Chess

Also, rename the pieces to whatever Hikaru is saying these days. Juicers or what have you.

But yeah, these super GM aliens are too good if you give them half an hour to think about every move. Challenge them with rapid mini-matches, if you must, so it doesn't swing so radically with one or two rapid matches. Best of 3 or 5 on each match day.

 

Ian keeps shooting himself in the dick. He did finally go away from e4 opening for white but Magnus is a supercomputer wrapped in flesh, neutralized the English opening by pushing the d pawn early, causing spacing issues right away in white’s camp. Magnus later pushed his a pawn all the way to a3, locking white’s rook in a perpetual defensive position with the threat of black’s rook on the 2nd rank. Lots of subtle repositioning through a tense middle game. Ian’s fianchetto’d white bishop gets greedy and takes the b pawn, but then the under fire black rook pushes to a4, threatening the c pawn with a collapse of white’s queenside. C pawn pushes to c5 to get out of danger but with black meeting that with c6… this traps the greedy bishop with no way out and no means of defense. Nepo really is against the wall now, must win 4 of 5 to just get to tiebreaks. He hasn’t really been imminently close at any point to winning a first. Magnus can clamp up and secure the title with three draws of five, if he so chooses.

 

I’ve seen Naroditsky and a few others be pretty critical of Nepos prep and energy saying he isn’t playing like he wants to be there. Maybe he wasn’t ready for the pressure on this stage. I thought Nepo would give Magnus more trouble honestly.

 

I’ve watched very little of live feeds of them on stage, so I couldn’t speak to body language. There is a constant little debate about if someone is still in prep, whether they’re playing mind games eating up 15 minutes and if that means they’re out of prep or just pretending they are…

anyways, Nepo has a reputation of being creative, brilliant, but mentally fragile. When things go wrong, he loses that confidence or spark. Losing 3 of the last 4 matches, once with the advantage of the white pieces, kind of confirms it. Of course, this is Magnus who he is playing, unshakeable, irreverent, blunt, and iyam, pretty much unquestionably the greatest to ever play. As recent posts in here have said, of course he is a product of studying with the most powerful chess engines ever created, who could say what a Fischer or a Tal or, going back, Morphy or Alekhine etc could have become with modern technology. There isn’t an inflation index we can necessarily point to in order to compare eras. Tangent over, Nepo toast, Magnus deserved, bring on the next candidates tournament and the rise of Firouzja.

 

Magnus is GOAT.

 

Magnus retains the crown.

game 11 had Nepo with white and he went with an Italian. Magnus piled up defenders on the contested d-file for pushing the d pawn, aiming to deconstruct the center. He advanced one of his rooks once that happened and then Nepo blundered g3 to threaten the rook. That took the evaluation from 0.00 to -11 something. It let the Queen get into the face of Nepo’s king with little to no backup. The position simplified to one rook for each +1 pawn for Magnus, with a fully passed h pawn. He kept Nepo’s rook busy with defensive duties on the queenside and promoted the h pawn. Gobble, gobble, and goodnight.

The next major for determining the candidates for the 2022/2023 WCC will be the Fide grand prix in February-April.

 

Hikaru was implying that he thought Nepo just didn’t want to have to play tomorrow and threw on purpose.

 

PGN:
[Event "FIDE World Chess Championship 2021"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2021.12.10"]
[Round "11"]
[White "Nepomniachtchi, Ian"]
[Black "Carlsen, Magnus"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "2782"]
[BlackElo "2856"]
[TimeControl "5400+30"]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. d3 Bc5 5. c3 d6 6. O-O a5 7. Re1 Ba7 8. Na3 h6
9. Nc2 O-O 10. Be3 Bxe3 11. Nxe3 Re8 12. a4 Be6 13. Bxe6 Rxe6 14. Qb3 b6 15.
Rad1 Ne7 16. h3 Qd7 17. Nh2 Rd8 18. Nhg4 Nxg4 19. hxg4 d5 20. d4 exd4 21. exd5
Re4 22. Qc2 Rf4 23. g3 dxe3 24. gxf4 Qxg4+ 25. Kf1 Qh3+ 26. Kg1 Nf5 27. d6 Nh4
28. fxe3 Qg3+ 29. Kf1 Nf3 30. Qf2 Qh3+ 31. Qg2 Qxg2+ 32. Kxg2 Nxe1+ 33. Rxe1
Rxd6 34. Kf3 Rd2 35. Rb1 g6 36. b4 axb4 37. Rxb4 Ra2 38. Ke4 h5 39. Kd5 Rc2 40.
Rb3 h4 41. Kc6 h3 42. Kxc7 h2 43. Rb1 Rxc3+ 44. Kxb6 Rb3+ 45. Rxb3 h1=Q 46. a5
Qe4 47. Ka7 Qe7+ 48. Ka8 Kg7 49. Rb6 Qc5 0-1

 

World Rapid and Blitz championships wrapping up, the tiebreaker rules at the end of both have fucked two of the biggest names. Just now Alireza is the third player with 15/21 points but his opponents had less accrued points in their other matches. So Duda and MvL will face off for the Blitz championship shortly.

