Rare Birds 2014

That's rare birds as in 'Chess960 tournaments are rare birds', last seen in Rare Birds 2012. Why no corresponding post for 2013? It just slipped my mind, I suppose.

I asked Google to restrict search results on 'chess960' to entries from the past month. The first two results were this blog and the most recent post on this blog. That's good for this blog, but not so good for chess960. No tournaments means no games, and no games means nothing to talk about. That's not so good for this blog either.

The third Google result was a collection of forum posts from Chess.com, after which I started to see some tournaments. Let's list them in alphabetical order by country.

CH: Swiss Chess960 Championship • A one day (?) event held in conjunction with the 47th Biel International Chess Festival; Victor Mikhalevski (1st), Andreas Heimann (2nd), Viktor Erdos (3rd), Marco Lehmann (Swiss Champion). No games available.

DE: Schach ohne „Herrschaftswissen“ (chess-tigers.de, in German) • 10th Chess960 Open and 3rd German championship; GM Klaus Bischoff (1st), Chess Tigers (top team). One annotated game available. From the Google translation: 'Chess without "superior knowledge" by FM Hartmut Metz: The rapid development has lost momentum and stalled, since there is no longer the world's biggest chess festival in Mainz. In this Hans-Walter Schmitt had seduced the world class with high prize money to play Chess960. [...]'

UK: Mind Sports Olympiad, chess events • 17 August (tomorrow!); 'Chess 960, constituting the official British Open Chess 960 Championship'. TBD.

The Google search radar also picked up a number of correspondence events.

Iccf.com: Russia vs Rest of the World (Chess960) • Thirty boards; top Russian correspondence players against ROW, four games per board. The Russians are currently leading 28.5 - 9.5. Games available when complete.

Chessleagues.com: Chess Leagues 2014; see also 2013. • 'I created this website to provide the best league experience for Chess.com users.' Three chess960 leagues out of 11 total. Although I've been a member of Chess.com since 2007 and am on a couple of teams, I've never understood their league play. TBD.

Yes, there were more Google results from the past month, but these were the entries that stood out. I'll try to remember to do the same search from time to time.