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Introduction

A (much) longer version of this interview appears in the years final issue of the Norwegian Chess Federation magazine Norsk Sjakkblad, appearing in mid-November 2020. The piece was my editorial farewell to the job, and a chance to explore a very turbulent year or so for the champion at home, after a series of high-profile episodes eventually led him to make the symbolic gesture of withdrawing from the national federation.

His endorsement of a proposed deal for federation funding from a cooperation with gambling giant Kindred sparked massive national controversy, and this was eventually followed by him becoming an ambassador for Unibet. Gambling is run by a state monopoly in Norway, and is both a thorny and touchy subject. Magnus remains active, supportive and a representative of the Norwegian federation. His lack of membership was a protest against the heated and hostile rejection of what he felt was a unique and unmissable chance to finally fund the chronically impoverished organization.

Although Magnus and I were clubmates at Asker during his late childhood, and I had the entertaining experience of captaining the Norwegian Open team at the Baku Olympiad in 2016, where Magnus led the squad to Norways best ever finish, Ive never had a chance to really quiz him from a journalists seat. In recent years, whenever this was a possibility, there was always someone higher up where I was working who would grab this opportunity for themselves.

Image Caption

photo courtesy Norway Chess / Lennart Ootes

This interview somehow automatically took place in English, which is worth mentioning, even if it only had an impact on the version translated and used in the federation magazine. As our conversation evolved, it became very clear that segments of this interview would be of particular interest to a U.S. audience, and Magnus graciously granted permission for me to publish this in any other channels I felt fit.

As always, Magnus speaks his mind and pulls approximately zero punches. He also repeatedly reveals the high standards he demands of himself over the board, virtual or physical. Some of my previous writing might be interesting as background context: My piece on the creation of Magnus global Offerspill Chess Club and an explanation of this and the Kindred case for a non-Norwegian audience in New in Chess 6/2019; and a look at Magnus history for being outspoken and admittedly nave. The latter article might shed more light on some of the things he admittedly miscalculated in a Norwegian political context, but it also illustrates his belief in speaking his mind.

About being a Unibet ambassador - is it going to focus on fantasy football because of your success? It seems to be the perfect medium for the sponsor, you applying mental skills that aren't chess to a different kind of contest.

Its as simple as it [being] something that I find very interesting to talk about, and to some extent promote as well. And there is a lot of overlap with people who like to gamble and like to play fantasy football. Theres a very obvious connection to make there.

You say on the fantasy football podcast that youre not much of a gambler, which might surprise people when you're a Unibet ambassador. How much 'math' is involved in what you play?

I think fantasy football has a lot of similarity with poker and with betting, in that you make decisions based on stats and then that gives you a better chance to be lucky. So to me its not the gambling aspect of these things that makes it interesting for me, it is more about trying to make good decisions, to make better decisions than others do, basically based on having a lot of the same data.

Obviously in the short term there is a huge amount of luck, there is no denying that, but I think that over time these are definitely - I think fantasy football is definitely in the same category as betting or poker, [which is] to a huge extent a skill-based game.

Luck is no coincidence is the Unibet slogan - this comes around to luck being a kind of skill?

Yes, if you're skilled youre going to be lucky more often, that's the basic point.

Do you see any analog to this in chess at all? I mean chess is a complete information game but there are human factors involved, psychology maybe bluffing occasionally to a certain extent...

I don't think there is any fundamental luck in chess. No...

When you speed things up don't you think it increases the chance factor? Or does it just increase the skill sets needed?

It certainly increases the variance when the game speeds up and when it becomes more complicated, more unpredictable. But I don't consider it chance, or to be a matter of luck. I still feel that it is all skill.

Lets go to the evil side of gambling for bit. When I look at fantasy football it doesn't really strike me as gambling per se maybe that's because I respect the level of skill involved in things like poker even though there's a lack of information and the presence of chance. But it doesn't seem to me the same kind of thing that people are worried about. I imagine the whole point of promoting gambling with a clear conscience, is you see it as a 'safe' pastime if it is a pastime and skill is consciously involved?

Yeah, to be honest I simply don't find gambling very interesting, I don't find online casino games that interesting. As you said, poker, sports betting, and I think also fantasy football, those are, in the long run, highly skills-based games. They can be extremely addictive, there is no doubt about that, so you need to make it safe, set boundaries.

But I dont think there is anything inherently wrong with these things.

The thing about poker and sports betting fantasy football is not quite the same the thing about these games when you play them online, if you are even a reasonably smart person, you understand very well that the house has the edge. You understand that and you accept it as the premise, that when you play there [at a casino or online betting site ~ed.] they are going to have a bit of an edge and you are going to try to beat them with your superior skills. Or youre just going to play a bit for fun. Which is also fine, but then you accept that you are going to pay a bit of money for the thrill of gambling.

But I don't think that there is something inherently wrong with person 1 accepting a fee to allow person 2 and 3 to wager a bet between them. I don't think there is any fundamental problem there.

Lets talk about what I like to call Magnus Inc.: Chess 24, Play Magnus, Chessable and CoChess. You came up with the name for CoChess (= 'coaches'), I assume?

