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Two traditional tournaments organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club will be held online next month: the Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX (Sept. 11-13) and the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz (Sept. 15-19). The first tournament is a round-robin this year, meaning that GM Garry Kasparovand GMMagnus Carlsenwill meet in an official event for the first time since 2004.

When the Grand Chess Tour was canceled due to the coronavirus crisis, many tournaments suddenly disappeared from the calendar. One of the tour's events has been re-instated as an online edition: the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz (more on that below).

The club also hosts a Chess960 event each year (mysteriously calling it Chess9LX), and it's nice to see that this wasn't canceled eitherif only for the fact that GM Garry Kasparov will again participate!

Online chess was never a big thing for The Boss during his career, partly because there were far fewer online events organized in the first place. This tournament seems to be his first official online event since his retirement.

Among Kasparov's rivals will be the world number one and two of classical chess, GMs Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, as well as the reigning Chess960 World Champion Wesley So and the Iranian prodigy GM Alireza Firouzja.

Last year the format was one-on-one matches, but this year the tournament is a round-robin. This means Kasparov will be playing against all nine participants, including Carlsen. This will be a historic clashalbeit online, albeit Chess960as the two world champions only faced each other in one previous event. That was also rapid and blitz chess, and it took place back in 2004 in Reykjavik, when Carlsen was 13 years old and Kasparov 41, a year before he would retire.

In 2017, when Kasparov played in the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament, he could have faced Carlsen as well, but it happened to be an event in which the Norwegian didn't play, coincidentally or not.

In Chess960, the starting position is different than in regular chess.While the pawns' positions remain the same, with White's pawns all on the second rank and Black's pawns on the seventh, minor (knights and bishops) and major pieces (rooks, king and queen) are placed semi-randomly on the first and last ranks.More about Chess960 (or Fischerrandom) can be found here.

The tournament will be held online on September 11-13 with three rounds per day. The players will learn what starting position they'll play only three minutes before the round.The time control is 20 minutes plus a 10-second increment. The total prize fund is $150,000.

Champions Showdown: Chess9LX | Participants

Right after this tournament, the Saint Louis Chess Club continues with another event, and for that, it's back to regular chess.

The Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz will be held September 15-19 and follows the standard schedule of such events in the Grand Chess Tour: first, three days of rapid with three rounds per day (25 minutes plus a 25-second increment) followed by two days of blitz with nine rounds per day (five minutes plus a three-second increment). The total prize fund is $250,000.

Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz | Participants

Games will start daily at 1:00 p.m. St. Louis time (GMT-5) which is 11:00 a.m. Pacific time and 20:00 Central European time.Both tournaments will include expert commentary to choose from:

The rest is here:
Carlsen, Kasparov Will Clash For The 1st Time In 16 Years - Chess.com

8/27/2020 Besides the Biel Triathlon played in July, no elite over-the-board tournament has been organized after the coronavirus crisis prompted the chess world to focus on online events. In a little over a month, however, we will get to see a strong field fighting over the board. The Altibox Norway Chess Tournament with Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Alireza Firouzja and Aryan Tari kicks off October 5! | Photo: Lennart Ootes

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Press release

The world as we know it has changed and people all over the world are facing challenging times. Sport events of all types have been cancelled as we together have been distancing ourselves to avoid the spread of the virus. For chess, this has been the case as well, where tournaments all over the world have been cancelled. However, online chess has grown exponentially during this period as tournaments and other chess events have been organized on different online platforms. This has certainly been positive for chess, as it is a perfect sport to follow online!

The time for chess across the physical board is back!

This years Altibox Norway Chess tournament will be different, but nothing short of exciting! It will be a double round-robin tournament with six players:

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The first round starts October 5 and the tournament ends on October 16. There are two free days (October9 and 14).

We cant wait to bring these incredible chess players back together for some exciting chess matches! The Armageddon games that we introduced last year will continue as theyturned out to be a major success.

Players will get the following points per round:

The team of theAltibox Norway Chess have ensured that the tournament willbe safe for players, teams and other crew members.

[Magns Carlsens photo: Lennart Ootes]

[Originally, the lineup included Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri. On August 25, it was announced that Jan-Krzysztof Duda would replace him.]

Anish Giridecided to withdraw due to growing concerns around the Covid-19 situation in the Netherlands.

Now, the Altibox Norway Chess team is thrilled to announce that Polish Grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda has accepted the invitation to play in this historic edition of the tournament. It will be Dudas first time playing in Altibox Norway Chess. Duda is a very interesting player and will be a great addition to the tournament.

Duda noted:

I must admit that I was surprised by the proposal to play in the tournament in Stavanger, which I got on my way to Ustro for the MOKATE tournament. However, I did not even think about declining this offer for a moment. Extremely interesting and, for me, a strong line-up of the tournament promises great emotions, and for me it will be another opportunity to test myself with the best chess players in the world. For my part, I promise what Im known for courage, uncompromising play and fight to the very end. I intend to use the possible quarantine for broadening my knowledge about Norway and preparing for the tournament.

