Hearthstone, Fortnite, and Valorant streamers are sliding into Nakamuras DMs asking for coaching. Nakamura has in turn developed his own streaming persona, somewhere between a proud dad and a laughing supergenius.

On stream, Nakamura has described his new role as Twitchs chess ambassador as his calling. In retrospect, he says, it makes sense; after winning his first championship in 2005, Nakamura says he went over to the hotel lobby to play blitz, or speed, games against random audience members until two or three in the morning. (Nakamura is now the top blitz player in the world.) Ive always wanted to bring it to the masses, he says. In his chat, viewers tell Nakamura that they hadnt played or watched chess since they were kids, but were intrigued by their favorite streamers newfound interest.

When I work with streamers, Im trying to get them to have fun, but also these aha! moments, says Nakamura. Moments where they see little combinations or little tricks, thats really the goal. Theyre not going to be great, but if they can learn something from it and theyre having fun, for me, that means Im doing a good job.

Nakamuras mission to bring a populist movement to chess runs up against the games marked culture of elitism. Theres a tendency among some chess devotees to look down on streamers learning, and sometimes making mistakes, so publicly. Zheng has been shocked at how antagonistic his Twitch chat gets when he streams chess; sometimes, he cant even look at it. League is known for toxicity. Chess, surprisingly, is even worse, he says, describing the phenomenon as backseat gaming.

There are a lot of people who are miles better than meI dont deny thatwho get mad that me, a new player, cant pick up the game and instantly be an expert at it, says Zheng. People will shove and yell moves down my throat. Not only is it annoying, oftentimes its wrong and very aggressive.

"Ive always wanted to bring chess to the masses."

Hikaru Nakamura

Chess mastermind and Twitch streamer Alexandra Botez, a Woman FIDE Master, who has also seen huge growth in her channel, says that elitism extends to the broader chess community, too. Your worth is really determined by your ranking, especially in the tight-knit circles of people who dedicated their lives to chess. Shes watched on as a lot of other top chess players have tried streaming on Twitch without seeing anywhere near her or Nakamuras success. She attributes it to Nakamuras ability to engage with Twitch culture on its own terms, memeing with viewers and gamely replying to their questions. Other top players prefer to remain distant, viewing Twitch as a platform rather than a cultural organism.

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The Grandmaster Who Got Twitch Hooked on Chess - WIRED

An Introduction to Chess: More notes on notation – Stabroek News

This week we return to notation to allow readers a better understanding of how the pieces move and capture, how to react when the King is in check and how to bring a chess game to its conclusion. The best way to do this is by going through the motions of solving the puzzle.

The aim of chess is not to swap pieces. Rather, it is to checkmate the King. The King cannot be removed from the chess board during a practical game. Every other piece or pawn can be captured and removed. Checkmating the King means placing the King in a hopeless position. The word checkmate is also used in situations pertaining to life. In chess, checkmate is when the King is unable to escape, similarly in life.

When check is announced, you have to leave everything you are doing and attend to it. You can block a check, move your King out of check, or capture the piece that is announcing the check. The goal of all chess puzzles is to checkmate your opponents King no matter what moves he makes. You have to administer checkmate in the required number of moves.

Some chess puzzles are created from actual chess games and some are chess compositions. I prefer the ones from actual games. In some compositions, we can reach a position that cannot be reached in a chess game. Chess puzzles are automatically verified so that the solutions are correct and complete. Sometimes a shorter solution to a puzzle exists.

My chess colleague Loris Nathoo has the rare ability of finding a shorter solution to a puzzle. He works on the puzzle on Sundays and presents me with the solutions. The two puzzles in Diagram 1 and Diagram 2 are taken from actual grandmaster games.

In Diagram 1, it is Black, played by Vitaly Chekhover, to play and win. The game was played at Leningrad in 1934. Black plays Re1+ (+ is an abbreviation for check). The Rook goes down on the back rank and calls check. White has to attend to this check immediately. He cannot take the Rook with his Rook which is stationed at d1 because White will lose his Queen with check. So White is forced to play Kf2. Black plays Re2+. White cannot capture the black Rook since it is protected by the black Queen. White is forced to retreat to f1 or g1. When he does, the black Queen will take the g pawn and it is checkmate since the white King cannot evade the check.

