@FabianoCaruana posted:

24...h6 is unimaginable. I can't explain it.

Spug posted:

The Reddit AMA with Magnus Carlsen just finished!

quote:

[–]perrii 54 points 1 hour ago
Hi! What do you think of Nakamura joking with calling you Sauron on Twitter?
permalink
[–]MagnusOenCarlsen[S] 236 points 42 minutes ago
I've never actually watched Lord of the Rings... if I had, and Nakamura had been a better chess player, I might have been more insulted.

Doltos posted:

Does anyone play this on facebook's chess.com app? I do this every day during my lunch break and would like to flex my 1k ELO chops to someone other than Moroccan teenagers that curse at me.

Also I'm god awful at black.

BurningStone posted:

This is Anand's best tournament in a long time. I'd still bet on Aronian, though.

I've been surprised by the fairly low number of draws. Normally everybody is very conservative in an event like this.

V for Vegas posted:

Welp that's Kramnik gone.

Levon needs some wins in these last rounds 'cause it don't look like Vishy is going to lose any.

quote:

After agreeing for a draw, Anand said in a press conference: "(If I play) Kd2... (instead of three-fold repetition that he went for) and I suspect white (Anand) is better but my head was spinning. And I decided not to tempt my fate."

These are typical thoughts of a scholar who has seen life. A younger and less experienced player is generally less aware about the chances of losing from such a position.

But not a colossus like Anand. "It was a practical decision (to draw with Andreikin in a better position). I was quite tired. If something (had) happened, I still had to make 4-5 correct defensive moves before winning an extra piece."

quote:

We mentioned in our Round 1 report on the Candidates that the pre-tournament prediction of Russian chess journalist Evgeny Surov was already looking a little shaky:

"If you asked me who would NOT win then I’d be glad to give you a clear reply: Anand. Let’s agree on the following: if Anand wins the tournament I’ll publicly admit I understand nothing about life or chess, and you’ll never ask me to take part in such a survey again."

In the post-Candidates survey of opinions on the same site, Sports.ru, he did indeed eat his words:

"I have to admit I understand nothing about chess or life."

quote:

Carlsen the Great
From Follath, Erich

The man is a journalistic nightmare. Not because he would be so uninteresting or pale, quite the opposite. The world rips present to him as to no one else interlocutor: Magnus Carlsen, only 23 become the new world chess champion. But interviews bored him, the questions appear to him trivial, Shallow from another world. Loss of time. Maybe he feels the reporters even just mentally superior. That would be understandable - the Norwegians is a genius, and that are very unconventional in the rule.

In Chennai, India, Carlsen said last November at the duel the previous titleholder Viswanathan Anand, then 43, dethroned in front of his home crowd, oh what, he has literally swept him off the board. The accepted to twelve games match was prematurely over, three wins, seven draws, no defeats - a runaway victory. And a few days ago the Norwegians won in Zurich a top tournament against world-class opponents, again without loss.

Magnus Carlsen moves in chess lonely heights. No one ever has the complex and demanding royal game so well thought like him, his Elo rating - the magnitude, after measuring the skill level - the highest ever. Carlsen currently dominated his competition like Roger Federer at his best tennis, like Tiger Woods in his heyday the game of golf.

"Mozart of chess, 'they have christened him earlier because he was a child prodigy and at a young age wonderfully composed lots conjured up on the board. "Boa constrictor of chess, 'they came to call him, because he literally cuts off the air his opponents on the board, they crushed without that they have a chance to break free from his grip. A champion, half god, half snake.

At the same time these Carlsen his sport, his art, also made his science attractive to the uninitiated, for a general audience interested in superstars. He is telegenic, he is photographed with actresses such as Liv Tyler and James Bond girl Gemma Arterton. And in individual portraits celebrity photographer Anton Corbijn has the stylized man with the Babyface and the distinctive chin to a James Dean of modern times, very cool, very sexy and of course black and white.

The American news magazine "Time" joins the new champion in its list of the "100 most influential people of the earth". The women's magazine "Cosmopolitan" praises him as one of the most attractive men. And Carlsen does not exhibit shyness. He mixes publicity among the great ones of the world, playing times on request against Bill Gates in London, sometimes against George Soros in the Hamptons, sometimes against Mark Zuckerberg in Silicon Valley.

Pulls. Recovers. Smiles. Silence.

If only there were not these interviews. Carlsen has brought colleagues from the "New Yorker" to the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" with its platitudes his short or non-answers to despair. "I hate losing"; "You can experiment and still play well"; "I prefer to keep for me." The reporter of the "Time magazine" was because of the lack of affection of his interlocutor downright offended: "We draw us back to the interview, but what is that Carlsen puts more on the sofa, as he continues his displeasure hits me with.?. full force. He says only the bare minimum, slowly and quietly, then he stops. " And let's face it: Even the interview with Der Spiegel in 2010, not one of the highlights of journalism. Carlsen to his original IQ: "No idea." His life outside of chess: "This is private and confidential."

