2022 FWFRCC Hikaru's Climb

The previous post, 2022 FWFRCC Lichess Swiss Group 2 (October 2023), featured IM Eric Rosen, a popular chess streamer, broadcasting his participation in an intermediate stage of last year's 'FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship', aka FWFRCC. The post quoted IM Rosen saying,

This is a more serious stream than usual. It's a [Chess960] World Championship and this is stage two. [...] To move on beyond this tournament I need to finish top-18.

That post provided enough background to locate online resources that documented the entire FWFRCC event. This current post features GM Hikaru Nakamura, an even more popular streamer, who won the entire event. For more background, see last year's post 2022 FWFRCC Finals - Live (November 2022). The following video covers the end of the last stage of the event.

Dear YouTube, Meet Your New World Champion (44:17) • '[Published on] Oct 31, 2022'

The video's description said,

Hikaru played Ian Nepomniachtchi in the Fischer Random World Chess Championship in Iceland on October 30, 2022, and WON! Here's his recap of the last five games.

The video was the last in a series by Nakamura that captured, from start to finish, his climb to the C960/FRC title. The winner's Youtube channel (GMHikaru) currently boasts '2.15M subscribers'. I found nine videos relevant to the 2022 FWFRCC on the channel:-

• 2022-09-13: Hikaru on Lichess Fischer Random World Champs Qualifier • 'Hikaru plays in a qualifier on Sept 11, 2022 held on Lichess for the Fischer Random World Championship being held in Iceland in October. This is the first qualifier, the top 15 will play on Sept 18th in a knockout format. This is part 1. Hikaru recorded this off stream.'
• 2022-09-18: Can Hikaru Be World 960 Champion? • 'This is the 2nd half of the qualifier played on Sept 11, 2022, on lichess.'
• 2022-09-19: Hikaru Finds Young Talent in 960 Quals • 'Hikaru Beats up two youngsters, FM Andy Woodward and GM Awonder Liang, and recaps it for us in the 960 World Championship Qualifier played on Lichess on September 18, 2022.'
• 2022-09-26: I'm Going to Iceland to Play Bobby Fischer! • 'Today, Sept 25, 2022, Hikaru played in the Qualifier to the Fischer Random World Championship 2022 in Iceland.'
• 2022-10-26: How I Beat Magnus - A Strong Start to 2022 FRWC Day 1 • 'Thanks to everyone for your continued support. The FR World Champs will be broadcast on my Twitch channel every day and I hope to make recaps after each day.'
• 2022-10-27: World Championship Recap Day 2, Fedoseev is a Tough Fish to Catch • 'Hikaru's recapping Day 2 of the Fischer Random World Chess Championship, two matches vs Vladimir Fedoseev.'
• 2022-10-27: Dear Youtube, Magnus is a Beast • 'Today I played Magnus in two games to qualify to the Semifinals'
• 2022-10-29: Dear YouTube, I'm Playing in a World Championship! • 'Hikaru played World Rapid Champion Nodirbek Abdusattorov in the Fischer Random World Chess Championship Semifinals today and here is his recap.'
• 2022-10-31: Dear YouTube, Meet Your New World Champion • 'Hikaru played Ian Nepomniachtchi...' [as above]

The video embedded on this post is the last clip of the series. It currently has over 519K views and over 2200 comments. The first comment says,

The man just won the Fischer 960 World Championship. Does he rest or go out for celebratory drinks or dinner -- nope, he goes back to the hotel, gets back to work, and gives his fans/subscribers a recap and analysis. Hikaru, you’re a true gift to the game of chess. Congratulations and thank you!

You might have a problem with GM Nakamura's brash style -or- you might have a problem with the idea of C960/FRC, but that's your problem. Naka is a legitimate World Champion in a chess discipline of the 21st century.

2022 FWFRCC Lichess Swiss Group 2

A few months ago, in Talking About Chess960 (July 2023), I discovered an interesting link:-

No.35; 2023-07-30: [Google] Swiss Rapid Fischer Random Championship (bielchessfestival.ch) • The runner-up was popular streamer 'IM Rosen Eric'; possible action: review his resources.

I reviewed IM Rosen's resources and quickly found the following Youtube video.

SERIOUS Chess 960 (3:04:05) • '[Published on] Nov 1, 2022; Originally streamed on Sept. 10, 2022.'

The clip has no description, so what are we watching here? At around 10:00 into the clip, we learn,

This is a more serious stream than usual. It's a [Chess960] World Championship and this is stage two. I believe this is a Swiss stage. I played the the Arena stage last week and because I finished top-500 in Arena -- which wasn't too difficult -- I'm in this tournament now. To move on beyond this tournament I need to finish top-18.

I covered that complicated World Championship tournament last year, where the final post was 2022 FWFRCC Wrapup (December 2022; 'FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship'). The stage of the tournament in the video was covered chronologically by an earlier post, 2022 FWFRCC Qualifiers (October 2022).

