Rare Birds 2015-16

On this blog 'Rare Birds' are crossboard (OTB) chess960 tournaments, as in Rare Birds 2014 (August 2014). In this post I'll add three that are definitely worth a mention, although there are undoubtedly more. I might come back to one or more of these in a future post.

• 2015-06-14: Complicated, But Interesting. But You Can Only Play It in Voronezh! (chess-news.ru/en; by Andrey Deviatkin) • 'The 19th Alekhine Memorial in Voronezh, as in the previous three years, opened with a FischerRandom Chess (FRC) tournament.'
  
  
• 2016-06-10: Chess960 : Alekhine Memorial (vrnchessfestival.org) • Photos and video (in Russian); date from 'Tournament table' at chess-results.com

The Chess960 Jungle reported on another significant event from 2015.

• 2016-03-01: Transcript of Showdown in Saint Louis 2015 - SP436 Caruana v Nakamura • 'Rumours have it that the organizers experienced technical difficulties during the event, so there are no PGN records for the games available in the public domain.'

When chess960 is played by the elite, it usually has little more than exhibition status in a traditional (SP518) chess event.

• 2016-10-27: Carlsen Beats Nakamura To Win GM Blitz Battle Championship (chess.com) • 'Just like the quarterfinals and the semifinals, all three time disciplines opened with a chess960 game, but for the finals, a twist. The players did not get advance notice of the starting positions.'

That last event merits a deeper look.