Octopus Overlords

Well, whatever mistakes you made, the other guy did a lot worse. Any time you let your king get chased out to the opposite end of the board, you know you done farked up.

The Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Final, the culmination of a few months of online tournaments, is currently underway and is a lot of fun. It's a best-of-seven series, and Hikaru Nakamura currently leads Magnus 3-2. (Each point represents winning a day, and each day is its own mini-series of games.)

Today, they tied the first four games. Magnus won game five, Hikaru won game six to send the day to a tiebreaker. Which he won.

The match went to all 7 rounds, with Carlsen drawing the Armageddon tiebreaker as Black to win the match. It doesn't get much closer than that.

I have played 335 games on chess.com. For the first time, chess.com has deemed one of my moves "brilliant."





This must be what it feels like when a parent tells you they love you.

I fail to see the brilliance of the move. Rook takes bishop, pawn takes rook, queen takes rook, and we're right where we started.

Yeah, but then black is down to a queen, while white has queen + rook, so black is basically hosed.

As Black, Stockfish's next move is to check via Qe3+. (-1.4)

Here is an online game I played as Black against a 2700 (I was about 1300 at the time). He thought he would run me off the board with his King's Gambit (click on the board to see moves):

Wild one!

Chess DRAMA! After Armenia defeated St. Louis in the finals of the Pro Chess League, American GM Wesley So accused the Armenians of cheating. This prompted one of the Armenian players to respond:

GM Tigran L. Petrosian wrote:Are you kidding ??? What the **** are you talking about man ? You are a biggest looser i ever seen in my life ! You was doing PIPI in your pampers when i was beating players much more stronger then you!

Shortly thereafter:

Chess.com wrote:The Saint Louis Arch Bishops are the winners of the 2020 PRO Chess League championship. The Armenia Eagles have been disqualified from the 2020 season due to fair play violations.

After a thorough investigation, Chess.com's Fair Play team determined that GM Tigran L. Petrosian, who played for the Armenia Eagles, violated fair play regulations during games in both the semifinal and final matches that took place on September 25 and 27, respectively.

AWS260 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:09 pm I have played 335 games on chess.com. For the first time, chess.com has deemed one of my moves "brilliant."

It's taken seven months, but I did it again, guys.



I only had 19 seconds left on the clock, so either: A) I stumbled into this; or B) I am extra-brilliant. Let's, uh, just go with B.

When in doubt, push a pawn.

The Candidates Tournament - the tournament to decide who will challenge Magnus Carlsen for the world championship - has resumed, after stopping at the halfway point last year due to COVID.

Here's a game from today.

Looks like Caruana is gunning for a rematch. He is now tied with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and a 1/2 point back of Nepomniachtchi.

This is pretty fun. Vasyl Ivanchuk is a treasure.

Anish Giri crushes Caruana with Black in a beautiful attack to reach 7.5 out of 12. Assuming Nepo draws an equal position against Wang Hao, Giri will be tied for first with 2 rounds remaining.

Edit: Nepo pulled a win out of his game to maintain a 1/2 point lead at 8/12.

Nepo draws against MVL while Giri lost to Greschuk, so Nepo stands at 8.5 to Giri's 7.5, and only needs a draw in the final round to clinch it. Will be nice to see some fresh blood in the WC match.

Nepo owns the tiebreaks over Giri, so he cannot be caught - he is the new Challenger! WC match starts November 24.

Today was the opening ceremony. The first game of the Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi world championship match will be on Friday around 1 PM PST. Various sites will be showing the games, including chess.com.

First game a draw with Carlsen playing Black. I messed up the time, Dubai is 12 hours ahead, so games start at 1 AM PST. At least I can get the results when I wake up.

Game 2 was another hard fought draw with chances for both sides.

After 5 straight draws, Carlsen finally breaks through with a win in 136 moves, the longest game in World Championship history.

Carlsen broke through with another win with White in game 8 to go up 2-0. To my eyes Nepo did not appear to be on his game.

I'm surprised either of them were still alive after the previous game.

Nepo blunders in game 9 to go down 0-3. The match is now effectively over.

Carlsen closes out the match in style as he sacrifices the exchange with Black for an unstoppable attack. Congrats to Magnus.

https://www.sixdegreesofhikaru.tk/

If you have a chess.com account and play blitz or bullet, this website will tell you your Hikaru number: you beat X who beat Y who beat Z... who beat Hikaru Nakamura.

My Hikaru number is a remarkably low 6, thanks to a 2100 FM who somehow beat Hikaru one time.

The Candidates Tournament has started! Winner gets to face Magnus Carlsen for the world championship. Ding Liren, one of the favorites, lost his first-round game.

Was watching a bit during work today. Fabi had a nice win as black.

Nepo won again today. Appears he is a lock unless Caruana catches him. The question is whether Carlsen will defend his crown in a repeat match against either of them. His refusal would throw things into chaos.

Some masterful tactics on display at the tournament.

The chess.com livestream of the Nakamura-Caruana game going on right now is really engaging. Lots of tension, and you can tell that the commentators are having a great time exploring different lines. (Occasionally punctuated by really bad jokes.)

Nepo with Black held Caruana to a draw today so still leads by a full point. Barring a monumental collapse, Nepo will win the Candidates Tournament. If Carlsen declines to defend his crown it will likely be a Nepo-Caruana match for the championship. Not since Bobby Fischer has a sitting champ declined to defend.

I have trouble imagining Magnus declining, especially given the trash talking he was doing last week.

Nepo won again, so with 3 rounds to go the fight is for second place. Ding beat Caruana to pull .5 points ahead of Nakamura. Ding was in poor form early but is coming on strong. Bizarrely he only got a spot in the tournament when Karjakin was booted for shitty comments about Ukraine.

Nepo wraps up the Candidates tournament with a game to spare, getting an easy draw against Rapport. The only decisive game today was Nakamura over Duda, so he has a 1/2 point lead over Ding for second place. This sets up an exciting last round game where Ding has White against Nakamura. A win by Ding would leapfrog him into second place, whereas Nakamura only needs a draw.

Nakamura bungled the draw and lost to Ding, who finishes a clear second. Now the championship match will either be either Carlsen - Nepo or Nepo - Ding.

Jaymann wrote: ↑Mon Jul 04, 2022 2:10 pm Nakamura bungled the draw and lost to Ding, who finishes a clear second. Now the championship match will either be either Carlsen - Nepo or Nepo - Ding.

The latter!

Wow, Ding Liren wasn't even in the candidates until he played (and won) enough rated games to qualify as a replacement, and now he has a shot at the world title. My understanding is Carlsen wanted to change the format so that every game would be contested at increasingly faster times until there was a winner. Apparently that was too radical of a change for FIIDE.

I guess Carlsen felt he had nothing left to prove and is going out on top. It would be hilarious if in the future he plays up through the ranks to become the challenger again.

In the 2022 Chess Olympiad the USA super team of Caruana, So, Aronian and Shankland is only good for a fourth place tie at 14 points with 3 rounds to go. They trail Armenia and India (2) at 15, and surprising Uzbekistan at 16. The story of the tournament has been Gukesh on Board 1 for India (2) who won 8(!) straight games before surrendering a draw to Mamedyarov.

It must feel pretty great for Armenia to be performing so well after losing their best player (Aronian) to the U.S.