And the other day, Magnus was one of four tied at 9.5/13 but he and Fabi were left out of any playoff. 17 year old Uzbeki Nodirbek Abdusattorov took it home off of Nepo in the two-match blitz tiebreaker. Magnus was upset that he and his team didn’t challenge the tiebreak setup before the tournament started because FIDE, left to their own devices, “fuck up every time.”

 

I’m happy to see new blood win one of these titles, and Nodirbek definitely deserved it. However, the tie break rules left a lot to be desired.

 

Yeah certainly, between 17 year old Abdu, 18 year old Alireza, 17 year old Nihal Sarin, and of course even the 23 year old Duda, the next generation has some bright stars.

of course the other cloud hanging over the tournament will be their handling of COVID testing. They made the players do it through the public testing sites. Hikaru started displaying symptoms during the Rapids but then tested negative and Fide said keep playing. As he had an upcoming departure flight, he took another today and tested positive so sat out the second day of the Blitz tourney. But he undoubtedly exposed several of his opponents through the end of the Rapids and day 1 of Blitz matches.

 

MVL on game 3, sudden death, repeated his Spanish opening from game 1 and locked up Duda’s rooks for a while in defense on the queen side, put Duda in the think tank so MVL had a minute up on the clock once they got out of prep. Marched to victory from there. The Frenchman is the Blitz champion.

 

We’re 10 rounds into the Candidates tournament. Nepo leads the pack with 7/10 points. Fabi, Hikaru, and Ding sit at 5.5 each. With just four matches left, Nakamura probably is the only one who could catch, as he does have a remaining match with the leader (albeit with the black pieces, round 12 on Friday). Hikaru definitely had a chance in Round 5 with white vs Nepo who had mixed up his prep on the Petroff, but Hikaru was bleeding time on the clock and began to play imprecise. He ended up confirming the draw on repetition before he lost anything further.

Firouzja has had a massive letdown of a debut Candidates tournament, sitting at the bottom. He’s the one that Magnus seemed to want to play for the crown. We’ll see if Magnus deigns to rematch Nepo or Fabi, or steamroll Hikaru as he’s always done on classical (14W-1L-26D). Ding has only faced Magnus 10 times in classical (1-0-9).

If he does choose to not defend the crown, I believe it’s the top two from the candidates in the same format.

 

nepo is a bum and a fraud and his wins are being paid for by Putin.

if he has any honor he should step aside and let fans have an interesting WC match instead of forcing us to all to watch him piss himself again against magnus or hikaru/ding/fabi

 

Candidates has been awesome. Very few draws and just a lot of exciting games. Shame Fabi or Hikaru had really tough round 9 results or this could still be in question.

 

Wtf is Alireza doing? Although I think we Ian dominating it really raises the chance Magnus bows out so this Ding vs Fabi game is huge.

 

He stayed up until 5:45am local time playing online blitz.

 

yes I’m watching and heard that, doesn’t excuse that line at all. Another missed chance from Fabi today, couple that with his inability to finish off Nepo and he’ll be kicking himself

 

Ding sinks Fabi, closest to Nepo but still 1.5 back with just three rounds left. Hoping for Naka and Ding W’s tomorrow to bring it to

Nepo 8
Ding 7.5
Naka 7

 

Holy shit the crazy son of a bitch is out. Magnus out.

Nepo v Ding

 

I wonder if Hikaru regrets throwing in the final round of the candidates and not getting 2nd place now?

 

I checked in on his stream. He is coping hard by saying Magnus would have played Ian to not give Hikaru (and like two others he mentioned) a chance to win the crown if he (or the others) took second place.

edit: found it

 

All he had to do was draw against ding

 

ding is going to wipe the floor with that fucking bum. bet the house on it. If he somehow loses, invest heavily in china because they're about to be buying russian oil at 5% of its actual value.

 

I think Ian got this tbh. He was playing excellent against magnus last year until he lost a tough game 6 and then spiraled he also mopped the floor with the field at the candidates albeit he got some favorable breaks.

 

I want to thank chess.com for their love and support but I have made a change and taken my talents to lichess. Respect my decision. No interviews #blessed.

 

Pretty crazy, in the Singfield Cup, Magnus gets worked by Hans Niemman yesterday then withdraws today and implies Hans cheated in some way.

Some good old fashioned chess drama

 

some sort of transponder into a tapping device concealed in a shoe or under clothing seems to be the only way to do it reliably. Maybe have someone analyzing with an engine off site and then disclose the moves via code? I dont know how much interaction they have with other people when away from the board.

 

Zero interaction on-site, so that can’t be it. Hans was busted for cheating online in the past so these accusations have some weight to them.

Either some new device or he knew the opening choice ahead of time. He took some odd thinks (5+ min) for someone who claimed to have prepped his way into an advantage.

Hikaru was basically roasting him on stream for hours today. Sounds like a lot of top pros are skeptical of Hans online, at the very least.

 

Chuckled

 

it seems a little unreleastic to me that he ONLY cheated two times I was sure there had to be other instances where he didnt get caught.

Having said that I have no idea how you cheat over the board so I think he still beat magnus fair and square. Having said that all of the GMs Wesley and Alireza seemed terrified of playing him and sounded like they suspected something.

 

I think I agree with all of those points

There is a vibrating anal beads theory floating around though

 

At this point we have to assume Magnus cannot legally discuss anything, otherwise it just seems super irresponsible to behave this way and would concern me we are heading to Bobby Fisher territory.