In Diagram 2 Vishy Anand is playing the black pieces. The game was contested at Salonika in 1984. It is Black to play and win. Black plays Ra1 if Rxa1 (x means capture) Nf2+. To prevent checkmate, White has to capture the Knight with his Queen which gives black a decisive advantage.

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An Introduction to Chess: More notes on notation - Stabroek News

Chess: national solving championship opens for entries from Britain this week – The Guardian

This weeks puzzle is the opening round of a national contest where Guardian readers traditionally perform strongly. You have to work out how White, playing, as usual, up the board in the diagram, can force checkmate in two moves, however Black defends.

The puzzle is the first stage of the annual Winton British Solving Championship, organised by the British Chess Problem Society. This competition is open only to British residents and entry is free. The prize fund is expected to be at least 1200, plus awards to juniors.

If you would like to take part, simply send Whites first move to Nigel Dennis, Boundary House, 230 Greys Road, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, RG9 1QY. Or by email to winton@theproblemist.org.

Include your name, home address and postcode and mark your entry Guardian. If you were under 18 on 31 August 2019, please include your date of birth.

The closing date is 31 July. After that, all solvers will receive the answer and those who get it right will also be sent a postal round of eight problems, with plenty of time for solving.

The best 20-25 entries from the postal round, plus the best juniors, will be invited to the championship final in February (subject to Covid-19 restrictions). The winner there will qualify for the Great Britain team in the 2021 world solving championship, an event where GB is often a medal contender.

The starter problem, with most of the pieces in the lower half of the board, is tricky and with an unusual twist. Obvious checks and captures rarely work. It is easy to make an error, so review your answer before sending it. Good luck to all Guardian entrants.

Magnus Carlsen survived some anxious moments this week in his quarter-final match in the online Clutch International before the world champion overcame Americas top junior Jeffery Xiong. The 19-year-old Texan had a purple period in the middle of the 12-game series when he had a run of five games with two wins and three draws.

Carlsen was dominant at the start and the finish and his best two victories were imaginative attacks where the rare knight move Nh7! featured.

The event, financed by the St Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield who has made his home city a global chess centre, has the highest prize fund yet, $265,000 (approx 207,000), for an internet tournament.

Carlsen controlled the first session of his semi-final on Thursday evening as he led Armenias Levon Aronian 6-2 without losing a game. Wesley So also led 6-2 in the all-American semi-final against the world No 2, Fabiano Caruana.

A Carlsen v So final would be far from a done deal for the world champion, as So is currently in excellent form. The semi-final is also not over yet due to the Clutch scoring system where the final two games (of six) count double on the first day and triple on the second. In his interview after the Thursday session, Aronian declared his intention to go into berserk mode for the last six games, taking extra risks to get back into the match.

Both semi-finals can be viewed live online for free with grandmaster commentary, starting at 7pm on Friday.

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Chess: national solving championship opens for entries from Britain this week - The Guardian

Karjakin vs. Cosmonauts | Earth vs. Space 50th anniversary chess game – chess24

Russian Grandmaster Sergey Karjakin played a game ofchess against cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner on Tuesday 9th Juneto celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1st ever Space-Earth game. Thecosmonauts were 400 km above the Earth on the International Space Station, which recently welcomed NASAastronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley and their SpaceX spacecraft, whileSergey played from the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics, exactly 50 years afterthe first game was played in 1970.

The game was organised by the Moscow Museum ofCosmonautics, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Russian ChessFederation and broadcast live from 11:00 CEST, in English.

