The tournament Chess960 Titled Arena #960feb19 finished just in time to make the deadline for this week's post.
A day later Youtube channel ChessNetwork released a video about the event. With more than 100K views and nearly 200 comments, the numbers speak for themselves.
Chess960 Titled Arena ft. Magnus Carlsen as DrNykterstein (3:08:03) • 'Published on Feb 24, 2019'
The description said,
This is a 3-hour bullet chess tournament, Chess960 Titled Arena, I provided commentary on while specifically observing World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen compete. Time controls are 2 minutes with a 1 second increment. This was the first titled arena lichess held with the variant chess960, or fischer random chess.
The comments help to locate the start of interesting games; for example, 'Eric Rosen's game at 45:31'. This game found a second path to Youtube, via the Eric Rosen channel: Playing the World Chess Champion in Chess960.
I played Magnus Carlsen (DrNykterstein) in the first ever Chess960 Titled Arena on lichess.org. The time control was 2+1. The game ended in an intense time scramble.
For more about the tournament, see Shaking Things Up in the Chess960 Titled Arena (lichess.org). Comments are at Forum >> General Chess Discussion >> Shaking... (ditto).
2 comments:
Hi Mark. That ChessNetwork video on the Lichess 960 event was for me the highlight of everything I have ever watched in Chess960 videos so. Carlsen's understanding of Chess960 is so good that even in blitz he plays high quality simple chess960 that an amateur like me can learn from. ChessNetwork's commentary was absolutely terrific. I start to wonder if Nakamura is really not a Chess960 player after all. In the unofficial world championship he played really well but seems to struggle with the concept of the simple chess opening style that Magnus has. Magnus plays it just complicated enough to create imbalances but not too complicated either. I love how Magnus will search for openings that break symmetry while still maintaining respect for opening principals. What do you think of Magnus's style where if queens are in the corner he will often play the edge pawn on the first move? After all, the pawn structure is not compromised is it!
Yes! Chess960, Magnus Carlsen, and ChessNetwork commentary. What's not to like? I think you are too hard on Nakamura. After all, he was playing Carlsen, a World Champion in every form of chess that has World Championships. Nakamura routinely beats everyone at chess960 and, the last time I looked, he had a chess960 rating in the stratosphere. Anyway, thanks for the observation about Queens in the corner. I'll use it for my next blog post.
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