"I speak through my features to the world that explain everything," Carlsen the Great defiantly dictates a particularly intrusive journalists in the block. Why not take him at his word? Why the phenomenon Carlsen not try to fathom with him on the basis of a chess game? Taut Scandinavian iceberg perhaps in the subsequent interview on something, can be genius sometimes flash language?

It obviously can not go earnestly to challenge him schachlich because there are worlds between us. I am an avid amateur players for five decades and have previously pushed the figures in a provincial association of the national league. Chess has helped me occasionally in occupations: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, whose half family exterminated by the Nazis, has never German journalists replying; with me, he has after all played two games of chess, his press secretary called it then a substantial improvement of German-Israeli relations. Natan Sharansky, the believing Jew and dissident in the Soviet Union, told me in an impromptu duel after replacing the Glienicker bridge of his Gulag days, "saved them from the maddening" of the chess puzzles that he devised himself and him.

And like any chess player I also have a game that makes me proud: In the fight against the Russian Garry Kasparov six years ago, the former world champion - and later coach Carlsen -, I caught a great moment, had in an exciting game for a long time best attack opportunities .

So now Carlsen. The chance to compare these two so profoundly different characters and flyer. Long negotiations, then a surprising commitment. Meeting in Oslo, a game, a half-hour interview. I have a quick game with ten minutes of total thinking time per player is proposed in order not to bore him; he agrees - rather a further disadvantage for me because Carlsen is also a champion in blitz chess. But he gives me the white stones, among like-strong has the Catching a small advantage.

The meeting will take place in the office building of an insurance company in Oslo. Simple Scandinavian interior, chairs, table, coffee and biscuits, a chessboard. A firm handshake. Carlsen typed something into his computer. He looks younger than in the photos, short sleeves, barely tamed his bushy hair. Small talk about the Olympics in Sochi and the blizzard raging outside. Then he wants to go to the board. Espen Agdestein, Carlsen's manager, pours coffee. A school friend Carlsen photographed. Ideal conditions, heavenly peace. No excuse for excuses.

I prefer with the women farmers, in addition to the double step with the king's pawn the most common opening. Also Carlsen plays often with white. And not surprisingly, his features come at lightning speed.

After four moves: As far as I know that yet. He has chosen the classical Nimzo-Indian, a widespread black concepts. But I do not quite know how to most go for me. I have not prepared myself specifically to openings - which has against a familiar with all variants champion no sense. The time now is just about to make any early mistakes and develop my characters properly, so I long as possible, can perhaps keep to the middle game. And it might surprise you sometimes with an attacking move - to keep him, the nerves strong man, from the rest, however, Stronger have unequal tried unsuccessfully.

Cold-blooded composure on the board that had to teach him no, that was born with him, so to speak.

His parents have very far-sighted called him Magnus, which means in Latin "the Great". In addition to his three sisters, he grows on well protected, the idolized boy. There are financial problems in the intact upper class family does not, the father works as a manager at an oil company, the mother is an engineer. They educate their little anti-authoritarian, playfully try to fathom where their interests lie. Magnus already shows very early unusual memory, known as tots all the states and capitals of the world, can create puzzles with 500 pieces. And amazed with amazingly complex structures made of Lego bricks. When Magnus is five, the chess enthusiastic father for the 64 fields tries to inspire him - and fails first. The Filius drives prefer skiing and playing soccer.

Magnus Carlsen is later off than most other prodigies of chess: He's been eight years old when his father it at the second attempt succeed to arouse enthusiasm. But then the boy quickly makes tremendous progress, the school did not interest him, he does it all with the left, homework, he ignored completely. When Magnus is twelve, Father Carlsen takes a break, pack the whole family in a caravan and moves of chess tournament chess tournament by Europe. The match practice against stronger helps Breakthrough: At 13 years, 4 months and 27 days, he wins because of its good competition results as one of the youngest ever the title of Grand Master.

But many top players still have the time, in 2004, underestimated the boy with the angelic face, this Schlaks who did not quite know what to do with his long legs, often before the board only as dahinfläzte itself, in the breaks Donald Duck-books devoured. You should still pay dearly for this mistake.

But it is now in my game now? I reach with my peasants to his bishop, looking for a battle? I develop my other jumpers?

