A lot is possible in fan fiction.
4k ELO lol. That’s like Magnus stomping over a club player.
It might have lost if Magnus had seen the Queen-Bishop diagonal threat. Truly bizarre opening, though. It’s like a Robot arm coming through with that Rook.
I only have 3 trophies out of 750 games total. A connect 4 pawn structure, a Queen sac and smothered mate in the same game ;)
let’s celebrate, a new world championship is starting this week, taking place from 7 April to 1 May 2023
Ian Nepomiatchi vs Ding Liren
(Carlsen is out, semi-retired, not interested in maintaining the WC title, but still the strongest player in the world). So, the winner will be a World Champion with an asterisk, WC* …
It’s a smaller * than the 1975 WC, which FIDE just awarded to Karpov because Fischer refused to play. Or the WC in the 90s when Kasparov played his own rebel championship. There’s no problem with no 1 rated player and the Champion being different in my book.
That one wasn’t really a problem. Karpov had just won the candidates final over 24 (!) games against Korchnoi, and he had proven stronger than Spassky at the peak of his game (according to Kaparov) in the semi-final.
Karpov had qualified as the official challenger against the strongest available opposition. It’s simply not his problem that Fischer didn’t play. History has proven FIDE’s decision right. Karpov is easily one of the 5 most successful players of all time.
Dark times. Many people made mistakes. FIDE’s decisions were quite unlucky, IMHO.
100% agree. Carlsen will soon find out that the top conditions at tournaments are reserved for the classical World Champion. Sooner or later a then-World Champion will grow into the role and make people forget Carlsen as a “shadow world champion”.
I can sympathize with Carlsen’s position though. The World Championship demanded between 25 and 50% of his time, either directly through play or prep, or indirectly because he couldn’t show his prep at other tournaments. I can understand that he wanted out.
Regardless who wins this year’s world championship I’d wager against them defending it next cycle - too much parity in the top 10 outside of Carlsen
Some clutch play by my man Ding there. Nepo couldn’t convert his advantage.
Quite possible. But it’s also possible the new world champion will grow.
Game 2 was terrific! Ding sprung a surprise on move 4 in a Queen’s Gambit declined, only to have Nepo manufacture a devastating attack on both sides of the board.
I was skeptical about a match without Magnus, but I’m now more excited about watching these games than I was for Carlsen-Nepo or Carlsen-Caruana.
Is it though?
These schools reflect an increased interest in chess that began in 2020, credited in part to Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. Chess hadn’t seen this level of popularity since the 1972 World Chess Championship, according to the New York Times. That was the first chess boom. Since then it’s grown even more popular, and in January, chess hit middle and high school students. The abrupt boost in popularity caused Chess.com, the most popular chess app, to crumble, forcing the company to upgrade its servers significantly. By late January, Chess.com had 10 million active members, it said; in April, it hit around 12 million per day. That’s in contrast to its usership before the pandemic, which was fewer than 2 million active players.
Chess’s popularity isn’t necessarily sudden, given that data — it’s been growing steadily since 2020. But the new growth among teens certainly does seem sudden, according to the teens, teachers, and chess experts that Polygon spoke to over the past week. Schools that don’t have chess clubs are rushing to start them. Teachers are confused but pleased to see a wholesome new hobby. Administrators are struggling with how chess is disrupting classrooms at times, and are blaming it for attention issues and drama in classrooms and hallways. Can you ban chess? Some schools have reportedly had to.
So…are there chess gangs now, and are they rumbling in the school hallways? I can’t quite grasp how chess is somehow causing trouble in school hallways.
Both players have actually won a game!
Yeah, it’s on! It was another nice win, too, with a timely exchange sacrifice leading to a dominant position.
What makes this world championship so intriguing is that both players have a history of cracking under pressure. Which player will have the mental fortitude to grind out a victory? Who knows at this point? I wasn’t sure if Ding Liren would be able to come back from being down, and now it remains to be seen how Nepo deals with a bit of adversity.
That’s ironic. Is there a hobby that requires more extended, deep focus than chess? I’d think it a superb antidote for tiktok-forged tiny attention spans.
I think the article explains it. Some kids are getting into chess for the traditional reasons, spurred by the popular catalyst of Queen’s Gambit and social media. Other kids are getting into chess purely for the social media meme-ness of it all. Those kids don’t really want to “study” chess. They just want to jump on the clout bandwagon.
Nepo totally unaware of a simple exchange sac… He is showing nerves. That was totally unecessary, but it is great for the match…
That was before the entire world started playing and streaming 1 minute bullet games.
And just like that, Nepo plays a masterful game to pull ahead.
There have been three decisive games out of five so far. Quite the match.