And in Russian:

The game ended in a fast and sharp draw, where almost all of the moves were perfectly played:

1. e4 e5 2. f3 c6 3. b5 a6 4. xc6 dxc6 5. O-O e6 6. b3 c5 7. xe5 d4 8. c4 xc4 9. bxc4 xa1 10. c3 b5 11. h5 f6 12. f3 b4 13. e5 O-O-O 14. a3 xf1+ 15. xf1 bxc3 16. exf6 cxd2 17. a8+ d7 18. d5+ c8 19. a8+ d7 20. d5+ e8 21. e4+ d7

1/2-1/2

2016 World Championship Challenger Sergey Karjakin needs nointroduction on a chess website. Cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagnerhave been on the International Space Station since April 9th, when they arrivedtogether with NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy.

They were recently joined by astronauts Douglas Hurley andRobert Behnken, whose SpaceX vehicle was the first to be launched from US soilsince the last flight of the Space Shuttle in 2011 and the first ever crewed commercial orbiting spacecraft. NASA estimated 10 million people watched the launch, with their arrival on the ISS also streamed across the world:

There are few details about the game to be played againstSergey Karjakin, except that Space plays White, but its value is symbolic, marking 50 years since thefirst such game.

Cosmonauts Andrian Nikolayev (1929-2004) and VitalySevastyanov (1935-2010) were the first humans to spend two weeks in space (NeilArmstrongs Apollo 11 flight to the moon and back a year earlier took just over8 days), with their Soyuz 9 flight ultimately lasting almost 18 days, orexactly 424 hours of weightlessness, as recorded on commemorative stamps.

The mission was in preparation for the Soviet Unions earlyspace station, with Vitaly Sevastyanov in 1986 telling the Russianchess journal 64:

When Nikolaev and I were preparing for our flight they toldus: Youre going to be flying for a long time. You need to think of how to meaningfullyspend your rest time during the hard work of the flight. What do you want totake onto the spaceship? Andrian and I were great chess enthusiasts and answered together: Chess! Unexpectedly the psychologists were wary. There are two ofyou on the flight. Itll turn out that one of you always beats the other and therecan be unnecessary negative emotions for the loser. Thats no good. Come on,we objected with one voice. On earth we play at the same level. Why should one of us always win in Space?

The psychologists gave in and chess went into space, thoughit was a special chess set designed for zero gravity by a young engineer calledMikhail Klevtsov. Magnets werent allowed (and still arent today on the ISS)due to their potential to interfere with instruments, and the pieces wereinstead kept in place but movable by a series of grooves, so they didntaccidentally fly into the mouth of a sleeping cosmonaut (Sevastyanov).

The players on the ground were General Nikolai Kamanin(1908-1982), the head of the cosmonaut training program, and cosmonaut ViktorGorbatko (1934-2017), with another cosmonaut, Valery Bykovsky (1934-2019) hostingthe broadcast:

The game lasted 6 hours, or 4 orbits of the Earth, with theplayers only able to transmit their moves while the spaceship was above theSoviet Union. You can catch some glimpses of the game in this video focussed onVitaly Sevastyanov:

The game ended in a draw, which you can replay below:

1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. e3 e5 4. xc4 exd4 5. exd4 c6 6. e3 d6 7. c3 f6 8. f3 O-O 9. O-O g4 10. h3 f5 11. h4 d7 12. f3 e7 13. g4 g6 14. ae1 h8 15. g5 eg8 16. g2 ae8 17. e3 b4 18. a3 xc3 19. bxc3 e4 20. g3 c6 21. f3 d5 22. d3 b5 23. h4 g6 24. f4 c4 25. xc4 bxc4 26. d2 xe1 27. xe1 d5 28. g5 d6 29. xd5 cxd5 30. f4 d8 31. e5+ f6 32. gxf6 xf6 33. xf6+ xf6 34. e8+ xe8 35. xf6+ g81/2-1/2

Space missed the best chance to conquer the Earth on move23:

23.g5! wins a piece, since the only move for the knight is23Nh5, but then 24.Qg4! forces 24Qxg4 25.hxg4 and after the again forced 25Ng326.Rf2 there are various ways for White to pick up the trapped knight.