Order that the invention of chess itself entwines a legend. The Indian way Sissa ibn Dahir suffered in the third century as so many of his friends under the hardness of the ruler, but because he felt entertained him well of him, wanted to fulfill one wish. Sissa asked him to fill the 64 squares of a game board with wheat grains, on the first field of a grain, two to the second, four grains for the third and each subsequent twice as many as in the previous field. The ruler was surprised at the modesty of the Brahmins, it promised - and then had to be explained by his quartermaster that all harvesting of the kingdom would not be enough. It would have required 18 trillion grains of wheat.

Similarly it behaves exponentially in chess. Already after two trains are 72 084 positions possible for the first 40 moves, there are 10 high 120 possible game histories, a number that is far greater than the number of all atoms in the observable universe. Chess is thus not only a game, an art but a science, even more: a counter-universe to the real out there with its black holes and its infinity.

The best that have approached this incomprehensible or felt so, felt able to report a specific proximity to Omniscient, the Creator: Many grandmasters, as the brilliant American Bobby Fischer not cope found in normal life. Or had because of delusions, as pursued by a fly Akiba Rubinstein, in the closed. World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz was supposed to play only against God, even pretend him a farmer.

Carlsen has until now needed just 30 seconds, I almost three minutes. I decide to an intermediate move with the farmer to secure my heart. The champion is the blame later as "not quite setting compliant".

Ten trains are gone - and the good news is that Bill Gates was already dull in his fight against Carlsen in London. It seems to me that my game is still quite open. The characters are developed. However, now stand at big decisions. Rather passive push further and then but soon crushed tactically be or try something unusual, combative?

Carlsen's way is run after reaching its grandmaster norm steeply upward. At 15, he already belongs to the expanded group of world-class, and later his World Cup opponents Anand calls after a frustrating loss to so on his sport-focused once in desperation: "It's time, time to introduce him to the girls' From any of affairs indeed nothing is known, Carlsen is unablenkbar. Then, however, the way to number one is still far away. And it is connected to two names that have a particular sound in the chess world: Frederic Friedel and Garry Kasparov.

The Hamburg Friedel, graduate linguist and as head of ChessBase expert on computer chess, is something of a guru and good spirit of the leading players. The most he has hosted home and closely monitored its development. Early on, he makes his friend Kasparov aware of the young Carlsen. But he is not sure whether he should see the next world champion in him as Friedel. Finally, he can convince early 2009 and trained the Norwegians - they are the months in which Carlsen makes the leap from number four to number one.

Both speak to the present day with shining eyes of their times as the dream team. But to stay together in the long run, they are too different. The Russian has always remained a romantic always in search of the "immortal game", despite its many successes, the shy no risk to gloss wins and who also has the time set in our struggle, the board formally in flames; Norwegian is a brilliant tactician and simplifier who studied in almost balanced, "dead" positions still ways to win and place.

Robert von Weizsäcker, the Honorary President of the German Chess Federation, has described after world title fight in Chennai a few weeks ago all seriousness Carlsen chess as a "bloodless and soulless," he had his opponent just "sat out" in the fourth or fifth hour in draw positions and worn down a little creative "computer chess" shown - an amazing error of judgment for someone who knows the game.

With a similar argument could also football, Bayern Munich is currently playing, with a high share of possession, waiting patiently, and then lightning fast slamming, described as bloodless and soulless: In truth Carlsen chess has evolved tactically masterful. He puts a lot less on computer preparation than do the other world-class players can rely on his intuitive understanding of the game. So it can detect and exploit every weakness of the opponent - even Carlsen makes a mistake sometime, but it is almost always the penultimate.

So now my eleventh train, turning point of the game. I have already used up six minutes of my thinking time. I have to take a risk. Long castling, and so stormy into a chess-hurricane. If Carlsen now with his bishop my knight on f3 suggests, although I have a doubled pawns, but on the open line and attack opportunities. And besides, my farmer might sacrifice in the center soon, if only, if only my own king is not faster in distress ...

After 15 moves: Nothing has come to this, as I have hoped. Carlsen has indeed beaten my Springer, but on the ladies side. And he puts the pressure while I am unable to start even a rudimentary promising attack. Now I have my hands full with defense. The game is tilted, but it is not yet lost.

Chess is also a psychological game. With appearances distract the opponent, this is a tradition: In the 16th century the Spaniard Ruy López advised to put his opponent so that he has "the sunlight falls in the face to blind him." Later masters brought cigars to their sensitive counterparty the smoke to blow in the face, or took a cat on your lap, if they knew the opponent will plagued by allergies. Again and again was of "magnetic radiation" is mentioned. Today, it is rather the toilet of the opponent or the hands of a spectator in the audience, which triggers at many a panic - it could be transmitted secret messages from a running parallel to the game computer analysis, launch winning tips.

But sometimes it's just the maddening calm face expression that brings the other completely out of rhythm. Carlsen, for example, has previously often yawned, as it bored the dispute, as it was basically over. Today he works with frozen facial features, Poker Face.