Ha! No Im a huge pun aficionado. Unfortunately, it wasn't me but obviously I like it.

How active are your roles with these companies?

Lately I stay a little bit out of the way. Usually whenever they ask me to do something, they ask me for a favor, I am very happy to do that, but its not like I run any of the day-to-day business. Clearly Im a lot more involved when it comes to the tour that we had and the tour that is coming up. That is something that Im thinking a lot more about and having much more of a say in.

So investor and promoter mostly?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is there a sense of this being a big competitive front for you? Are you taking on chess.com and lichess and any other big online players with this empire you're building?

Yes, we certainly are trying to compete, especially with chess.com, there's no doubt there, but most of all we're trying to grow chess, and to do something special to create a good environment for the best players.

Image Caption

photo courtesy Norway Chess / Lennart Ootes

Do you consider lichess a competitor? They seem to be helpful in some of your projects and they would appear to be a natural competitor in others.

In general I like those guys. So I wish the lichess guys everything good, [and] I think what they've managed to do is amazing.

So the main rival is chess.com. What are your ambitions, and what is success in that respect?

Its not really all about competing with them. We just want to create good products that are going to make people interested in following our events, and eventually also playing on the new site we've got coming up on Chess24.

Its not only about Chess24 as well. We're trying to grow all of the different companies. Essentially, Im just there as you said, as investor and promoter. My main role still is to try and play well; that's after all, I think, the best way to promote [these ventures]. When I start playing a lot worse, my value for the company will be a lot less.

There was a recent video with Arne Horvei about exciting job opportunities as a broadcaster for the next online tour - but this tour sounded a bit like the start of a new world title...

Ha! You'll have to ask him.

(Tisdall's aside: I did ask Arne, on business social media site LinkedIn. He gave me a very professional answer, explaining that the tour was a private initiative and It is not in any way an announcement of a new world title, official or unofficial but the message did include a wink emoji)

The format of your (online) tour (sets of rapid matches) a lot of people are talking about it being a testing ground or public demonstration of what you would like to see the actual world title format change to. Any truth to that?

Yeah, I guess I have been pretty open about, not necessarily for the championship title, but about my opinion about how you would determine the best player in the world, and certainly this goes some way to showing that.

Do you think the COVID-19 situation has permanently changed the status of rapid and blitz events now?

I think so. But I also think its just not realistic to expect people to play long games online. I also think it is not realistic to expect people to watch it with great interest. So I think the rapid format is excellent for online play because you keep at least some semblance of high quality chess and it also doesn't take too long. You get more games in a day and that way you get more excitement possibly.

You don't think it will impact over-the-board play when it comes back? That things will speed up more in general?

I don't know. I think in general the future of classical chess as it is now is a little bit dubious. I would love to see more Fischer [Random] Chess being played over-the-board in a classical format. That would be very interesting to me, because I feel that that particular format is pretty well suited to classical chess as basically you need a lot of time in order to be able to play the game even remotely decently. And you can see that in the way that Fischer [Random] Chess is being played now when it is played in a rapid format.

The quality of the games isnt very high because we make such fundamental mistakes in the opening. We don't understand it nearly enough and I think that would increase a lot if we were given a classical time control there. So I would definitely hope for that.

For classical chess over-the-board, I guess it has a future, but I think you have to accept it as it is. There are going to be a lot of draws when the best players in the world play classical chess over-the-board. There is no way around it, if you dont change something fundamental that is simply not going to change. It is a little bit sad but I think it is very, very hard to do something about.

You don't think engines might open the frontiers again somehow?

I find it very unlikely. The fact [is] that Alpha Zero and Leela, are, in terms of the Berlin Defense, rather shutting down doors than opening them. I think that's not a very encouraging sign and youre grasping more and more at straws when it comes to finding playable opening ideas. It is a bit of a shame.

That makes me wonder if you've been following these chess variant experiments, I think by Kramnik.

I certainly think its interesting, and yeah, Id love to try some of the variants that most resemble chess, I would love to try them in real games. I just think that to some extent we already have a really good variant, that is Fischer [Random] Chess. I think that probably also needs to be explored more.

Going back to the topic of rapid being possibly the main battleground for a while: What's it like reanimating [GM Hikaru] Nakamura - he seems to be more of a rival now than when he was world number two?

Yeah, definitely. First of all, Ive been mightily mightily impressed with the way he's been playing. When we were doing the invitations for the first Magnus Invitational there was this basic thought to invite all the best players in the world and there were a lot of people who were a given, and I was pushing for Nakamura to be invited there. I was saying that even though it has been a long time since he has had any success whatsoever in classical chess, I still thought that in rapid formats he would be a more than worthy competitor. And I didn't expect him to be nearly this good.

Its been amazing to see the amount of success that he's had and I also think the match that he played against me, or all of the matches, they became very, very difficult for me. I think that he had a very well thought out match strategy, to a greater extent than other players have had. Its come to the point that theres no doubt that when it comes to rapid and blitz chess, especially online, he's clearly my biggest competitor.

Do you think the faster controls will create more serious challengers for you or do you think you will be just as dominant?