One of the most interesting things about the game is that itwas commentated on widely by the best Soviet chess players. David Bronsteinwrote in the Izvestia newspaper:

That game will undoubtedly go down in the annals of the 1000year long history of chess as the game that spread the sphere of influence ofthis wise game beyond our planet. Everyone can understand the emotion withwhich I look over the moves sent from space. The first Space Earth game isvery interesting to play over on a board. From the moves its easy to see thatboth sides love sharp, puzzling situations and show no lack of courage andinvention in creating them. And the fact that neither side managed to win bearswitness to the skill of the players not only in attack but also in defence.

Later that year on the 24th November 1970 the cosmonautsvisited Moscows Central Chess Club for an evening featuring World ChampionBoris Spassky, former World Champions Mikhail Botvinnik and Tigran Petrosian aswell as other top players.

It was right in the middle of the Palma deMallorca Interzonal that would mark a sea change in chess, with Bobby Fischer going on to win by a huge 3.5 point margin. Of the six players who qualified for WorldChampionship Candidates Matches only Efim Geller and Mark Taimanov representedthe USSR, with Fischer, Bent Larsen, Robert Huebner and Wolfgang Uhlmann taking the remaining places. Alexander Kotov, best known now for his Think Like a Grandmaster book,referred to that as he tried to look 40 years ahead, i.e. to 2010, that evening:

Im sure that then well have not an Interzonal but an InterplanetaryTournament. And the grey-haired, now ex-World Champion, Boris Spassky, will comeout with a big article where as a journalist hell criticise the organisers thatfor some reason they allocated two places to weak players from Jupiter,reducing by two the representation of the lunar base And chess fans, gatheringin an even more luxurious club to assess the outcome of the Interplanetary Tournamentwill of course recall the first game played in space that opened a new era forthe ancient game.

Back then it was hard to imagine that the last men to travelto the Moon would have done so just two years later in 1972, with no Sovietcosmonaut ever standing on the Moon.

3-time World Chess Champion MikhailBotvinnik also referred to the Interzonal Tournament while talking about thehead of the cosmonaut training program:

36 years ago I saw Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin for the firsttime, if Im not mistaken, in the Grand Peterhof Palace not far from Leningrad,when the ChelyuskinHeroes were being honoured there. Back then we were both very young andboth could have become cosmonauts. Now, of course, Im no longer fit for that.

I look on General Kamanin with great envy. Although werethe same age hes taken great care of himself and is in charge of ourcosmonauts. Besides that, Ive already stopped playing chess myself, whileKamanin, as we just got to see, still continues to perform well in events.

From the stories of Andrian Nikolaev and Vitaly Sevastyanovit became clear to us what difficulties a man faces in space. The first isphysical weightlessness, which can be compared to what the participants in theInterzonal Tournament in Palma de Mallorca feel, when theres only a rest dayonce in every 9 days. The second difficulty is, if we can put it like this,intellectual weightlessness.

When a man finds himself on the Earth in everyday life hesconstantly confronted by the solution of complex problems or, to put it anotherway, inexact problems. Its not so simple to cross a street, to decide how tospend an evening to go to the cinema, theatre or find a more frivolousactivity. But on a spaceship a man has none of that and he can forget how tosolve complex, inexact problems. And here chess comes to the rescue becausechess is a typical complex, inexact problem. After all, its long been knownthat people playing chess drift and find the correct decisions withdifficulty.

I by no means want to suggest that cosmonauts should bepicked from among chess players. On the contrary, I think that if ourgrandmasters will play the way theyve played at the start of the InterzonalTournament in Palma de Mallorca (not counting, of course, Geller), then wellneed to find chess reserves from among the cosmonauts

Of course since 1970 chess has been played in space, with someastronauts having had plenty of time as they spent hundreds of days on Mir and now the International SpaceStation. The US Chess Federation in particular organised anEarthvs. Space matchgiving the chance for kids to take on astronauts. Chess always makes for good photo opportunities!

Tuesday's game will be a memorablecelebration of some of the early pioneers of space flight.

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Karjakin vs. Cosmonauts | Earth vs. Space 50th anniversary chess game - chess24