Chess World Championship: Carlsen-Caruana

[Federberg]

 

[Federberg]

 

[Federberg]

 

[DarthFed]

Jeez, those are harsh words from his fellow countrymen.

 

[Federberg]

 

[Federberg]

 

[Federberg]

 

[DarthFed]

Kasparov does make a great point but I still go back to the thought before the match that Carlsen would be very happy with a 6-6 tie because he has such a huge edge in the tiebreak. I think Garry may be overstating it by saying he doesn't see Carlsen as the favorite. Was this really a case of Carlsen losing his mind or just realizing a draw makes him the overwhelming favorite? We are only guessing what is in his mind.

 

[Federberg]

Kasparov does make a great point but I still go back to the thought before the match that Carlsen would be very happy with a 6-6 tie because he has such a huge edge in the tiebreak. I think Garry may be overstating it by saying he doesn't see Carlsen as the favorite. Was this really a case of Carlsen losing his mind or just realizing a draw makes him the overwhelming favorite? We are only guessing what is in his mind.

I definitely agree that was Magnus's calculation, but he's not seeing the wood for the trees. He's just made his life so much more difficult. He will lose a lot of respect for this. He should think back to his criticisms of Vishy back in the day. It's wearing when you're a constant target, he's learning that now

 

[britbox]

I've never played much chess - know the rules and stuff... but that's pretty much how it begins and ends... but I'm pretty engaged with the idea of the size of the online community. I was pretty staggered by the amount of stuff floating around on Twitter and Darth's tournament talks of $5K purses for smaller tournaments. This is one thing I think the Internet does really well.... connects people in niche areas.

 

[DarthFed]

I've never played much chess - know the rules and stuff... but that's pretty much how it begins and ends... but I'm pretty engaged with the idea of the size of the online community. I was pretty staggered by the amount of stuff floating around on Twitter and Darth's tournament talks of $5K purses for smaller tournaments. This is one thing I think the Internet does really well.... connects people in niche areas.

Chess is an interesting one because of the huge online sites that attract many players and blitz chess (3 or 5 minute games) and bullet chess (1 minute games) are so quick that you can get a lot of games done in under an hour. I'd still venture to guess there are a lot of people that are only online players and never play tournaments. I learned how to play in high school and it was just by playing 5 minute games. I'd venture to guess I've only played a little over 50 tournament games (mix between 45 minutes and classical games) and then about 50 games in high school (45 minutes each player).

Chicago was convenient for me as I live just 90 miles north of the city and it was just a 2 day event. The other big money one I played was in Philadelphia and that was a lot bigger than Chicago. Those and the US Open are the biggest money events each year. Interesting back story is that I remember seeing Caruana play in the Chicago event when he was really young. He was already a prodigy of course.

Truth is I didn't ever enjoy tournament chess as I was only in it for the money. I played an event as a beginner and didn't do well and then I kind of took advantage of the rating system. I didn't sandbag, which is losing on purpose to get your rating down so you can play a lower section, but I was a much different player after my sophomore year of high school. So I was always in a section I could uhhh, succeed in we will say

I enjoy blitz chess and probably always will. But playing 7-9 games over the course of 2-3 very long days is not my cup of tea. And they are an investment to play, the one in Philly with entrance fee, flight and hotel was probably over $1,500. I won the $14k one year in 2009 and then barely broke even by winning $1,700 or so in 2011 and I was not happy. That's the last time I played a tournament. They recently were doing a millionaire chess tournament for a couple years (I think 2015 and 2016) and that was a huge purse. I think $50k for the U2200 section which is one under the open section that pros play in. I was thinking of playing in 2016 but I hadn't played chess at all for a couple years. I played probably 20 games over the course of 2 days online and I was sick of it. I just simply did not want to play chess. I started playing again and am enjoying it more. Still a good escape from other crap in life. You should try it out Baron, see if you get obsessed with it

 

[Federberg]

This is simply awesome from Vishy....

 

[DarthFed]

I'm hoping the games will be good today. The rapid games were one-way traffic for Carlsen against Karjakin a couple years ago.

 

[Federberg]

I still think that Magnus's play is more directed to waiting for Fabi to make an error. Let's see if all this negativity works

 

[DarthFed]

If that pawn on c4 falls white will be much better. And it looks tough to save that as Bf1 is now available

 

[DarthFed]

Rb8 Bf1 c3! looks best. But will he find it

 

[DarthFed]

Goes for Nf8 and Nd6 instead...interesting. Protects the pawn for now but blacks pieces are really tied down

 

[Federberg]

looks like Magnus is slowly putting pressure on Fabi.

 

[DarthFed]

This looks ugly for Black already. A loss in the first game and it's all over.

 

[tennisville]

Why is Carlson taking so much time. Bxe6 can be seen by me