Chess

yes, fairly simple but the fun part for me is when you reached this position:

and black plays above move… just thinking about all the people that will just promote to a queen and then realise too late that black will force a draw :wink:

I didn’t get this.

Well I didn’t get the black Queen on c3 and he didn’t explain it better so idk.

Anand is back in the top 10. He’s 54.

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I didn’t realize the candidates was going on. It’s in Toronto. They’ve done a poor job of advertising. Hikaru just lost for the first time in 47 matches. I’m still rooting for him, Caruana or an Indian. Although, Caruana already had his chance and would be boring. Nothing as boring as Ding. Nepomniatchi just won. He beat Alireza. The most unlikable lol.

2 matches out of 14, so far.

I would love to see Praggnanandhaa win but I don’t think there’s any chance of that. He’s ranked 14.

Excellent commentary! Is Caruana playing Ding or is he out and who is Hikaru? Never heard of him.

Caruana is playing against 7 of the top players in the world. There are naturallly 14 rounds. Whomever has the most points faces Ding for the title. There are some tiebreakers if needed. I think their tiebreak rules are more idiotic than the world cup, unless they updated them.

Out of the 8 players, 3 are from India, 2 from USA. 1 from Russia, 1 from Iran/France who cheated his way to get in. 1 guy from some dinky European country that has no chance.

Hikaru Nakamura is one of the top 2 blitz players of all time. He is a very popular streamer. Despite making most of his money streaming, he is 3rd in the world in classical. An unreal improvement, considering training is not his full time job. He is a sore loser, but good for chess and he’s American so I root for him.

Chess24 did an awesome job with the tourneys. They were bought out by Chess.com. chess.com and fide are awful at covering.

Pragg just won.

What are the tiebreaker rules?

I still don’t know how anyone can cheat at chess. So why do you think the European doesn’t have a chance?

Sounds like a really strong player to watch for, if you’re into blitz. Is this a blitz tournament you are watching?

Hikaru is irritating but is generally a good guy. I just can’t get through most of his videos because he’s too irritating. Odd for an American. He’s almost Dutch that way.

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I think the tiebreaker rules look like head to head blitz after the 14 rounds. That’s probably a good idea if 3 or more way tie, but head to head followed by total wins is better if there are 2 at the top.

It is a classical match tournament. That’s why Magnus won’t play it. He thinks the world champ should be good at blitz.

Nepomniatchi won again. He’s in 1st place lol.

The guy from Uzbekistan has no chance because he is by far the worst in the tournament. The Persian guy didn’t cheat over the board or he’d have better results, but his new country of France made some bogus tournaments for him to play in against weak players to up his ranking right before the cutoff for the candidates. It was a rotten move on France’s part. I’d root for Nepo over him.

:india: is amazing. 3 players in this. They now have the 5th ranked player in the world who is not even in this tournament. They also have Anand.

I’ll root for Hikaru and Pragg but I’ll take anyone from :india:.

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Anand is the classiest champion of all time. He is not the greatest of all time. Kasparov, Fischer and Carlsen can fight that one out. Anand was simply the best human being. Never a bad word about anyone. Even now, he just has a grace about him that none of the others have.

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That’s silly. There’s no thought in blitz. It’s all about speed. How fast you can move from one game to another and how often do they really checkmate but I suppose blitzers don’t care about checkmate.

Okay…what’s so funny, Dan? Is that a strange thing for Nepo? Does he not usually take 1st place?

The cutoff for the candidates? What does that mean? Who is in and who is out or as in cutoff time to enter the tournament?
It does seem like France was taking an
easy way to level up

It takes quite a bit of talent to be a blitz player. You need to recognize something quickly and act on instincts. Magnus believes that is a requirement to be a world champion. Blitz can be up to 10 minutes.

Nepo has won the tournament 2 times in a row and lost the championship match. If he wins this again, he and Ding could make it so boring that maybe they’ll listen to Magnus.

By cutoff, I mean he passed someone (I think Wesley So), about a week before the ratings deadline to get in. They put the tournament together in a week. It was BS. Alireza has sucked for months and he is off to a bad start so far. 1.5/4.

This is exactly right. I have no intention of watching the next WCC. I don’t care at all. Maybe if Pragg makes it, but he won’t.

I realize Mangus is the pro player here but moving too fast without thinking causes mistakes. Even one wrong move can cost you the game. I just don’t agree with it but I’m not playing so I can throw my opinion around lol.

Why won’t Pragg make it?

That’s all been very interesting, Dan. Tell me about scoring. How do you keep score with the players?

He’s not good enough. He’s ranked #14 right now.

You can count him out but I wouldn’t. How is it that all those players are competing to play Ding, who is rated #5?