English Chess Forum

Yes, we are number two seeds, and perhaps with the exception of Poland, many or most teams below us seem to have players missing: Radjabov (!) for the Azeris, Gelfand for Israel, most of the usual team from France, and so on. We also had the benefit of playing against several understrength teams in ...

Presumably he needs favours elsewhere as well as winning tomorrow, though. If he were the only winner in his score group, would that do the trick? I imagine so, but that itself would require favourable developments elsewhere, eg if he does not play Wang Hao and just has to hope that the latter does...

(how do we delete posts? has some icon been removed?)

David H has made a collection of big scalps this year (remembering the Black win v Aronian in the last round at Gibraltar) but yes, playing in the Candidates would be something else! Presumably he needs favours elsewhere as well as winning tomorrow, though. On a completely unrelated note, England fl...

This seems to be so far a 40 minute think at move 17 (Carlsen). it does seem to be a very important decision though, whether to take on a7.

Still 30 pieces left on Keith's board. I expect that Alex H has noticed.

This seems to be the same line as played by Ding in the recent World Cup; and he had to struggle to hold the draw (with Black). Anton might have to do the same.

It looks like an excellent intervention by Alex - brave, as well, but more importantly, rightly judged.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:12 pm

On a related note, did Gawain's opponent just accept a draw offer that he really didn't ought to have done?

Probably not, if I am reading the clock times correctly and remembering that he is human!

JustinHorton wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 01, 2019 11:47 am

This is all a bit Eighties Revival

Apparently Botvinnik approached Kasparov during that game v Sokolov at Belfort, not having seen the opening, and asked him which line of the Open Sicilian had Sokolov played?

I am rather pleased at this. Partly because it maintains the Ding momentum. He has been off colour most of the event (except in the classical game v Grischuk) and still looks likely to win it! So this maintains the promise of an intriguing 2020 title match; and we know now that he might (might) have...

I hate to criticize MVL as he is a lot better than me, and I may be talking complete rubbish, but Nxc3 doesn't look the principled move Didn't it get played in some Carlsen games, or am I making that up? It's not exchanging queens that looked odd to me. something certainly went wrong quite quickly,...

A pity for Aronian but both players seem likeable and one of these players has perhaps played enough Candidates', while the other hasn't played one.

Ding is tired, eh - but that game could have been played by Carlsen in one of his best events.

Interesting times ahead in 2020.

arguably the four strongest are playing each other in QF; though no one is here by accident and Yu Yangyi looks like a real dark horse.

(Dark horse! Where does that phrase come from?)