27 January 2018

A World Class Match and Some Top-level Games

Before continuing the previous post, Two Important Chess.com Events, let's go back to Three Chess960 Developments to Watch (October 2017), where I noted,
In February 2018, there may be an unusual exhibition match held between Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, playing chess960 (also known as Fischer Random).

The web site for the match can be found at Fischer Random Chess – The Unofficial World Championship in Fischer Random Chess (frchess.com), where the Regulations page says,

The match will be played in Henie Onstad kunstsenter, at Høvikodden outside Oslo in Norway, from February 9 to February 13 2018. The match will include a total of 16 games. The first eight games are played like slow rapid chess with 45 minutes for the first 40 moves and then 15 minutes for the rest of the game, no increment. The last eight games are played as fast rapid chess with 10 minutes and 5 seconds incremental for each move. All 16 games will be played even if the match is decided. Games will not be rated.
Start positions will be chosen just before a pair of games, for example:-

For the slow rapid games, set up of the pieces will be decided by a drawing made by computer with both players present 15 minutes before the start of the game. This set up then will be used for both games of that evening.

I've already noted Friday, 9 February, 5 PM CET (aka 1700 Central European Time) in my calendar, because live streaming is promised.

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Back to 'Two Chess.com Events', I located the games for the 'Speed Chess Championship' using the technique documented in GM Blitz Battle PGN (March 2017), and created a PGN file that is available here:-

Speed Chess Championship PGN : 45 games (15 matches with three chess960 games per match)

I had a number of unexpected problems to create and upload the file, but hope that it is usable. The PGN header tags are not the same as they were for the March 2017 upload and I'm not sure whether the Chess.com format changed or my manipulations created differences.

As for the Chess.com 'Chess960 Championship', a preliminary analysis counted 372 games in the PGN file provided by Chess.com. I wanted to look at the file in more depth, but ran out of time.

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Looking again at the upcoming Carlsen - Nakamura 'Unofficial World Championship', the two players met in the final match for both the 2016 GM Blitz Battle and the 2017 Speed Chess Championship. Although Carlsen won both matches, Nakamura won the chess960 minimatches with identical scores: +2-0=1. Nakamura appears to be the stronger player at chess960.

20 January 2018

Two Important Chess.com Events

At the end of 2017, chess960 fans were in a holding pattern, waiting for a couple of Chess.com events to terminate:-
  • 2017-10-17: Three Chess960 Developments to Watch • Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship ('One chess960 game will be played in each time control at the end of each time period')
  • 2017-12-23: 2018 Fischer Memorial • 1st Chess.com Chess960 Championship ('you can win a ticket to the Bobby Fischer Memorial in March in Reykjavik')

Both events finished within a few days of each other. Here are Chess.com's final reports:-

Congratulations to both GM Carlsen and GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Now that the events are over, where can we find the games?

Last year, when I discussed the precursor of the 'Speed Chess Championship' in GM Blitz Battle PGN (March 2017), I noted, 'To search on games, you need to know the players' names on Chess.com.' The full results of the event, including all preliminary matches, are detailed in 2017 Speed Chess Championship Schedule, Results, Information (chess.com), from which I copied the following chart.

The results of the each match include links to a full report. Here is a summary of the first round matches.

Nakamura 20.5 (Hikaru), Grigoriants 7.5 (sergiochess83)
Karjakin 19.0 (SergeyKarjakin), Meier 7.0 (GeorgMeier)
So 15.5 (gmwesley_so), Giri 14.5 (AnishGiri)
Grischuk 17.5 (Grischuk), Rapport 9.5 (Lordillidan)
Nepomniachtchi 15 (lachesisQ), Aronian 13 (LevonAronian)
Caruana 19 (FabianoCaruana), Hou 8 (yifan0227)
MVL 19 (LyonBeast), Xiong 12 (jefferyx)
Carlsen 20.5 (MagnusCarlsen), Guseinov 5.5 (GGuseinov)

In my next post, I'll try to gather all of the chess960 games from those matches. As for the chess960 championship, the 'MVL Wins' report provides the possibility to 'Download Tournament PGN'. In the next post, I'll also look at that file.