BOTW: 2016.06.16
The second part of the 2016 World Chess Tour goes from June 17-20 in in Leuven, Belgium; and Boris Spassky recalls "a very embarrassing devil on the doorstep" in this week's Best of the Web.
2016 Grand Chess Tour/Your Next Move
Leuven, Belgium
June 17-20, 2016
The Grand Chess Tour combines with Your Next Move to put on world-class Rapid+Blitz event, featuring:
#1 Magnus Carlsen
#2 Hikaru Nakamura
?? Fabiano Caruana
#6 Vladimir Kramnik
#7 Viswanathan Anand
#10 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
#12 Veselin Topalov
#21 Levon Aronian
#22 Anish Giri
#?? Wesley So
#s are FIDE Rapid rankings.
World #10 Wesley So has a rapid rating of only 2652, not even in the top 100.
World #3 Fabiano Caruana has a rapid rating of 2829 (which would place him #3 on the rapid list), but does not appear on FIDE's June 2016 Rapid ranking list at all.
The event has exactly the same format as Paris -- 9 rounds of rapid chess (25 minutes + 10 seconds a move) are played on the first 2 days, with wins worth 2 points, followed by 18 rounds of blitz (5 + 2) on the next two days, with wins worth 1 point -- and almost the same field, with one change: Vishy Anand replaces Laurent Fressinet.
Hikaru Nakamura won the first stage of the Grand Chess Tour, winning the rapid and tying with Magnus Carlsen in the blitz, despite losing both blitz games to Carlsen.
Games start each day at 2pm local time, 8am EST; except Monday, June 20, when they start 2 hours earlier.
Live Games
http://grandchesstour.org/watch-live
facebook
https://www.facebook.com/YourNextMoveGCT/
Pre-Event Video: Leuven city and multi-GM simul and interview with Anand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS4u9kHguBI
The next stop on the 2016 GCT is the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis, Aug 5-16, where the players return to classical time controls. The final will again be in London, December 9-19.
Boris Spassky 2016 Interview:
Movies, Two Blondes, and a Very Embarrassing Devil on the Doorstep
Chess.com has a translation of a 2016 interview with Boris Spassky.
Here are some excerpts:
on Movies
BS: Milos Forman had some plans for me. He wanted to make a movie about my match with Fischer. I don't know why it didn't work out. I visited Milos at his countryhouse in Connecticut. Great house, a tennis court, pool. He would call me when he came to France.
Last Autumn, I visited Berlin, the premiere of Pawn Sacrifice [2015 movie about the Fischer-Spassky match].... The film was bad though.
Q: Did the actor who played you do at least something right?
BS: I've noticed no similarities!
BS: There's no intrigue in the movie, they failed to show the main thing: how I agreed to continue the match. I could have just stopped everything and walked away as the champion!
Q: Was continuing the match the right decision?
BS: Now, in hindsight, I understand that I was wrong. I had to let Fischer finish what he started. He started to resign the match!
on Victor Korchnoi
Q: About the 1968 Kiev match against Korchnoi, you said: "I understood that I'd win on the very first day. Because Korchnoi came with his wife, and I came with two blondes. I couldn't choose, I fussed about, and this influenced me in a good way. I need an outside impulse."
BS: There were blondes, indeed. Perhaps even more than two.
"Korchnoi just started to mess with my playing! He would grimace at me when my clock was ticking. He snorted. But the most disgusting thing he'd done was scratching his fingernails on the table. Some people can't stand this sound."
"Korchnoi, he always overreacted after losing. Ever since the Leningrad Pioneer Palace. He would throw the pieces from the board, scream, insult the opponent. If someone was better than him at anything, Korchnoi was ready to tear them apart."
"When Korchnoi lost to women, this was like a knife through his heart. He would attack them immediately. He drove Pia Cramling to tears. I doubt she'd ever cried so much after winning a game."
Q: So, Korchnoi deservedly failed to become a world champion?
BS: Yes. He had no personality to speak of.
...but despite this, years after their falling out, and when some of Boris's Soviet friends were too frightened of political punishments to attended Boris's second wedding...
BS: You wouldn't believe, but Korchnoi came! Not to the wedding itself - to our home, late in the evening. We lived in an embassy house. Then the doorbell suddenly rings, Marina opens. And in the dark, there's Korchnoi, with flowers! You know, he looks like a devil...
Q: An awesome comparison.
BS: Yes, yes, he does. And so, there's a very embarrassing devil on the doorstep, and he gives us a bouquet of flowers. I'm still grateful to Korchnoi for that. But my wife was afraid. She didn't know who he was.
Interview with Boris Spassky
https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/boris-spassky-2016-interview