The many FWFRCC preliminary events were played in parallel, independently on the two main online chess sites, Chess.com and Lichess.org. IM Rosen participated on the Lichess side. My 'Qualifiers' post had a link to Midway Through The World Fischer Random Championship Qualifiers on Lichess (lichess.org; September 2022), which gave some context:-

With the open and invitational arena stage over, we now move to the first Swiss stages marking the midpoint of the qualifiers on Lichess. At the Swiss stages, eligible players can only take part in the groups they’ve been sorted into. Eligible players and the groups they’ve been sorted into can be >>> found here <<<. [...] The top 18 players of each group go through, where they will meet on 11th September (with the same start times), and be met by 10 wildcards. In total, up to 100 players will compete in the second Swiss stage to determine the final 16 who go through to the KO stages.

The 'found here' anchor leads to FIDE World Fischer Random Championship - Swiss Stages (lichess.org), where we learn that one 'EricRosen' qualified from the 'FIDE CCC & NACCL World Fischer Random Qualifier' into the CCC and NACCL: Swiss Group 2. That is the 11-round event presented in the video.

After that long introduction to set the scene, let's list the games played from the video. The first column shows the video start time, followed by the start position:-

0:00:08 SP422 RNBQNBKR
0:14:32 SP459 RNNKBQRB
0:31:05 SP670 RNKRNBBQ
0:46:13 SP385 BQRBNNKR
1:01:58 SP060 NBNRQKBR
1:18:43 SP901 RKBBQRNN
1:35:35 SP280 NBRKBNRQ
1:51:03 SP099 BQNRNKRB
2:07:21 SP803 BRKQNRNB
2:25:24 SP228 NBBRQKNR
2:39:43 SP466 BRNNKBRQ

The page for 'Swiss Group 2' lists 'No.10 IM EricRosen'. His participation ended in the next step of the event, CCC and NACCL: Swiss Phase 2, where he finished at no.74. Will I find the time to study Rosen's games in more depth?

What about Biel?

The annual chess960 tournaments at Biel (Switzerland) have been running for some years now and I've never given them a good look. In a recent post, Talking About Chess960 (July 2023), Biel appeared twice with links to the results:-

'ACCENTUS Chess960 (ACC) - Biel International Chess Festival (bielchessfestival.ch; w/ PGN)' *and* 'Swiss Rapid Fischer Random Championship (bielchessfestival.ch) • The runner-up was popular streamer "IM Rosen Eric"; possible action: review his resources.'

That first tournament, 2023 ACCENTUS, was streamed live; the coverage starts at 9:10 in the following video:-

Biel Chess Festival 2023: GMT Chess 960 (2:59:21) • 'Streamed live on Jul 15, 2023'

The description doesn't add much except an error:-

Biel Chess Festival 2022 [?; sic] live from Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.

Before I discovered this video, my objective in the search was to learn about best practices for organizing and directing an OTB (i.e. not online) chess960 tournament. The year 2023 saw both a round-robin and a Swiss chess960 event in Biel. What can be learned from them?

It turns out that this video is the first of two parts and that there are previous year streams going back to 2020. Before I go any further with this post, I need to determine exactly what I'm looking at.

2023 Champions Showdown, Videos

In the previous post, 2023 Champions Showdown, St. Louis (September 2023), I quoted a press release from the Saint Louis Chess Club which started,

SAINT LOUIS, September 12, 2023 - GM Sam Sevian won the 2023 Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX after a brilliant final day [...]

Here's a video from the club's Youtube channel featuring a chat with the winner not long after he won the event.

9LX Champ Sevian: 960 Helps the Imagination (5:09) • '[Published on] Sep 11, 2023'

The description said,

Sam Sevian talks to Cristian Chirila after going [+2-0=1] and winning the event on the third day of the 2023 Chess 9LX.

The three days of action were streamed live on the same channel under the title '2023 Champions Showdown | Chess 9LX':-

• 2023-09-08: Day 1
• 2023-09-09: Day 2
• 2023-09-10: Day 3

The description for the first day said,

Live from the World Chess Hall of Fame, the sixth Chess 9LX event is a 10-player Fischer Random chess (Chess960) round robin rapid tournament (with pairings). Today are the first three rounds. Join GMs Yasser Seirawan, Cristian Chirila, and IM Nazi Paikidze for the move-by-move.

For all of the club's videos for the event, see:-

• 2023 Champions Showdown | Chess 9LX (playlist)

The playlist includes two more videos featuring GM Sevian.

2023 Champions Showdown, St. Louis

The top chess960 tournament of the year is undoubtedly the annual event hosted by the St. Louis chess club. The results for this year were announced on the club's blog in Grandmaster Sam Sevian Delivers Brilliant Performance to Win 2023 Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX (saintlouischessclub.org). The press release started,

SAINT LOUIS, September 12, 2023 - GM Sam Sevian won the 2023 Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX after a brilliant final day, where he defeated a competitive field including legendary former World Champion Garry Kasparov and World No. 2 Fabiano Caruana to take home the $37,500 first place prize.

The crosstable shows that GM Sevian won the event without a loss, a full point ahead of the next group of players.

