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.
Extremely slow just means that there needs to be a way of allowing the players to get to grips with novel initial positions. We don't want to see the kind of randomness that might easily result in players being lost after a handful of moves. Perhaps classical time controls would work, if the players are given the initial positions a day in advance. Or make all the starting positions available a week or two in advance. Then the public could join in too.
No, I wouldn't want the whole event to be Chess960, or to cut ties with chess history. What I'd really like to see is something roughly like 8 games of Chess960, 16 rapid, and 32 blitz, with the rapid and blitz being in the traditional starting position.
I'm really just responding to the state of the world in which the undisputed world number one isn't interested in what should be the marquee event. The primary problem with the present format is the vast amount of prep the players have to do, and the fact that it is too easy for a super well prepared player to dry up the position against a better opponent.
I think including a lot of rapid and blitz games means, as Carlsen has said many times, that weaknesses are going to be exposed. Having them in the standard starting position preserves the legacy, while slow games at Chess960 preserve much of the appeal of classical chess while avoiding the drawbacks of the present system, and is a relatively minor fix.
Finally, while I agree that there isn't a ton of enthusiasm for Chess960, it seems to me that the issue is figuring out how best to present it.
Personally I would love to see the next "classical" world championship played between Carlsen and Firouzja to be Chess960 with extremely slow time controls and a great commentary team.
You mean, like five hours per side, with three minutes added after every move? (You did say "extremely" slow!) A more serious question: you want the *whole* event to be Chess960, or just a portion of it? I can see the latter, though it wouldn't be my cuppa tea, but the former seems like a bad idea not only on legacy grounds (why wash our hands of the game as we've played it for hundreds of years? When GMs start making draws with Stockfish I'll reconsider) but for wider publicity as well. (But maybe I'm underestimating the adaptability of the general public.)
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.
Extremely slow just means that there needs to be a way of allowing the players to get to grips with novel initial positions. We don't want to see the kind of randomness that might easily result in players being lost after a handful of moves. Perhaps classical time controls would work, if the players are given the initial positions a day in advance. Or make all the starting positions available a week or two in advance. Then the public could join in too.
No, I wouldn't want the whole event to be Chess960, or to cut ties with chess history. What I'd really like to see is something roughly like 8 games of Chess960, 16 rapid, and 32 blitz, with the rapid and blitz being in the traditional starting position.
I'm really just responding to the state of the world in which the undisputed world number one isn't interested in what should be the marquee event. The primary problem with the present format is the vast amount of prep the players have to do, and the fact that it is too easy for a super well prepared player to dry up the position against a better opponent.
I think including a lot of rapid and blitz games means, as Carlsen has said many times, that weaknesses are going to be exposed. Having them in the standard starting position preserves the legacy, while slow games at Chess960 preserve much of the appeal of classical chess while avoiding the drawbacks of the present system, and is a relatively minor fix.
Finally, while I agree that there isn't a ton of enthusiasm for Chess960, it seems to me that the issue is figuring out how best to present it.
Personally I would love to see the next "classical" world championship played between Carlsen and Firouzja to be Chess960 with extremely slow time controls and a great commentary team.
You mean, like five hours per side, with three minutes added after every move? (You did say "extremely" slow!) A more serious question: you want the *whole* event to be Chess960, or just a portion of it? I can see the latter, though it wouldn't be my cuppa tea, but the former seems like a bad idea not only on legacy grounds (why wash our hands of the game as we've played it for hundreds of years? When GMs start making draws with Stockfish I'll reconsider) but for wider publicity as well. (But maybe I'm underestimating the adaptability of the general public.)