Various Events
Bullet Chess Championship, Clash of Claims, World Junior Championship, and World Juniors
For most of us, bullet chess isn’t exactly chess, but an amalgam of chess, coordination, and trickery. Actually, that’s true for all of us, as you’ll see if you watch Chess.com’s Bullet Chess Championship online. Four-time champion Hikaru Nakamura is the headliner, and most of the world’s best bullet players, excepting Magnus Carlsen, are participating. Right now three players are still alive in this double elimination event: the winner of the winners final, the loser of the winners final, and the player who has won the losers bracket. I won’t give any spoilers, in case you want to watch; instead, here are links to each day’s videos: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
The “Clash of Claims” match ended, though without all 36 games being played. Jose “jospem” Martinez defeated Vladimir Kramnik by three points, going -1 in the over-the-board games but 8-4 online. Read more here; note that Kramnik just can’t let it rest but is now making further accusations (here and here). Time will tell, but the quality of his accusations and evidence over the past months doesn’t give me at least much hope that there will be anything to this other than sour grapes, but maybe this will be one of the two times per day that a stopped clock gets it right.
The World Junior Championship chugs on, and with one round to go it looks likely, but not at all guaranteed, that an Armenian player will win the title. Armenian GM Mamikon Gharibyan has 8 points out of 10 and has Black against Kazakh IM Kazybek Nogerbek (who has 7.5 points); on board 2 another Armenian GM, Emin Ohanyan, has White against Filipino IM Daniel Quizon (they both have 7.5 points); finally, Serbian GM Luka Budisavljevic also has the white pieces and 7.5 points against Colombian GM Jose Gabriel Cardoso (who has 7).
Top seeded American GM Abhimanyu Mishra seems to have dropped out after round 6, when he had just 3.5 points. The player who defeated him in round 1, untitled Indian player Pawar Harshit (rated 2132) has six points. So far he has gone 1.5-.5 against GMs, 3-3 against IMs (with one win and one loss), and 1.5-.5 against FMs. He has gained 179 points so far - crazy. He is facing a GM in the last round. I don’t think he can get a GM norm even if he wins, but I’m pretty sure he already has an IM norm regardless of the result.
That’s the World Junior Championship, but the best juniors in the world continue to nudge their way up the ratings. Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the world’s #6 player (but essentially tied with Ian Nepomniachtchi for #5), tied for first in the UzChess Cup with a round to go. If he can beat Vidit Gujrathi in the last round he guarantees himself at least a tie for first in the tournament and at least the #5 spot in the world ratings, over 2770.
Even so, he’s behind Arjun Erigaisi, who is at #4 in the ratings and is starting to chase the Americans. Erigaisi went 7.5/9 at the French Top 16 Team event, picking up 9.9 points there, and after three rounds of the Avagyan Memorial he has picked up another 5.6 rating points. While online events and those featuring Magnus Carlsen (and Hikaru Nakamura) tend to suck up almost all the oxygen in the chess world, it’s worth taking some time to watch these amazing youngsters as well - especially with Carlsen playing increasingly less classical chess and Nakamura talking about retiring from the game when he’s (around) 40.