#chess world championship

[sibyl-of-space]

Ok I know probably none of your guys are as plugged in to #chessdrama as I am but like, putting aside Hans's horseshit for 8 seconds, I am SO EXCITED about the championship match upcoming in 2023.

It's like a Hollywood underdog movie come to life.

The chess championship works like this: there is a "candidates tournament" where only a very small handful of the best of the best are invited to participate, and the winner of that candidates tournament is selected to face off against the incumbent grand champion in the championship match.

There are TWO "but"s about it this year.

1) One of the players invited to the candidates tournament, Sergey Karjakin, publicly announced support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. As a result he was banned from FIDE events for a time - therefore disqualifying him from the candidates' tournament. This will be very relevant later.

2) Reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen declined to defend his title. The likeliest reason being that he has held the title since 2013 and has repeatedly shown himself to be on a league of his own, and already defeated this year's winner of the candidates' tournament (Ian Nepomniachtchi) in LAST year's championship match... anyway for whatever reason he will not be participating and will relinquish the title.

So who is the championship match going to be between? The top TWO finalists of the candidates' tournament. The top finisher was also last year's finalist, Ian Nepomniachtchi.

And who finished second place in the candidates' tournament 2022....?

This is where it gets super juicy. The second place finisher was Ding Liren, who was not originally invited to the candidates' tournament, but was a last-minute replacement for the banned Sergey Karjakin!!!

The guy who wasn't originally even in the candidate's tournament now has a shot at the world champion title.* Y'all it's so exciting. I can't fucking wait until April. Like even if Ian wins the title you can't tell me Ding having a seat at that table isn't some chefs kiss shit.

Anyway here's my favorite picture of Ding Liren which I'm pretty sure was a photo op specifically to announce his invitation to the championship match, and you can't say they didn't flex at the opportunity (but I'm also laughing at the not properly buttoned up dress shirt and ill-fitted suit):

This has been your reprieve from chess drama involving Hans. Thank you for your attention

* it should be clarified that Ding Liren is like up there among the highest ranking players EVER, with a batshit impressive resume of his own, hence he was chosen as a replacement (iirc as the highest ranking player not already in the tournament). So it's not like he's some nobody. He is very very much somebody. it's just the circumstances around his candidacy for the championship title this year are so.. DRAMATIC

[p3ld]

I have plans for this AU, yeah yeah, it's still them, maybe you guys don't care about it as much as me (I'm the one who make it after all), but the idea and their dynamic in it really give me alot of ideas, even for Errorcore itself.

[kolbiewa]

gift for @p3ld

World Chest Championship AU with Corry and Error Sans is quite inspiring!

tbh i want to see more content on this

[coffeeandinsanityy]

bhaiii gukesh actually fucking won the candidates at the age of fucking 17 are u kidding me😭😭😭 he’s the youngest person in the history of fide to win candidates!! God i feel so proud as an Indian!!! Finally after so many years Ian Nepomniachtchi is not leading the candidates !! Now he just has to defeat the previous world champion Ding Liren and he’d be youngest ever player to actually win the Fide world championship😭😭😭😭 My man is here on a spree of making history 🥹🥹

[chessismyaesthetic]

Happy birthday Tigran Petrosian (1929-1972)!

One of my favourite chess players who most people haven't heard of, "Iron Tigran" was a Soviet-Armenian chess grandmaster and World Chess Champion from 1963 to 1969. When he beat Boris Spassky to defend his world title in 1966, this was the first time a world champion had beaten their closest rival in match play since the nineteenth century. In 1969 Spassky got revenge and Petrosian lost his title. He continued playing though and continued being a very tricky opponent. In total, was a candidate for the World Chess Championship eight times (1953, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1971, 1974, 1977 and 1980) which means that for EVERY SINGLE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BETWEEN 1953 AnD 1980 Petrosian was either the champion or the candidate!!

He also won the Soviet Championship four times (1959, 1961, 1969, and 1975) which, given the quality of Soviet players at the time, was no mean feat. This was, after all, the age of Tal, Botvinnik, Korchnoi, Spassky, Smyslov, and Keres!