2023 Champions Showdown Chess 9LX
(uschesschamps.com)

I'll have more to say about the event in the next post. For the report on last year's event, see 2022 Champions Showdown, St. Louis (September 2022).

Chess018 and the CCRL

In last week's post, Chess018 Is a Thing (August 2023), I suggested an idea for a follow-up post:-

One more idea that could be easily tested is to look at the chess018 start positions (SPs) on CCRL. Which SP is statistically best? Which is worst? What are the most popular first moves for each SP? Sounds like another post is taking form.

The following chart lists the 18 SPs in the chess018 family. The first three columns are from my own database of SPs. The last three columns are from the CCRL (see the sidebar for a link).

The column 'Dist' ('Distance') is a metric I whipped up when I first started investigating chess960. It was explained in the following posts:-

• 2009-08-15: Randomness in Chess960 Start Positions
• 2009-08-22: More on the Concept of Distance

Some day I hope to find a use for 'Dist', e.g. a correlation with some other observation. Today is not that day.

The CCRL numbers for chess018 should be compared to the same numbers across all 960 SPs. At first glance, nothing unusual appears. Somewhat curious is the one SP where the score for White is less than 50% -- the traditional start position. I imagine it has something to do with the engines not using a book.

Chess018 Is a Thing

This month's Chess Life (August 2023) had a three page article relevant to the world of chess960. Titled 'Chess18 : Streamers descend on a giant log cabin to try their hands at an interesting variant' by GM Larry Kaufman, it started,

Recently I had the opportunity to participate, at least for a bit, in a fun chess event at the Timber Moose Lodge in Timber Lakes, Utah, along with some of the most popular chess streamers around. It wasn't a world championship, but it was the first master-level chess18 tournament, and it was watched by chess fans around the globe.

Chess18 is a subset of chess960, or as it more popularly known, "Fischer Random" chess. It uses the 18 positions of chess960 where the Kings and Rooks begin on their normal squares -- the upshot is that no special castling rules are needed.

Later in the article, GM Kaufman admitted,

I have long liked the concept of Chess18, so in 2020 I organized a four-game Chess18 Rapid match between the Komodo chess engine and 2018 Reykjavik Open Chess960 champ GM Alex Lenderman, with Komodo giving knight odds.

This isn't the first time that 'chess018' (as I'll call it for the purpose of searching on this blog) has been discussed here. More than ten years ago I posted 'Bizarre Castling Rules'? (July 2013), which quoted someone else saying,

This variant, which I have dubbed Chess18, has a randomized opening setup just like its "predecessors." The difference is that the Rooks and the King start on the same squares that they do now so that castling remains exactly the same as it is now -- problem solved!

Ten years on I can say with some authority that the 'bizarre castling rules' add an extra dimension to the opening strategy in a game of chess960. Instead of automatically castling O-O as in the majority of games using the traditional start position (SP518 RNBQKBNR), the players have to consider which of the three castling options is best -- O-O, O-O-O, or neither -- for themselves and for the opponent in the given start position. This consideration affects the choice of development for the other pieces.

Before that 'bizarre rules' post, I wrote Not Everyone Likes Chess960 (December 2011), where I noted,

There is nothing to stop any circle of players -- be they GMs or club players -- from restricting their chess960 activity to a handful of positions. This is, after all, what traditional chess does in restricting its focus to SP518. The rest of the world should not be obliged to follow their narrow choice.

That thought is still a guiding light for me. 'Let a thousand flowers bloom' becomes 'Let 960 flowers bloom'.

***

A few other points came to mind while I was writing this post. One of the obvious, although unspoken, advantages of chess018 is that chess engines don't have to be altered to play it. Of course, in 2023 any engine that doesn't understand chess960 castling rules is a contender for the chess engine graveyard.

Re 'automatically castling O-O as in the majority of games using SP518', I'm not sure whether I've already posted on this. How do the other 'chess018' positions compare to SP518?

Re Kaufman's aside -- 'chess960, or as it more popularly known, "Fischer Random" chess' -- I've assumed for a few years now that this was indeed the current trend. Last month, while I was researching material for a post, I searched on both 'chess960' and 'fischer random' plus a keyword/phrase using several different search terms. I had more hits on 'chess960' than on the alternative. This is only anecdotal evidence and should be tested more rigorously. But how?

Re 'chess018', I'm going to try to stick to 'chessnnn' to name subsets of chess960. The leading zero in '018' is a bit geeky, but so what?

Re '18 positions of chess960', did the organizers allow SP518? Some people use 'chess959' to describe the full 960 positions less SP518. It's not a bad convention. Some more conventions: 'chess001' for the SP518 crowd (the chances of that catching on are exactly zero); 'chess002' for SP518 and SP534 only (the King and Queen switched), and 'chess000' for people who hate chess.

One more idea that could be easily tested is to look at the chess018 start positions (SPs) on CCRL. Which SP is statistically best? Which is worst? What are the most popular first moves for each SP? Sounds like another post is taking form.