BOTW: 2016.02.12

John Upper's picture
Submitted by John Upper on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 17:07

2016 Zurich Chess Challenge
Feb 12-15, 2016

 Features:
Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Vishy Anand, Anish Giri, Lev Aronian, and Alexei Shirov.

The event will be held over four days:

  • Feb 12: pre-event blitz to determine pairings;
  • Feb 13 & 14 will be at "New Classical" time control: 40m + 10s;
  • Feb 15: Blitz RR.
  • Feb 13: a two game semi-rapid match between Morozevich and Gelfand.

 Three things to look for: 

  • New Time Control: the semi-rapid pace (40m + 10s) will likely affect players very differently, as Aronian and Giri are not nearly as strong at fast controls.
  • Unusual Openings: Everyone but Kramnik and Shirov are playing in the Candidates Tournament in March, which will be the most important tournament of their year, and so are expected to "hide" their opening repertoires until then. What will they play instead?
  • Shirov: the former world #3 who now trails the others by over 100 Elo is making a (now) rare appearance in a super-tournament. 

 Live Commentary  (start: 9am EST)
GM Jan Gustafsson comments live on the organizers' site:
http://www.zurich-cc.com/live.html

and on Chess24:
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/

Homepage
http://www.zurich-cc.com/

facebook
https://www.facebook.com/zurichchess

 

 1988 World Blitz

 The 1988 World Chess Festival in St.John, NB, was the most ambitious chess event in Canada. 

It included:

  • seven Candidates matches (remember those?)
  • two open tournaments,
  • many lectures and simuls.
  • and ended with the World Blitz championship with a then-huge $80,000 prize fund

The Blitz event attracted current World Champion Garry Kasparov, as well as a stellar field, including: Karpov, Tal, Yusupov, Dlugy, Elvest, Georgiev, Chernin, Seirawan, Vaganian (who you can watch hang his king), and Canadians Kevin Spraggett and Igor Ivanov.

 Technologically, the event broke new ground by having the games played on special boards: magnets in the pieces triggered sensors under the squares which sent the moves to electronic display boards and CCTVs in nearby restaraunts. Chess fans will recognize that as the precursor to the now-ubiquitous DGT setup at every major modern super-tournament.

 As you'll see in the videos, it was also a mix of old technology (wooden clocks with 5"+0 TC), and not-so-effective use of chess graphics (the fuschia and sky blue boards).

 Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22JKDfKoGQQ

 Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fj-CUu4aRE

 Part 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2cH-hzr3rs

 (the first two parts are 55min each, the last is 30 min, followed by 25 min of a blank blue screen)

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