To be fair, I don't think I've been very dominant recently. I want to be a lot more dominant than I've been. I think I played well in one of the events, the Chessable Masters. Apart from that it has been fairly mediocre I would say. I feel like I havent reached my full potential in these formats and I would say certainly during the last St. Louis event, I think I was just basically going through the motions. I had no energy or creativity. I was just not playing well at all.

Is it just as demanding as playing classical then?

Yes, I think so, when you play a bunch of games in one day it is equally exhausting.

Will classical chess and the official cycle still be your top priority?

I think it is very, very likely that I will compete for a world championship next year, but I feel it is very unlikely that I will ever play as many classical tournaments as I did in 2019.

Because of the strain?

Yeah, because there is going to be, at least for the next year, a lot of focus on the online tour that is coming so I cannot spend all my time travelling.

Who do you expect to be your next challenger?

One of the guys playing in the Candidates. I don't know, the two guys who are leading [GMs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Ian Nepomniachtchi - ~ed.] and also [GM Fabiano] Caruana have a very decent chance. I don't have a better answer than that.

Is there anybody you'd find more interesting to meet?

By far the best player among them is Caruana.

But that doesn't mean he'd be the most -

I think that would be the most interesting for sure. Its not necessarily what I want. I mean, I don't really know what I want at this point but yeah, I certainly think he's the most interesting opponent.

What did you think of Nakamura's Bong Cloud in the last round at the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz? (Nakamura played 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 as White vs. GM Jeffrey Xiong, an opening known as the Bong Cloud.)

I think it was OK. my opinion has always been chess moves are chess moves theyre not much more.

In that particular situation it's not about respect for the game or lack of it.

What about respect for the opponent?

I just don't find that whole discussion very interesting. Like when you face it, either you go 2. Ke7 yourself and you say, I see that you're trying to give yourself a disadvantage here and I don't want to be a part of that, now we play on equal ground. Or else you try your best to win. Certainly it's not an ideal situation to be put in, but you do your best. If you're talking about lack of respect for the opponent, that's far too dramatic, there should be room for some showmanship in these events. But I don't necessarily think it should be a headline creator.

What about what the organizers think?

It's also about what you do after. Clearly Hikaru's intention was: I play 1. e4, I play 1. Ke2 and after that I play a normal game. He didn't continue to play in a silly way after it. So if you think you are good enough to play 1. e4 2. Ke2 and beat your opponent, sure go ahead. I don't see the problem.

It almost looked like he did it because his stream followers voted for it.

Youve got to keep in mind, that he considers himself a streamer first and foremost rather than a chess player. With that in mind, his choice is not only understandable, its perfectly rational.

What do you think about the way his video streaming is plowing new ground for chess popularity?

I think its very good for him first and foremost, and in general its a good thing for chess. I don't think that it's necessarily a case of more numbers always corresponds to being that much better for chess, but I think overall its a very positive thing. I just think that we should not lose complete track as chess players of what we are trying to do, which is play good chess.

He himself has been thoroughly vindicated in the sense that he finds a lot of success, not only as a promoter of the game but also as a player. I think what he's doing is a huge positive, and it's obviously great for him.

--

After getting to see all the attention seekers swarming around you when I was Olympic team captain in Baku, I'm curious to know if all this has made you reflect a little bit about celebrity life. And if you think about yourself as a role model at all, and the implications of that.

(Pause)

Im not particularly guided by those thoughts about being a role model or whatever. I try to live my life in a way that I feel reflects what I want to do, but its not like I am going to do exactly what people expect of me. That's never, or at least not recently, something that's been important to me.

Are you more comfortable with these kinds of media storms now? I see that just for fun you can provoke Liverpool fans (in connection with fantasy football), which is a strange kind of hobby.

Read more here:
We're trying to grow chess: An Interview with Magnus Carlsen - uschess.org

Thinking that chess had lost much of its spontaneity, American grandmaster Bobby Fischer developed his own variation of the game that is still played today Photo: David Attie/Getty Images

On Sunday 23rd July 1972, the Americangrandmaster Bobby Fischer made the first move of the sixth game in the world chess championshipshunting his pawn two squares up the board.

Nothing, in itself, was unusual about that. Pushing either of the middle d or e pawns two squares forward is the most common way to begin a game. But this move involved neither of these pawns and took Fischers opponentthe reigning world champion Boris Spasskyby complete surprise. Moreover, because he had not expected it, he had not prepared for it.

Fischer began with square c2 to c4the English Opening (so called because it was a favourite of a 19th-century English chess champion, Howard Staunton). To those who dont follow chess, it might sound a comically small twistthe same move, just one or two spaces along. But it shook everything up, and shook Spassky up in particular. During the months he had been in training, the indolent Russian had pooh-poohed the notion that he had to be ready to respond to all of whites opening options. Fischer almost unfailingly played e4. Surely he would not unleash a new opening in the most important match of his lifetime? Its not easy to think of analogies, but imagine a fast bowler in cricket suddenly bamboozling the batsman with an over of leg-spin.

With both sides in unfamiliar territory, the game itself proved the most beautiful of the championship. After resigning, Spassky joined the spectators in applause at his opponents brilliance. Fischer was now ahead in the match; six weeks later he would be crowned the 11th world champion.

A quarter of a century on, Fischer called a shock press conference in Argentina. Since his headline-grabbing battle with Spassky, the American genius had become a recluse. In the past hed been described as troubled, turbulent, mercurial, and had engaged in crude antisemitism despite being of Jewish descent; it was now clear that hed tipped into paranoia. Hed resurfaced from isolation in 1992 to play a rematch against Spassky in war-torn former Yugoslavia, in defiance of US sanctions. After winning, Fischer disappeared yet again, this time as a wanted criminal.

The 1996 Buenos Aires press conference was packed. In his meandering remarks, Fischer denounced the arrest warrant against him and complained that hed been denied payments from various books and films that supposedly exploited his name. But eventually, he got to his point: the promotion of a new type of chess, Fischer Random, which built-in far twistier twists than his celebrated opener in 1972.

This game would be like ordinary chess in most respects. Each side would have eight pawns, arrayed on the second (white) and seventh (black) ranks. Each side would have two rooks, two knights, two bishops, a king and a queen. The pieces would move as before, and the object of the game would still be to checkmate the other side. But there would be one radical -departure: the pieces on the back ranks would be orderedor maybe that should be disorderedrandomly.

For what reason? Well, four months earlier the IBM computer, Deep Blue, had taken on the world champion Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue had humiliated Kasparov in the first game, and although it lost the series, it was clear that the era of mans superiority over the machine was approaching its end. In 1997, Kasparov would be crushed by a new and improved Deep Blue.

One might have expected Fischer to take some schadenfreude from Kasparovs struggles against the chess supercomputer. Fischer was a child of the Cold War, and despite the collapse of the Soviet Union five years earlier, he retained an enduring conviction that the Russians were cheats, frauds and schemers. During the Argentine press conference, he defamed his two successors, Kasparov and Anatoly Karpovtheir games against each other were fixed, he said. If supposed Russian rigging were the problem, then Fischer Random could have helped: when you have no idea what the set up of the pieces is in advance, collusion becomes impossible.

Some chess matches are so methodical they conclude before players are out of their rote-learned opening moves

But the tilting of the scales against humans of all nations was even more of an affront to Fischer. Computers, he grumbled, had an unfair edge. No human could memorise the millions of opening variations that programmers could simply enter into Deep Blues database. Without that advantage, he insisted, human creativity could still vanquish any silicon wannabe. His aim, then, was to provide an answer of sorts to the creeping digital dominance of the game.

Twenty-four years on and Fischer Random, though still a minority pursuit, grows ever-more popular: you can buy chess clocks that double-up as gadgets that shuffle the starting order of the pieces around. For ordinary fans, the appeal is simple: the variant rescues the top-level game from what had increasingly become a struggle between human databases.

With the assistance of chess software engines, todays top players can spend hours on openings each day, endlessly analysing innovations that have been made in games by others, becoming encyclopaedias of past play. Its a lot to keep up with, says Britains leading player, Michael Adams. If thats exhausting for them, its also deadening for those who watchit can mean it takes 15 or 20 moves before any novel position appears. Indeed, some games nowconcludebefore one or even both of the players are out of their rote-learned preparation. When the player on each side of the board is going through a drill, there is little drama, and the upshot, far too often, is a crowd-displeasing draw.

Look only at how many people areplayingchess, and it seems as popular as everthere have not been many winners from the Covid-19 pandemic, but with millions stuck at home the online game has boomed. On the website chess.com, there were 204m games between humans in February 2020, but 323m by June, growth of over 50 per cent in those few locked-down months. Still, there is a nagging sense that there is something missing in the spirit of the game, particularly at the top, which has sparked many different ideas to revive it. The AI company Deep Mind has been analysing various radical options, assessing the permutations and whether potential new laws could create a dynamic but balanced game. One mooted idea is that castling, the manoeuvre that allows you to shuffle around a king and a rook in a single move, should be abolished. Anotherwhich opens up what to chess players would seem like almost psychedelic strategiespermits players to capture their own pieces.

Fischer Random was supposed to give humans the upper hand against computers. Instead the opposite happened

But among many weird variations, Fischer Random remains the front runner, becauseby subjecting the starting position to the luck of the drawit directly attacks the curse of over-preparation in the database age. The alien piece arrangement can flummox players from the very first move. The long years in which a grandmaster has deepened his (and it is usually his) knowledge of the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian Najdorf, the Nimzo-Indian or any other openings for white and black suddenly count for nothing. All the cognitive sweat from memorising innumerable opening lines yields no advantage. The thousands of hours top players put into opening training and development are redundant: what matters is raw talent.

The first Fischer Random tournament was held the same year as Fischers press conference. In 2001, the Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko defeated Michael Adams to become the first unofficial Fischer Random champion. Only last year, however, 11 years after Fischer died, did the game truly hit the big time: receiving the imprimatur of the International Chess Federation, which held a formal Fischer Random tournament featuring some of the worlds top players and a respectable prize fund ($375,000). The introduction of chance in the ultimate game of skill gave rise to a new little ritual: 15 minutes before each game begins, and with the players present, a computer runs software to generate and reveal the piece set up. The Federation President Arkady Dvorkovich described the tournament as an unprecedented move.

There are, however, still plenty of naysayersand sometimes the critics have a point. In normal chess, learning from the mistakes made in previous openings is one of the main ways to improve; in the opening of Fischer Random, theres virtually no scope for learning by doing and the satisfaction that comes with that. Whats more, depending on how the pieces are originally arranged, the first mover advantage of white (which is negligible in ordinary chess) may be greatly enhanced, creating an uneven contest.

But the most common objection to Fischer Random is less well grounded; namely, that its not real chess. This is a variant of a moan heard across many sports. Test cricket fans grumble that Twenty20the fast-paced 20-overs-a-team game that has drawn huge interest and many new fansis not real cricket. Its as though there were an ideal, Platonic form of chess or cricket, against which every variation is merely a shadow approximation.

But it is of course a mistake to imagine that Test cricket or chess materialised fully formed into the world. Games evolve, and chess certainly has. Several hundred years ago, for example, the queen was a less potent piece than she is today. Rules are modified for a variety of reasonsto make the competition more tense and exciting, for example, or, as with the 1992 change to the back-pass-to-goalkeeper rule in football, to make the game more fluid and aesthetically pleasing.

If the rules diverge sufficiently, of course, the novel game may be too different from the original for the old label to be sensibly attached. One could imagine the rules of chess being adjusted bit by bit, until chess became draughts. But chess is not draughtsand it was important to Fischer that Fischer Random remained recognisable as the child of its parent. Constraints have been imposed on how the back pieces are to be shuffled: for example, the king has to sit between the two rooks, which allows for a rather baffling form of castling and, to retain another central feature of the game, the two bishops must occupy opposite coloured squares. Most fundamentally, just like the original white and black setups, the two shuffled back ranks have to mirror each other. Within these limitations, there are still 960 possible starting combinationsand so Fischer Random is now sometimes called Chess 960.

Fischer Random chess is radically different from ordinary chess, but not so radically different that its not chess. You could waste a lot of time on puzzles akin to the Ship of Theseus, and ask how many planks can be replaced before it ceases to be the same thing. It is, however, much more instructive simply to look at who plays the game well.

Some professional cricketers who excel in Twenty20 cricket may not thrive in quite the same way in sedate five-day Tests. Still, theres an enormous overlap between the best Twenty20 cricketers and the best Test cricketers, and the same holds for Fischer Random. Last years official championship culminated in a final between Wesley So (a world top-ten player) and the current world champion in ordinary chess, the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen. On this occasion, Wesley So was victorious, but it seems likely, says Michael Adams, that if Fischer Random became the main version of chess, then Carlsen would become the strongest player.

For, disorientating though it feels, Fischer Random requires the same skills as ordinary chess: pattern recognition, insight and intuition, calculation and strategy. Or at least, the same skill set as was required before the technologies that catalogue and crunch openings and past games put such a premium on the retention of desiccated knowledge. For the first part of a Fischer Random game, its as though players are in a familiar but dark room, bumping around the furniture, trying to find the door outbut then they emerge blinking into the light. It can take quite a few moves, but once the players have reconfigured their forces, a position materialises that could have easily appeared in a game played with the usual rules, though perhaps with a stray bishop languishing in a corner somewhere.

It is not only in games but in many other areas of our lives that it is becoming necessary to modify rules and practices to check the might of technology from warping behaviour. What with our data protection regulations, advice on digital detoxing and laws to protect individuals against revenge porn, there are occasions when we admit that digital advances can also have damaging and unforeseen consequences for human interaction. The sapping, stifling dependence on software and searchable databases on the art of top-level chess may not be a harm of the same order, but it is another instance of a negative spillover from silicon processing power on the way that we rub along. Fischer Random is an ingeniously simple way to liberate us from these effects.

In many areas of our lives, beyond games, it is becoming necessary to modify rules and practices

But the irony is this. Fischer believed his invention was a clever means to befuddle silicon opposition, much the way his surprise move wrong-footed Spassky in 1972. He thought that a throw of the dice, the introduction of the random element into a game of pure skill, would readjust the odds in the humans favour. The opposite is true. The exotic set-up disorientates humans and makes much of their training redundant. Judging the state of a position, at least in the early stages of a Fischer Random game, is difficult. But the new chess engines, built on powerful artificial intelligence, operate through reinforced learning and are indifferent to human assessment. They have long dispensed with the need for human opening theory. They arent discombobulated by peculiar piece configurations, or anything else. Far from improving humanitys prospects vs the machine, Fischer Random stretches the gap, cutting off formidable human weaponspreparation and early-stage pattern recognition.

I didnt invent Fischer Random chess to destroy chess, Fischer said in an interview in 1999, I invented Fischer Random chess to keep chess going. It was a noble sentiment, and his beautiful creation really does serve the cause of human vs human chess.But the human vs software chapter of chess history is over.

Excerpt from:
How a chess grandmaster tried to outwit the computer - Prospect Magazine

In the fourth match of the2020 Speed Chess Championship Main Event, GM Wesley So(@GMWSO) defeated GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov (@ChessWarrior7197) 18-10.The next match is Nepomniachtchi vs. Aronian on Wednesday, November 11, at9 a.m. Pacific / 18:00 Central Europe.

How to watch?The games of the Speed Chess Championship Main Event are played on the Chess.com live server. They are also available on our platform for watching live games at Chess.com/events and on our apps under "Watch." Expert commentary can be enjoyed at Chess.com/tv.

Except for a brief comeback from Abdusattorov at the end of the five-minute portion, So dominated the match from start to finish. He brought his great play at the American championship into his next tournament while the Uzbek youngster couldn't find his best form.

The live broadcast of the match.

So played the match from his home in Minnetonka, Minnesota; Abdusattorov played from Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The players in this competition play with two cameras (for fair play reasons). Since both of them had no problem with Chess.com showing the cameras in the broadcast, the fans had the opportunity to see their setup:

So, who played with a relatively small board in the corner of a big computer screen,started with three winsall three scored in endgames. His opponent was fairly close to a draw in game two but couldn't hold it in the end. "Wesley stole that one!" said commentator GM Maurice Ashley.

After a draw, So won a quick game in a Two Knights Defense that gave him a four-point lead. Abdusattorov referred to this game afterward: "His opening preparation was amazing. [In this game] he just crushed me."

The author has added some engine lines to this game, which is very hard to understand in general without using a computer. It's worth noting that it was theory for 18 moves.

In game six, Abdusattorov finally got his first win. "I said to myself, OK, I need to play faster and my best. And then it became very close," he said afterward.

The next game ended in a draw, but then the Uzbek GM won two more. Suddenly he was just one point behind. So later admitted that this was the first of two times in the match that he "tilted."

The five-minute portion ended with one more draw, which meant the score was 5.5-4.5 with So leading. The American player started the three-minute segment with a win but then blundered again. Did commentator IM Danny Rensch jinx him?

Were we going to see a close battle after all? Alas, it didn't happen. At this point,So won five games in a row to take a commanding six-point lead. That blow Abdusattorov couldn't recover from.

"He's just a little off," said commentator Ashley. "This youngster is stronger than me and you, no question about it. We should not be seeing moves that he doesn't see. When that starts to happen, I get scared in commentary."

So could even have entered the bullet portion with a slightly bigger lead as he missed a win in game 19. Somehow, pawn endings are always interesting, so let's look at this one and learn:

By winning the first three bullet games, So made it clear that he wasn't going to allow another comeback. In this phase, he also used the well-known technique of winning time on the match clock by, for example, not resigning in this game:

The second moment So went on "tilt" was at the very end. Leading 18-8, he lost the last two bullet games that gave Abdusattorov both a more decent-looking final score and some extra prize money.These were the last moves of the match:

So said he got "a bit careless" halfway in the five-minute segment: "Actually, I was quite angry with myself because first of all, I lost on time in two or three games. That's frustrating. After the first four wins, I thought the match would be comfortable, but then Nodirbek played very well today. He is always looking for a fight. He gets fighting positions with both white and black, so it's hard for me to consolidate."

Abdusattorov won $714.29 based on win percentage; So won $2,000 for the victory plus $1,285.71 on percentage, totaling $3,285.71. He moves on to the quarterfinals, where he will play the winner of GMsFabiano Caruana and Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

All games

Here's the remaining schedule for the round of 16:

The 2020 Speed Chess Championship Main Event is a knockout tournament among 16 of the best grandmasters in the world who will play for a $100,000 prize fund, double the amount of last year. The tournament will run November 1-December 13, 2020 on Chess.com. Each individual match will feature 90 minutes of 5+1 blitz, 60 minutes of 3+1 blitz, and 30 minutes of 1+1 bullet chess.

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Excerpt from:
So Beats Abdusattorov In Speed Chess Match - Chess.com

In a statement published on its website, the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) makes a proposal for changing the world championship cycle. The main change the ACP proposes is to include open tournaments.

The association, a non-profit founded in 2003 to protectchess professionals rights,makes a comparison with tennis: "In tennis, we have the Grand Slams at the top, but also the local Futures tournaments at the bottom. The structure is clear, easy to understand and the players see the way to the top ahead of them."

Chess is described as a pyramid with the world championship match at the top, and below that the Candidates tournament,the Grand Prix tournaments, the World Cup, and the continental championshipsthe latter being the only entry point for a large majority of the players.

The ACP calls this system "elitist." The association claims that the continental championships are "not easily accessible to the lower-rated professionals, among other things because they are very expensive tournaments to play in."

The ACP likes to add another, bottom layer to the pyramid: open tournaments, describing them as "the bread and butter of the chess world." Although concrete research is not mentioned, the ACP states that many chess players "feel trapped in this 'swamp' of opens without a clear idea how to go 'upwards,' how to feel integrated in the big picture and feel part of the whole chess family. In its current state the chess world is a segregated place with the elite and the rest living in different worlds."

What the ACP proposes is to make open tournaments part of the world championship cycle, with the current ACP Tour system or a similar one serving as a point-based tournament circuit.

"At the end of the year, the top 20 of the World Open Circuit qualify for the first round of the World Cup, thus providing direct access to the world championship cycle," says the ACP. "This would ensure that chess is as meritocratic as it can be and as it should be."

The International Chess Federation, responsible for the world chess championship cycle, is reacting positively. FIDE Director GeneralEmil Sutovsky likes the idea but also notes that there are more opportunities to qualify for the World Cup than the ACP suggests:

"I like a lot the idea of Swiss events being implemented as a part of the cycle.However, I don't see how the ACP proposal addresses the problem of disproportional opportunities. Actually, FIDE made an effort last year and expanded the World Cup from 128 to 206 participants. One can qualify for it by rating, through continental championships, through numerous zonal events, and now through national championships in most of the countries as well. If we talk about the best opens, their winners would qualify for the World Cup through one of the above-mentioned paths.

"While rewarding one player who was just behind the qualifiers looks logical, it seems odd to allocate 20 spots for these purposes. In addition, it has to be said that a proposal to organize some circuit of 20 strong open events sounds untimely, as most of these events are now canceled or postponed."

"Having said that, I reiterate my opinion: big Swiss events shall be implemented one way or another to the cycle. Of course, it can happen only when normal life gets restored, and we will have a sufficient number of high-level events to call it a circuit.

"Meanwhile, FIDE is planning the Grand Swiss and Women Grand Swiss, which will be announced soon. These events help a lot to all the excellent players who are ranked between 2650 to 2750 (and 2400-2500 ladies)."

The Norwegian grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer, a popular chess commentator on national television, has a different opinion. He starts by saying that the ACP is "misleading" about the effects of such a tour system:

"The World Cup will rarely offer opportunities to what they call 'lower-rated professionals' because its a tournament for the very best, and as long as the World Cup remains an attractive tournament financially, the best will adapt to whatever qualification system used, including a tour."

Hammer agrees with the claim that the current state of the chess world is "a segregated place with the elite and the rest living in different worlds" but sees the bottleneck elsewhere:

"I think that separation happens at world rank 25, not the World Cup. In fact, the World Cup is the great equalizer, allowing second- and third-tier players a big payday if they perform their very best. If you are not rated in the top 100 in the world, making a living from exclusively playing will always be a challenging task, and many in that bracket wanting to be chess professionals try establishing themselves as coaches instead."

Australia's former top grandmaster, coach, and journalist Ian Rogers says the ACP proposal is likely going to be "unfair and expensive." According to Rogers, the proposal is too much focused on Europe:

"The proposal seems to have been devised by Europeans for the benefit of Europeans. Unless the ACP circuit includes an equitable number of open tournaments in Asia, the Americas, and Africa, as well as Europe, it is simply a method of tilting the odds against a non-European becoming world champion."

Rogers adds: "The problem which the ACP fails to address, or even acknowledge, is that it was Europe's choice to abolish their zonal tournaments and require everyone but the stars to play in an enormous continental championship in order to qualify for the World Cup. Then they forced the players to pay a lot of money to play in it. So Europe should solve their own problemsnot create a new pathway which is going to benefit them above others."

Since it was founded 17 years ago, the ACP has struggled to play a significant role in the chess world. That role seemed even further diminished when in 2018 the new FIDE leadership under President Arkady Dvorkovich accepted a lot of suggestions from the ACP and installed the now-former ACP President Sutovsky as its Director General.

"The ACP is a very niche organization," says Hammer. "In order to grow to a sustainable size, theyve had to accept more people from outside the top 100 than in it. As a result, we get press releases like this, where the ACP is representing its members, but members who dont have the level needed to live as full-time chess professionals. I think they should focus on bridging the gap between number 40 and number 20 on the world rankings, rather than bridging the gap between 600 and 100.

"I think ACPs true goal is to elevate their own product, the ACP tour, which hasnt been a big success at any point since its inception in 2005, but I fail to see how that qualification method is better than the established one we already have in place."

Read the original here:
Should Open Tournaments Be Included In World Chess Championship Cycle? - Chess.com

Bruce Pandolfini is one of the most experienced chess coaches in America, having trained the likes of Fabiano Caruana, Josh Waitzkin, and many other big names. He has given thousands of training sessions and has authored more than thirty books.

Moreover, he has also been one of the main subjects of the book and film "Searching for Bobby Fischer". More recently, he worked on the webseries "The Queen's Gambit" and came up with the name for the show. His vast career in the world of the 64 squares gives us a chance to buzz him with a ton of questions. So, here's to moving on to the Q/A.

1.How did you get into chess? What were the early days like?

My mother showed me the moves at age 9, but I didnt get excited about chess until I was almost 14. I came upon the chess section in a public library. There were 32 books. I was permitted to take out no more than 6 books at a time. I took out 6, and then went back 5 more times to clean out the entire section. I stayed home for the next month and read chess books.

2.You were a solid player with a high rating, but you switched into training players. How and why did this happen?

It happened by chance. I was a television analyst for the Fischer-Spassky Match. Afterward, I had many requests for chess lessons. My schedule became quite full, and I suddenly found myself giving lessons all day long. After that, I never had any time to play. De facto, I had become a chess teacher and coach. Whats more, Im glad it all worked out that way.