Art Zeller, Paul Keres and Tigran Petrosian with the Piatigorskys at the 1963 Piatigorsky Cup, 1963

He was insanely hard to beat, virtually unplayable at times, using a style heavily influenced by Aron Nimzowitsch's book My System and makes me think particularly of Nimzowitsch's dictum "First restrain, next blockade, lastly destroy." In the Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games, Graham Burgess writes Petrosian invented:

"a unique playing style that oppnonents found very hard to handle. Often it wasn't even clear what they were fighting against, as Petrosian's deep prophylactic play would be preventing ideas that had not even occurred to them. Once his opponent's active possibilities were neutralized, Petrosian would squeeze relentlessly."

To give an example of how difficult an opponent he was, over the ten Olympiads he played in, he had 79 wins, 50 draws, and only 1 loss. In 1969, his final year as World Champion, he didn't lose a single tournament game.

Sam Copeland breaks down one of his best games with Spassky in the video below and you can check out some more of Petrosian's games here.

[dozydawn]

Grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi plays game 12 of the World Chess Championship, 2023.

[galaxacious]

Norway Chess 2024 round 6... woag. You gotta feel for Ding Liren at this point.

Ding's lost 4 classical games in a row in this tournament, which you just never see with a World Champion. Both Hikaru Nakamura and now Magnus Carlsen have expressed disbelief during their games where they won against him after Ding made a game-ending blunder.

Hikaru said yesterday in his post interview game that he just felt bad, Ding wasn't playing like himself and he was moving agitatedly during the game.

Just a few hours ago we could see Magnus (left) shaking his head after Ding missed a mate in 2 and immediately resigned here (if the link works)

Why is Ding off his game? Last year he won the World Champion title after defeating the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi, but not as the defendant. The previous World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, withdrew from the Championship for various reasons (he fucking hated preparing for it and he always won).

Immediately afterwards Ding disappeared for several months and then had a few lacklustre tournaments. There's been speculation about his mental health for months now but nothing confirmed until an interview this morning with a German outlet that confirmed he's been treated for depression and is receiving treatment for insomnia.

So. Everyone's wishing him the best, and here's hoping he manages to have a more successful end to this tournament. His Championship challenger is a young bloke named Gukesh, and I hope Ding doesn't have to withdraw or postpone the Championship as is being speculated during this tournament.

[p3ld]

Yeh no

I can do M3

[noneun]

🛎️ Ding! ♟️

[valkyries-things]

JUDIT POLGAR // CHESS GRANDMASTER

“She is a Hungarian chess grandmaster, generally considered the strongest female chess player of all time. In 1991, she achieved this title at the age of 15 years old, the youngest to do so, breaking the world record of Bobby Fischer. She is the only woman to have been a serious candidate for the World Chess Championship, which she participated in 2005. In 2014, she announced her retirement from competitive chess and in 2015 was elected as the new captain and head coach of the Hungarian national men’s team. She received Hungary’s highest decoration, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary and was inducted into the World Chess Hall of Fame.”

[chessaglow]

3 Fun Facts about Max Euwe

Euwe played a 10 game match against Alekhine in 1927 shortly before Alekhine's World Championship match against Capablanca later that year. He surprised the world by proving to be a tough opponent, losing narrowly 4,5-5,5.

Euwe is the only World Champion to go on to become president of FIDE.

Euwe played two matches against Bogoljubow for the title of FIDE Champion, separate from the World Championship, in 1928. He lost both 4,5-5,5.

[chessismyaesthetic]

Happy birthday Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand!

Vishy Anand, one of my favourite commentators from recent World Championships (he just seems like such a lovely guy and his analysis is always interesting and well explained), is an Indian chess grandmaster and a former five-time World Chess Champion. The FIRST grandmaster from India (he won the title in 1988) which is hard to believe given how many great Indian chess players there are now, he has the 8th highest peak FIDE raiting of all time. He remains the only player to have won the World Chess Championship in tournament, match, and knockout format, as well as rapid time controls.

