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pillory

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Van Foreest struck back with this delicacy after he for some reason decided to walk straight into Carlsen's WC prep in the previous round. And Carlsen beat Mamedyarov in a boring game which suddenly turned into a complicated and unbalanced endgame, so we have four leaders now.
 

pillory

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Jesus Christ, Shankland resigned against Giri because his knight was trapped, but he had an extremely obvious fortress. That means Giri joins Carlsen in first place with two rounds to go.

 

pillory

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And today Radjabov offered Giri a draw despite having a +2 advantage according to the computers (much more understandable than Shankland's resignation, though, since Giri had a pair of scary-looking connected passers). Without those two free half-points for Giri, Carlsen would already have won the tournament, but now he has to draw Giri with black tomorrow to secure the win. Which he'll easily do, because he's playing his best classical chess in ages.
 

Kasper

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Draw and he wins the tournament.
 

pillory

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Caruana has gone 27 classical games without a win. Carlsen's #1 will be safe for a while. Meanwhile Artemiev is closing in on top ten like a rocket.
 

pillory

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Looks like Carlsen has found himself after the WC match. 50 games undefeated, +10 =12 this year. Just won the Gashimov Memorial by two points and with a 2988 rating performance, pawn-sacrificing his way to crushing victory in the last three games against Giri, Karjakin and Grischuk.
 

pillory

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Looks like Carlsen has found himself after the WC match. 50 games undefeated, +10 =12 this year. Just won the Gashimov Memorial by two points and with a 2988 rating performance, pawn-sacrificing his way to crushing victory in the last three games against Giri, Karjakin and Grischuk.
And +5 =3 in Grenke before the final round. He's back, and this time he has prep!
 

Grylte

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Norwegian media said Carlsen will play more matches and tournaments this year than every before.
Looks like he's prepared well.
 

pillory

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He beat a clearly terrified(?) MVL as well, so he's at 2875.2 and getting very close to the rating records. 2942 rating performance so far this year.


Look at this madness.
 

do.ob

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He can thank Aronian for making it to 67, still an incredibly impressive run though.
 

pillory

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Currently making hugely controversial moves in Norwegian chess politics and simultaneously smashing it at GTC Croatia.


 

pillory

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Carlsen had a bit of a meltdown in the Fischer Random WC final, but at least he's #32 overall in Fantasy Premier League. (Could someone explain the name of his team please??)
 

pillory

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Carlsen's record in the rapid and blitz WC, updated:

2014 R: Won
2014 B: Won
2015 R: Won
2015 B: 1.5 pts behind the winner :eek::eek:
2016 R: 0 pts behind
2016 B: 0 pts behind
2017 R: 0.5 pts behind
2017 B: Won
2018 R: 0.5 pts behind
2018 B: Won
2019 R: Won
2019 B: Won
 

Macern

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Carlsen had a bit of a meltdown in the Fischer Random WC final, but at least he's #32 overall in Fantasy Premier League. (Could someone explain the name of his team please??)
Kjell Ankedal is a Norwegian name, but it’s not anyone known and it might even be a name he came up with himself as I can’t find anyone when googling the name.
 

Mrs Smoker

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Watching more and more chess recently, but they are almost all with 15 minutes and less of time per match. That suits me these days just fine.

Svidler won a nice little tournament called Cuenca Invitational, Magnus got beat by Iranian Firouzja in Banter Blitz final, which won me a nice sum betting wise, and any second now, Magnus Carlsen invitational should start. Really strong field of eight players with Banter guys included.
 

Kasper

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Watching more and more chess recently, but they are almost all with 15 minutes and less of time per match. That suits me these days just fine.

Svidler won a nice little tournament called Cuenca Invitational, Magnus got beat by Iranian Firouzja in Banter Blitz final, which won me a nice sum betting wise, and any second now, Magnus Carlsen invitational should start. Really strong field of eight players with Banter guys included.
Firouzja winning Banter Blitz against Magnus really was a bit of an earthquake event in chess. He's obviously extremly highly rated and the best young talent around but someone beating Magnus in a multiple round (+5 games) Blitz duell has never happened before. Previous similar events like the chess speed championship on chess.com he soundly beat Nakamura and Co. Getting outplayed by Alireza who also beat him in a first to 100 1min bullet match on lichess the week before is crazy.
Don't wanna go too much into armchair psychology but he looked quite shook after the match and I feel he's genuinely worried about the Iranians potential. Keep in mind that Firouzja also was winning against him over the board at the World Blitz Championship 4 months ago before he knocked his pieces over by accident and lost on time. Magnus is still quite ahead in Classical but next couple of years will be tense. Their matchup tomorrow obviously will also be highly anticipated.
 

Mrs Smoker

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Very enjoyable tournament. Love that players themselves often join chat and commentate on other games.

Wonder if they'll try for another similar tournament when the pandemic ends...
 

Mrs Smoker

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Carlsen on the brink of losing twice in a row. :o

Looking pissed as hell after drawing in second match again Ian. Missed a winning move.

To be fair, already qualified for semi-final.
 

freeurmind

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What difficulty do you all easily beat when playing the computer on chess.com? I can't seem to crack level 8.
 

Samid

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Impressive by Dubov. Glad Hikaru didn't win, his twitch fanboys are annoying as hell.
 

The Firestarter

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That was fantastic. To be honest didnt expect Hikaru to be that resourceful. And that gung ho approach in the final rapid game :lol:

Credit to Magnus for the last blitz game where it was a must win and he calmly went into that queenless ending . Imagine the confidence you must have in your technique.

The armageddon was insane.
 

NM

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This Ramesh fella the real deal then?
I've played him in a simul. Fair to say he is going to be top 5. World champ is always hard to say.

And yes he beat me but I lasted 3rd longest out of the 20 he was playing and was level for the first 35 moves.
 

altodevil

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I've played him in a simul. Fair to say he is going to be top 5. World champ is always hard to say.

And yes he beat me but I lasted 3rd longest out of the 20 he was playing and was level for the first 35 moves.
Wow - that's very very cool. I was really into rapid and blitz chess for a good chunk of my life there but I've just not had the time recently. Probably haven't played more than a handful games since Covid. It's a real shame because the progress you make completely plummets when you aren't constantly remembering openings.