Others overlook triumphantly, Kasparov always did the wild man, grim, aggressive, as if he wanted to jump his opponent. Many opponents were also intimidated and made difficult inexplicable errors. The thickest Patzer all chess world champion made the then champion Vladimir Kramnik in 2006 against a particularly perfidious, emotionless monster: He let himself checkmate cage, one of the computer program "Deep Fritz".

And now suggests to me that chess blindness, most likely explained by the more self-inflicted time constraints. Carlsen has until now consumes just three minutes, I have nine and a half - almost the entire appointment time. I see in my next rook move that the captivation of the jumper is indeed repealed by the queen move - and shoveling me so fast my grave.

21 trains, and it's over. I could go on a little longer, a mat is at least ten blocks away. But I have no more chance of a serious opposition and critical material disadvantage: The lady is much too strong and agile, think my remaining tower far. In such a situation, you can not offend with the game from the worlds best.

I shake him to congratulate his hand. He thanked with a short analysis of our game and with a flattering comparison: "They played aggressively and at about the same level as George Soros." The long castling he calls "brave, but unfortunately you have then made a few mistakes."

And then he is amazingly relaxed during the subsequent interview, almost exhilarated.

What is after the Langerringen the world title nor his motivation? And why he does not like how some measure of his predecessors on the chess throne, with the best computer?

"I think I can still improve significantly, and I would like to defend my title as often as possible later. Computer does not interest me that way. Chess for me is not so much the scientific analysis for the best train rather than a psychological war. " He believes he can dominate the chess world for a long time, "my climax should I 30-40 have", but he knows all be chasing him. "And of course, my time at the top at last." He just wants to play tournaments as long as he can keep up in the world rankings - "if I no longer can do that, I'll stop."

Then told Carlsen, next he planned in Brazil an exhibition match against ten opponents simultaneously, that is simultaneously and "blind", without view of the board. Is not that the way into the madness? He shakes his head. "You can not make it only too often and against too many. But basically chess can already become an obsession, it is possible to slip into a parallel world to lose themselves in the infinite cosmos of the game."

For himself, he does not see the danger to be particularly large, he had also other interests, he was playing football with friends, listen to lots of music, Dire Straits and Rammstein are his favorite bands. He joints off with American TV series and the online poker, sometimes long night hours. He was not a morning person at all and I need ten hours of sleep.

What can we otherwise learn even from his private life?

"I recently moved out of home and am taking a small apartment in the city center of Oslo., But I'm attached to the family, we all go eat together once or twice a week." Whether he'll even have one wife and children, he did not know. Of course, he already notice that there are chess groupies. "I enjoy the attention well."

His old companion and mentor Kasparov has gone in the meantime the policy, has been engaged against the Russian president. Now fighting for the presidency in Fide, the World Chess Federation. A role model?

"I can not imagine that for me., But I wish him luck."

He used to cry during defeats. How does he deal with it today, if it times but caught him on board?

He wants to be honest, trouble with the answer itself is. "I think I'm currently the Best That is, there are no excuses for defeats -..., And I hate to lose in London last year at the Candidates Tournament I almost cried from anger, frustration, disappointment about myself "

Has he the strange accusation of German Chess honorary president offended? This subordination of the non-creative, but where already for the style-object artist and culture critic Marcel Duchamp in the last century chess players "are as crazy as the artists are supposed to be, but unfortunately, are not"?

"The allegation can not hit me. I see my chess as a revolutionary, as a creative," said the champion. "Obviously I put my opponent successfully under pressure And therefore:. I take the error of my opponents claim for myself."

Carlsen is the chess commentators, the after-thinker, very calmly, almost as if he thought the interview is not a waste of time. What, please, was the schwachsinnigste all feeble-minded journalists questions? Was there ever something similar mysterious, such as the epigram, which is ascribed in a parody Lukas Podolski: "Football is like chess, only without the dice"?

He thinks. "A lady in the U.S. television has ever asked me that unless my favorite character in chess." Since Magnus Carlsen looked long against the wall. Then he got up and left.

OrangeKing posted:

Here is a video promoting the Millionaire Chess Tournament, which is (for now) still on for later this year. I offer no further comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7x6mCVATWM

Shoeonhead22 posted:

If you're having a million dollar event put more than $500 into the promo video jesus christ

Hand Knit posted:

Last I checked I think they had fewer than 1% of the people they needed to go ahead so they probably have to be a little frugal with promotional material right now.

BurningStone posted:

I think you missed a round. Didn't Carlsen and Karjakin draw in round 3?

V for Vegas posted:

Caruana the only one drinking

gret posted:

I don't see Caruana in the pic.

V for Vegas posted: