Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess GOAT Challenge 2024
Chess960/Fischer Random: Love it, hate it, or don't care?
As many of you are aware, there’s an invitational Chess960 event rather immodestly and absurdly referred to as the “GOAT” Challenge, despite the absence of 2022 Chess960 (or Fischer Random or whatever label you prefer) World Champion Hikaru Nakamura, his runner-up Ian Nepomniachtchi, or 2019 World Champion Wesley So, who bludgeoned Magnus Carlsen 13.5-2.5 (+4=2-0 in actual games played) in that year’s final.
The field consists of Magnus Carlsen and seven hand-picked invitees: Classical Chess World Champion Ding Liren, Fabiano Caruana, Alireza Firouzja, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Dommaraju Gukesh, Vincent Keymer, and Levon Aronian. A fine and interesting field to be sure, but the absences mentioned above are significant.
It’s a multi-stage event, which seems to be all the rage now. First, they played a rapid round-robin, with four games on Friday and three games on Saturday. These didn’t count for anything except to determine the pairings for the knockout matches. The results were interesting:
Abdusattorov 5.5
Keymer 5
Caruana 4.5
Firouzja 4
Carlsen 3.5
Gukesh 3
Aronian 2
Ding 0.5
Ding started 0-6, and only a draw with Firouzja in the last round saved him from a maximally embarrassing performance.
The knockout matches are played with a classical time control, with one game on the first day, one on the second, and then rapid tiebreaks if the match is 1-1. The quarterfinals are over, and tiebreaks were necessary in the Firouzja-Carlsen match after first Firouzja and then Carlsen won their slow games with the white pieces. Carlsen won both of the rapid games, and advanced to the semis.
The other matches finished in regular time. Abdusattorov dispatched Ding, Caruana got past Gukesh, and Aronian put the kibosh on Keymer, in each case by a 1.5-0.5 score. Thus the semis, which start today (Tuesday), will be Abdusattorov vs. Carlsen and Caruana - Aronian. The losers of the first match are also playing: Firouzja vs. Ding and Keymer vs. Gukesh.
The games have had their moments, as you’d expect from players of this caliber. But, readers, do you care? I’ve watched some recap videos, but haven’t bothered watching live or even checking all the games yet, and this lack of interest doesn’t seem to be unique - see here and here, for example. But what say all of you?
Rumors say that Nakamura was invited but declined mentioning candidates preparation - as for Tata Steel and American Cup. I wonder whether this event was good candidates preparation for Caruana, Firouzja and Gukesh - practicing non-standard positions that can also arise from standard chess? But his new German club said that Nakamura will play the Bundesliga weekend 23-25 February. His opponent in the match likely to decide the German team championship could be any of Caruana(!), Anand, Rapport, Aronian, Vachier-Lagrave or Keymer (top boards of Baden-Baden). The two other opponents could be Bluebaum and, interesting twist, candidates underdog Abasov (who would face the same players as Nakamura).
Organizer-sponsor Jan Henric Buettner differs from other rich people present and past spending money on chess in two ways:
1) He seems completely new to chess, self-assessment: after some months of courses and private lessons by GM Huschenbeth, he sees Elo 1700 "on the horizon" but doesn't have time to test and prove himself in tournament games. In Germany, Wolfgang Grenke and recent addition Wadim Rosenstein are 1800ish club players with nationally rated games for their clubs. Earlier, Oleg Skvortsov and Joop van Oosterom had even higher own chess levels. Even Rex Sinquefield "pretends to play chess".
2) He is totally focused on Carlsen, it was an event with Carlsen or nothing at all. Carlsen could dictate everything: the fact that it's Chess960, the format, and the entire field.
As to "Love it, hate it, or don't care" - count me under "don't care". I didn't plan to watch live but ended up doing it a bit - Leko did a pretty good job making sense of openings. It's fine for me as an exhibition event, in terms of luxury for the players comparable to the former Amber events - which had rapid (uncommon at the time) and blindfold (not really picked up by anyone else before or afterwards). The event will return next year with the top5 (after the KO phase Carlsen, Caruana, Aronian, Abdusattorov and Firouzja) re-invited, Keymer probably also invited again, so just two spots for others replacing Gukesh and Ding Liren.
But I wouldn't need more: for this year, (vague?) plans for additional events in the USA, South Africa and India were mentioned, for next year (as Reyk Schaefer also says) a "Grand Slam" with 5 events on 5 continents. Do we really need another series in addition to Grand Chess Tour and Champions Chess Tour (rapid on the Internet)? Carlsen really seems to be on a mission to phase out chess as we know it with classical time control. The Grenke Chess "Classic" this year will have a slow rapid time control (45+10) probably because else Carlsen wouldn't play.
I was always sceptical, but quite of liked this one regarding presentation and atmosphere. The players and commentators very much seemed to like it. And while for instance Peter Leko is well payed here for sure, you still feel authentic passion.
I especially liked the position with Rf1/h1, Kg1 and the enemy bishop looking at g2 (first round rapid game Aronian - Abdusattorov).
Maybe there is also some bias now for us germans as it's more fun to watch these tournaments with Vincent Keymer competing.
I'm not sure what to make out of the planned Grand Prix next year. Already this year it had impect on Wijk. Seems, Magnus Carlsen won't play much classical chess anymore.
Finally, it hurts to see Ding playing here (and in Wijk). Whatever it is, I hope, he comes over it.