3.Tell us about some of your strategies for coaching chess players.

From the beginning of my teaching, I concentrated on the endgame. I also relied on asking lots of questions to help students think more logically. My emphasis was on analysis and guiding students to make relevant decisions. When analyzing, I never let students move the pieces. Everything had to be done in the mind. If the student touched a piece, it was considered automatically wrong, even if the move was correct. To become a perfect master, one must master self-control. I believed, and still do, this method helps to instill true mastery.

4.You have worked with some prodigies like Josh Waitzkin, Caruana, and others. What was your experience working with them?

Ive been very fortunate, blessed with remarkable students. With all such wonderful talents, one quality always comes through. They all love chess. It is easy to teach when your students have a passion for learning.

5.You were one of the main subjects of the film "Searching for Bobby Fischer" and were played by the Oscar winning actor Ben Kingsley. Can you recount your experience about this film?

It was a fascinating experience - one I shall never forget. Mr. Kingsley was very friendly, and a true professional. He worked diligently to get things right. When I initially sat down with the director/screenwriter in his Hollywood office, I noticed a note from his secretary on his desk. It simply said: Spielberg called. I knew I was in another world.

6.How has your teaching chess evolved over the years? What have been some of the biggest moments and learnings from your career?

I didnt know what I was doing at first. I never thought I was entering into a lifelong profession. It just happened over time. From the start, I stressed endgame fundamentals and principles. I was greatly influenced by famous teachers like Capablanca, Tarrasch and Lasker. As far as big moments go, there have been many. Ive enjoyed every students success, and there have been many.

But there have also been abysmal lows. Each major defeat left me depressed. But then one day I had a realization. If I accepted blame for their defeats, should I accept credit for their victories? The answer is, of course not. I always try my best, but I dont play the moves, good ones or bad ones. Its as Ben Kingsley more or less says in Searching for Bobby Fischer: In the end, they are who they are.

7.Apart from being a trainer, you are also a prolific writer. Can you talk about your writing journey, sharing with us some tips?

I am not a natural writer. Ive always had to work hard at my writing. Now, I had a great deal of help. My mother was an editor for Simon & Schuster, Random House, and such. She would show me how to edit pieces practically every day. One thing I learned from her is to just get it down.

That is, write what youre trying to say, without getting fancy. You can refine it afterward. Writers are apt to obsess over each sentence, right from the start. Going about it that way, spending a good deal of time over every nuance, often gets nowhere. The other thing I picked up from her is to use simple language and short sentences.

Long sentences can be troublesome to read. One-syllable words tend to be more effective than multi-syllable words. But good writing also has creative variation. Sometimes, the unexpected is just what a piece might need. Finally, for my own writing, I always like to close (if I can) with a pithy line at the end that kind of summarizes the entire piece.

8.Recently, you were the chess consultant for the drama series "The Queen's Gambit" along with the former World Champion and number one player Garry Kasparov. Can you tell us about your role and experience working on this series?

My involvement with the project goes back 38 years. That is, I was the Random House consultant on the original novel. I first saw the manuscript in 1982. The final title, The Queens Gambit, comes from me. I was hired by Netflix in 2018 to be a script consultant for the series and to create all the chess positions. I was also responsible for training the actors.

Originally, I came up with 92 positions to correspond to critical script situations. Garry Kasparov provided cardinal advice on 6-8 of those key positions, devising ingeniously brilliant variations and novelties.

Moreover, he provided the director with an insiders view of chess in Russia. But there were also two very gifted chess experts from Germany who helped immeasurably. Iepe Rubingh (who sadly passed away this past year) and John Paul Atkinson. They were both incredible.

The final game was developed by Kasparov. But because of cinematic necessity, I had to change the ending with minutes to go before filming, and those changes are what the viewer sees on screen. Of course, we had to get the chess as correct as possible. But the series is fiction. Its drama. So, the most important thing was to make sure the chess enhanced the storyline and did not impair the narratives flow. More than anything, we wanted the actors to look like real chess players, and I think they do. Anya-Taylor Joy is brilliant. Director/screenwriter Scott Frank is masterful. I think they, along with the entire cast and crew, did a fantastic job.

9.What can you say about the current online chess model? How have you been adapting to the virtual world?

There are obvious drawbacks to online chess and competition, but there are positives as well. During these difficult days, it has granted aficionados chances to play regularly and stray sharp. It seems that untold new players are being drawn to the game every week. The software is getting better and better.

I can only imagine what Bobby Fischer would have done if he had had access to all these programs and possibilities. For me, I still give lessons online. There are advantages, indeed, because you can look at material more quickly and see more examples over a given time frame. But I do feel something is lost at the same time, at least on the human level. Nevertheless, the future of chess remains quite bright.

10.What advice could you give to the readers?

The best way to improve at chess is to play and be challenged regularly. While playing, I believe you should give it your all. Too many of us take training lightly, playing practice games too casually. Students should practice and train for real, always giving their very best. I will leave the readers this final piece of advice. Play as if the future of humanity depends on your efforts. In fact, it does.

See more here:
From the 64 squares to Hollywood: In conversation with chess coach Bruce Pandolfini - Sportskeeda