Month: June 2016

Leuven Rapid Day 2: An Impressive 4/4 Performance by Carlsen

The rapid rounds are over for the Grand Chess Tour 2016: Your Next Move in Leuven, Belgium. A great performance was posted by the world champion, Magnus Carlsen, as he won all of his 4 games against three of the former world champions: Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, and Vladimir Kramnik, plus Anish Giri. In the process, he clinched the top spot with 18 rounds of blitz games to go in the tournament.

Chessbase:

If day one of the rapid games in Leuven was full of surprises, day two was no less so, though thankfully not due to record numbers of blunders. Vishy Anand started the day with a win, but after two losses lost the lead as he was caught up by Wesley So. In the meantime, Magnus Carlsen showed he was back and managed to win the rapid phase after a fabulous 4/4.

The final crosstable of the rapid games follows:

Blunderfest in Leuven

Chess.com describes the first day of the rapid games in Your Next Move, Grand Chess Tour 2016, in Leuven, Belgium, as bluderfest:

Viswanathan Anand leads the Your Next Move Grand Chess Tour after five rounds of rapid chess. The first day of rapid saw a number of huge blunders that made the playing hall seem haunted.

That’s actually what makes the tournament more exciting and attract more spectators in the process. I guess that’s the purpose of rapid games, to bring out the human-nature in the world’s top grandmasters.

Remember, you can catch the rest of the rapid games in GCT Leuven 2016 LIVE here.

Photo credit: Grand Chess Tour.

Hikaru Nakamura is the King of Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016

Chessbase reports:

Hikaru Nakamura convincingly won the Grand Chess Tour Paris. After a shaky start into the second day of the blitz tournament he started to win game after game. World Champion Magnus Carlsen, however, failed to find his form and lost one game after the other. After 16 of 18 rounds Nakamura was 2.5 points ahead and had won the tournament with two rounds to go.

Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura finished both with 11.5 points in their 18 blitz games. Interesting to note, though, that in their match-up, Carlsen won both games.

Wesley So started to pick up and win more games in the last eight rounds with a score of 5.5/8, but it was not enough to help his campaign when he scored 3 points only in the first 10 rounds. Thus, he just settled in the 7th place in the blitz leg and 4th overall.

Final blitz crosstable follows: 

Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016 Blitz Day 1 Results and Standings

After the first round robin blitz games (9 games), Carlsen led with 7 points, ahead of Nakamura by half a point. See standings below:

# Name Pts SB
1 Carlsen, Magnus 7.0 30.25
2 Nakamura, Hikaru 6.5 24.50
3 Caruana, Fabiano 5.5 20.00
4 Aronian, Levon 5.0 20.50
5 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime 4.5 20.50
Kramnik, Vladimir 4.5 16.50
Giri, Anish 4.5 15.25
8 So, Wesley 3.0 12.75
9 Topalov, Veselin 2.5 11.75
10 Fressinet, Laurent 2.0 6.50

Replay the games played so far (Rounds 1-9 of Blitz games): Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016 – Blitz Round.

Blitz games Day 2

The countdown is done. You may catch the games LIVE: Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016 Blitz Games

Photo courtesy of the Grand Chess Tour.

Wesley So beats Magnus Carlsen in Grand Chess Tour Paris 2016 — Rapid Round 1

The Grand Chess Tour 2016 has started, and first stop was Paris, France. The Paris leg is composed of 10-player Round Robin Rapid and 10-player Double Round Robin Blitz games. Check out results and standings of the tournament.

What made this tournament really exciting is that right at the start of the tournament, in round 1 of the rapid games, GM Wesley So defeated the World Champion Magnus Carlsen.

Chessbase reports:

World Champion Magnus Carlsen is top favorite in Paris but the tournament did not start well for him. In the first round Carlsen played with White against Wesley So and with bold and creative play the World Champion reached a completely winning position in which he had two queens against queen and knight. But then he could not make up his mind which winning move he should play and lost on time – a bitter loss particularly so because the rapid games are played with a time-limit of 25 minutes for the whole game and a 10-second increment per move.

Apparently, Carlsen was winning the Rapid Round 1 game but lost on time.

Check out the game below. Also, you may also replay all round 1 games.

Viktor Korchnoi dies at the age of 85

Chess.com news:

In a bad year for sports legends, the chess world is not staying behind. Today Viktor Korchnoi died at the age of 85 in a hospital in Wohlen, Switzerland. Korchnoi had been ill for some time and was hospitalized last week after suffering from internal bleeding

Viktor Korchnoi was considered by many as one of the most underrated players in the world of chess. He was mentioned as such by Magnus Carlsen in his interview.