BOTW: 2017.08.23
Chess.Com Speed Chess Championship
August 23-30 2017
The 16-player online knock-out event continues with three matches in 8 days:
- August 23: Lev Aronian and Ian Nepomniachtchi
- August 24: Fabiano Caruana and Hou Yifan
- August 30: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs Jeffery Xiong
The format for the Chess.com matches is 3 hours of online play, broken into four formats:
- 90 minutes of 5+2 blitz,
- 60 minutes of 3+2 blitz,
- 30 minutes of 1+1 bullet,
- one chess960 game in each time control.
Aronian - Nepomniachtchi
Until last week Nepo would have been the clear favourite, but Aronian may be getting better. The two had recently played at the Sinquefield Cup in St.Louis and immediately after in the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz. Nepo won their rapid game, but Aronian won their long game in the Sinquefield Cup and both his blitz games in the Rapid & Blitz, which Aronian won a full three points ahead of Karjakin and Nakamura, while Nepomniachtchi was 4th. Favourite: regression to the mean says pick Nepo.
Caruana - Yifan
Sees the current US #1 against the long-time women's world #1. Caruana is not known as a particularly good blitz player: he was last in the Saint Louis Blitz with 5.5/18, which cost him 78 rating points and drops his world ranking all the way down to 32 (see: 2700chess). That still leaves him 70 points, 51 ranking places, and comfortable favourite ahead of Hou Yifan.
MVL - Xiong
MVL is the current world #2 after his win in the Sinquefield Cup, and for a few years one of the top three blitz players in the world (with Carlsen and Nakamura). The phenomenal blitz results by Karjakin and Aronian in St.Louis have pushed MVL all the way down... to 5th. 17-year-old Jeffery Xiong is the 2016 World Junior Champion, 2016 US Junior Champion, world #2 U18, and the #10 player in the US, and an unknown quantity in the blitz world, with no FIDE blitz rating. MVL has to be the favourite, but Xiong is strong, improving, and may surprise.
Live Commentary by IM Danny Rensch with GM Robert Hess or IM Anna Rudolf.
- Wednesday, Aug 23: 10 am Pacific, 1 pm EST
- Thursday, Aug 24: 3 pm Pacific, 6 pm EST (note the unusual start time)
- Wednesday, Aug 30: 9 am Pacific, 12 pm EDT
St.Louis: Player Interviews
While there are a few film clips of chess greats like Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine, and a few TV interviews with Tal and Fischer, prior to the Karpov-Kasparov matches there are almost no clips of top players seriously discussing their games. That's changed so completely recently that chess fans might not appreciate how lucky we are today, with most major tournaments having live video feed, game analysis and post-mortem interviews.
The big chess event of August was in St.Louis, and all of the players there talked about their games, and ChessBase has set up a helpful page of links to all the player interviews from Saint Louis: both the Sinquefield Cup and the Rapid and Blitz event.
The interviews after the long games have a lot more interesting chess content, with the players picking out the important points in the game and responding (usually non-plussed) to various computer suggestions. The interviews during the Rapid and Blitz are much less interesting -- think, post-game interviews with tired baseball players -- which is not so surprising when you consider that the interviews were done between rounds. But even they have their moments: when asked whether his win in the Rapid and Blitz event might count as a wedding present for his fiancee, Lev Aronian smiled and said: "there're not enough wins to give as a present to a person I love".
St.Louis Results
MVL won the Sinquefield Cup to jump up to #2 in the world. He finished 1/2 a point ahead of World Champion Magnus Carlsen (who he beat) and former World Champion (and oldest player in the field) Vishy Anand. The event was a disaster for the American players who plugged 3 of the bottom 4 positions: Wesley So had his worst event in years, scoring +1 =4 -4 to finish equal last with Nepomniachtchi. Nakamura was only 1/2 point better, and Caruana only 1/2 beter than Naka.
The Rapid and Blitz event was a 10-player event comprised of a rapid RR and a blitz double-RR, highlighted by the return of Garry Kasparov.
Rapid and Blitz Final Standings:
1. Aronian Levon, ARM
2. Karjakin Sergey, RUS
2. Nakamura Hikaru, USA
4. Nepomniachtchi Ian, RUS
5. Dominguez Leinier, CUB
5. Caruana Fabiano, USA
5. Le Quang Liem, VIE
8. Kasparov Garry, RUS(?)
9. Anand Viswanathan, IND
10. Navara David, CZE
The two oldest players -- 54-year-old Garry Kasparov and 47-year-old Vishy Anand -- did not give the commentators reason to use the cliche that "age is just a number", finishing 8th and 9th respectively out of 10. Supporters of the former World Champions have no reason for despair: Kasparov's result is not quite as bad as it seems: after a 12-year layoff* from tournament chess he was only 1/2 point out of a tie for 5th and was clearly very rusty, often getting into time trouble early in his games; while Anand had just finished playing in the Sinquefield Cup (as did Aronian, Karjakin, Nakamura, Caruana, and Nepo) where he finished =2nd with World Champion Magnus Carlsen.
*the "12-years-off" is what everybody says, but since retiring from tournament chess in 2005, Kasparov has played a few blitz matches with Nigel Short (still near 2700) and played Naka, Caruana and So in a blitz match last year in St.Louis.
Interviews
Sinquefield Cup
http://en.chessbase.com/post/all-sinquefield-cup-interviews
St.Louis Rapid and Blitz
http://en.chessbase.com/post/all-saint-louis-rapid-blitz-interviews