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Altibox Norway Chess with Carlsen and Caruana returns in October - Chessbase News

There is a strange long-distance chess game going on between Dublin and Brussels focused on picking a replacement for Phil Hogan. And this chess game has compounded the already messy political wrangling going inside the three-party Coalition.

he Government's focus has been on trying to figure out what the EU Commission President's next move would be - once they have shown their hand. If they comply with a request to send the name of a man and a woman, is the man definitively not going to get the job? And just what calibre of job might be available?

For those of us who like our politics, this one carries more than a hint of intrigue.

People around Government Buildings keep stressing that Brussels has no legal right to demand two nominations, male and female. This is true - but it does not help things.

Realpolitik is that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has the final decision on who gets what. Given the recent history of this one, it would be prudent to comply with her wishes.

Ireland will not keep Phil Hogan's trade portfolio, but two high-calibre names could secure a meaningful role for his successor, maintaining Irish political heft.

Informal talks are going on between European experts in Government Buildings and Ms von der Leyen's advisory team, while Ireland's EU embassy is heavily on the case. But hard information is scarce - and there can be no guarantees.

In the simplest terms, it means Simon Coveney has no guarantee of anything much. If he lets his name go forward as one of two, he could be rejected in favour of the female nominee. Or, he could come through and be handed a portfolio with little political relevance.

Yesterday in Brussels, Ms von der Leyen hosted the big return-to-work, meeting her Commission team. It was an informal affair focused on identifying the many challenges facing the European Union in the coming months.

Ireland's Commission nominee was at best a sidebar, viewed through the prism of who might be getting promotion now that one of the heavy-hitters, Mr Hogan, had unexpectedly departed. Ms von der Leyen's immediate focus is on her first so-called 'State of the Union' address, to be delivered to the European Parliament next Wednesday week, September 16.

You're already forgiven if you have not heard about this before. It is a product of the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon, borrows heavily from the USA, and is an effort to put more political transparency, and indeed some political oomph, into the EU's sometimes byzantine politics.

Suffice to say this is big stuff for the woman known increasingly as 'VDL' since it is her first of these and she needs to show leadership on Covid-19, Brexit, climate change and a plethora of other pressing issues. When it comes to Irish issues, she can afford to wait.

Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis has taken temporary responsibility for trade. The former Latvian prime minister has been briefed by Mr Hogan and is familiar with the big-picture issues.

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John Downing: In this long-distance chess game there is only one kingmaker - Independent.ie

Whether championing math, poetry, or just how to be a decent human being, the inspirational teacher is as familiar to movie audiences as the class stoner. Critical Thinking does little to detach itself from genre clich; yet this heartfelt drama about a rough-and-tumble group of high-schoolers who claw their way to a national chess tournament has a sweetness that softens its flaws.

Based on a true story and set in an underserved Miami neighborhood in 1998, the movie drops us into the boisterous classroom of Mr. Martinez (played by the director, John Leguizamo).

Chess is the great equalizer, he tells his multiethnic students, using the game to teach his critical thinking elective with a side of racial history discouraged by his school board. The principal (Rachel Bay Jones) might treat his classroom like a dumping ground for miscreants, but Martinez, assisted by wigs and funny accents, explains complicated chess moves with a deftness that cuts through their indifference.

With goals as modest as the lives of its characters, Critical Thinking follows the predictable arc of the underdog drama as the chess team overcomes troubled home situations and other setbacks on the road to a Beverly Hills-set finale. Slow and straightforward, the movie knows that a chess match is hardly a barnburner; but its lively young performers and their eventual triumph are easy to warm to. Drugs and gangs might beckon and ICE hovers just outside the frame but theyre no match for the values of sportsmanship and teamwork. And Mr. Martinezs pep talks.

Critical ThinkingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas, or rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

Link:
Critical Thinking Review: All the Right Moves - The New York Times

Chess has been played by millions of people all over the world from the 6th century onwards in one form or another. Young and old, rich and poor: chess transcends all normal social barriers.

16 pawns, 16 pieces, 64 squares and two opponents, but we are still nowhere near reaching the stage of the game being fully solved. Even in the modern era, when computers and programs can cycle through millions of positions and calculate to unbelievable depths, there are still entirely new positions being reached every day. The amount of possible permutations is just that big.

Especially now with the explosion of Internet chess, where streamers and Grandmasters alike are bringing the game to new audiences, there are more eyes on the chess world than arguably ever before.

So what kind of stories surround the "Game of Kings" and who are the players involved in them? From titled players to novices, there will hopefully be something here to pique the interest of everyone.Let's see what kind of stories have involved that chequered board in one way or another.

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10 Interesting Stories From The World Of Chess - WhatCulture