This post was originally intended to go out before the weekend, but I keep discovering more things to report on while trying to finish up the material that’s already there. Finally, I’m caught up, and it’s time for this behemoth to be published.
First, we begin with the super-tournament in Bucharest, the Superbet Chess Classic. It has a stellar field featuring both old pros and some of the top youngsters, and there has been plenty of fight. There haven’t been as many wins as we’ve been getting used to in recent classical events, but hopefully the second half of the tournament will see more blood on board. Through five rounds Fabiano Caruana is the leader with a +2 score (pushing him back over 2800), and he could easily have been on +3 had he converted a winning advantage against Wesley So in round 2. Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu and Gukesh Dommaraju are tied for second, half a point behind. All the games played so far are here, with my notes to about half of them.
Second, we move from Superbet to a “super” bet of sorts. Way back in 1972, Bobby Fischer was hemming and hawing about contesting the World Championship match against Boris Spassky until one James Slater doubled the prize fund and essentially told Fischer to put up or shut up. Fischer played, won, and collected. The latest chapter in the chess history of “put up or shut up” comes from someone named Wadim Rosenstein, who would like Hans Niemann to put his money where his mouth is. Rosenstein is arranging a four-player rapid event for this November in which each participant is responsible for contributing $1 million to the prize pool. The winner gets $2 million, the runner-up gets $1.5, third place gets $400k back and the cellar dweller goes home empty-handed. When these sources (here and here) came out, it appeared that three players had accepted the terms and had confirmed backing: Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. Will Niemann find anyone to back him? Will he have the guts/foolhardiness to put up a huge chunk of his own money? For his sake, I hope he doesn’t. I haven’t checked for updates on the story, so if you know more, please post about it in the comments.
Third, some sad news: Indiana master Bernard Parham, the mind behind the “Matrix”, has passed away (source HT: Allen Becker). He championed 1.e4 followed by 2.Qh5 against almost any first move by Black, and this idea hit the big time - at least against 1…e5 - when another Indiana master told Hikaru Nakamura about it in the early-to-mid ‘00s. Nakamura played it with some regularity not only in online games but in OTB games as well - even classical games, against fellow GMs. His results were what you’d expect: he didn’t do terribly because he was Hikaru Nakamura, but he didn’t fare brilliantly because the line is, frankly, pretty bad.
I met Parham once or twice, and he seemed like a nice man. While I’m not impressed by the “Matrix”, I am impressed that he kept the courage of his convictions and played it against one and all, for decades, despite everything. Maybe he was too loyal to it, but chess is richer for people like Parham sticking to the Matrix and Lev Polugaevsky sticking to his eponymous line of the Najdorf. Rest in peace, and condolences to his friends and family, including his son (Bernard Parham, Jr.) who has followed his father in the family “business” (2.Qh5).
Fourth: Other events are underway. One is Chess.com’s Speed Chess Championship. They just completed a play-in event in two stages: an 11-round Swiss followed by a knockout tournament for the final eight, with the winner advancing to the main event. You can watch the replay for the Swiss here and the knockout here.
Fifth: A small but savory event took place over the weekend, and saw Viswanathan Anand take his 10th tournament victory in Leon. He defeated fellow old-timer Veselin Topalov in one semi-final while Jaime Santos represented the home country with a comeback upset against Arjun Erigaisi in the other semi. In the final, Anand worked to draw the first two games, and then won the next two to take the match and the title. Time catches up with us all, but Anand has fought well against the pull of temporal gravity, still #11 in the world at the age of 54.
Sixth: From the relatively old (by chess standards) to the very young: 10-year-old Argentinian Faustino Oro is the third person his age to become an IM, and by a very small margin the youngest ever. Congratulations to the youngster, who has a very bright future ahead of him, and condolences to the rest of us as we ponder the wisdom of our life choices.
Item seven: Magnus Carlsen is developing a fantasy chess league (HT: Marginal Revolution). This is a great idea, because neither gambling addiction nor game-fixing is a problem (/sarc). It’s also wonderful that players may end up spending more time working on their fantasy teams than playing chess or working on their game. (On the other hand, if it gets more club players following big-time chess more attentively, that could be a genuinely good thing.)
Eighth: If you’re not familiar with former - and possibly future - Women’s World Champion Tan Zhongyi, well, you still won’t be that familiar with her after reading this interview, either, but it’s a start.
Ninth, here’s a survey about chess players in the U.S. The results are interesting but should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Perhaps the least plausible question asks U.S. citizens whether they hold a favorable or unfavorable opinion, or no opinion at all, about various chess players. Despite Bobby Fischer’s fame in the last century, I don’t believe that 40% of Americans have an opinion about Fischer, but I could be wrong about that. But the idea that 16% of those surveyed have a favorable/unfavorable opinion of Ding Liren and 17% for Ju Wenjun tells me that the pollsters need to go back to stats class. (Did the pollsters include a Chinese name that doesn’t correspond to any internationally known chess player to see if people are just reacting randomly or expressing their likes or dislikes for China as a geopolitical rival to the U.S.?)
Let’s finish up with a 10th item. I saw somewhere that the late great Tigran Petrosian (1929-1984; World Champion from 1963-1969) would have turned 95 a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been a fan of Petrosian’s - of all the World Champions - since my childhood, and even as a pre-teen I had read Vik Vasiliev’s biography of the former world champion. There was some interesting tidbit in that article - I can’t remember where I saw it - and decided to read Petrosian’s Wikipedia page to see if it said anything more about it. It didn’t, but the page is interesting all the same, and I commend it to you whether you consider yourself knowledgeable about the ninth World Champion or not.