Vishy playing Kasparov, 1995.

As a teenager people called him "Lightning Kid" for his rapid playing speed, and later GMs who faced him often described him as one of the all-time greats alongside Garry Kasparov (a logical comparison given the schism in the World Championship and the fact most top GMs would have played both so could compare).

As a lightning fast teenager in the 1980s.

Wikipedia describes him as "a well-liked figure throughout the chess world for two decades, evidenced by the fact that Kasparov, Kramnik, and Carlsen, all of whom were rivals for the world championship during Anand's career, each aided him in his preparations for the 2010 World Chess Championship" which is something I massively admire in sports people - the seemingly rare ability to be a top competitor AND be nice to people.

Check out his game 6 win against Karpov in the 1998 World Championship match for a great win at an important moment. Karpov had won the first four games, Vishy made a draw in game 5, and NEEDED to win. So what does he do? He plays the Trompowsky Attack (1. d4 Nf6 2. Bg5) - rarely seen at GM level - and wins in 42 moves! Seriously, go google and admire. Sadly (for me at least since I'm a fan) he lost the WC in the tiebreaker games and didn't manage to become World Champion until two years later when he became the first world champion from Asia and the first world champion from outside the ex-Soviet Union since Bobby Fischer.

Anand v. Kramnik at the 2008 World Championship, game 3.

OR check out game 3 of his World Championship match against Kramnik in 2008. Here Vishy has the black pieces playing against Kramnik's Queen's Gambit Declined - they go into a really tactically sharp line known as the Blumenfeld Attack (this is part of the Semi-Slav defence, classical merin variation if you want to look it up). On move 14 Vishy plays a novelty - a new idea - that Kramnik needs to refute if he's to win. Vishy's idea is to just give up a pawn (which is usually defended) in favour of attacking the white king. Two pawns down, Vishy rejects the possibility of a draw and goes on the attack with Kramnik's king on the run. It's exciting stuff and unbelievably tense when you imagine the WC conditions they were playing in!

Vishy about to beat defending champion Magnus Carlsen in Game 3 of the 2014 World Chess Championship in Sochi.

His career is way too long and too well documented to be worth going into any greater detail - google is your friend here - but what a great player. Well worth delving into his games, not least as he was one of the first to embrace computer prep so that alone is an interesting development.

[dozydawn]

Grandmasters Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren play the first game of a 14-game match to decide the new World Chess Champion, 2023

[eretzyisrael]

All of the 11 chess teams originally set to play at the World Team Championship in Israel on Sunday proceeded as planned despite attempts by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) to convince the teams to cancel their plans to travel to Israel due to what it sees as the government's oppression of Palestinians.

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) did not respond to a letter sent by the organization demanding that it move the championship from Jerusalem, according to the Israeli Chess Association.

Countries that participated in the championship

The other countries that played alongside Israel included the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, India, South Africa, China, Spain, France and the Netherlands.

The Israeli team shared a house with Olympic champion Uzbekistan and bronze medalist India, as well as the American, Polish and Azerbaijani teams.

Israel will face rising stars like Hans Nieman from the US, as well as Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri, Teymur Radjabov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Javokhir Sindarov, Nihal Sarin, Vasyl Ivanchuk and Alexei Shirov, according to FIDE.

The championship, which was spearheaded by Culture and Sports Minister Hili Tropper and Jerusalem Affairs and Housing Minister Ze'ev Elkin, will be held until Friday and each game will last 45 minutes.

"Under the exciting new format devised for this competition, the participant countries are split into two pools of similar strength, taking as a reference the rapid rating list for November 1st," FIDE said on its website. "The four best teams from each pool will advance to the knock-out stage, where they will play Quarter-finals, Semi-Finals, and Final, with each duel consisting of two matches between the teams."

"The event, organized by FIDE and the Israel Chess Federation with the support of the Israel Ministry of Sport and Culture, will be held at the Mount Scopus Hall in the Dan Hotel in Jerusalem," the organization added.

[galaxacious]

Me watching games 7 and 8: