English Chess Forum

Not fun in the ordinary sense, no. Fun in a grim, vigilant, sadistic and masochistic way, yes.

According to Nigel Short, the titles don't matter at all. He moved sharply away when I pointed out they are one of the fuels that make chess tournaments run. At Short's level, the GM title becomes almost irrelevant. It's like a PhD for a Nobel prizewinner in physics or economics -- it's taken for g...

MJMcCready wrote:Possibly but his opponent played at Tromso, so Anand could have also.

Anand's getting on a bit and unlike Carlsen, who's twenty years younger, has to husband his declining reservoirs of stamina.

BTW how many titles are there and what is the rank of the titles and what ratings do you have to get to get them? The only ones that matter are FIDE's IM and GM. The former indicates you know something about the game. The latter that you've acquired some proficiency at it. There must be well over 2...

Jeremy Silman has published his personal list of "The Best Chess Books Ever" http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-books-ever What do other people think of his choices? The choices of the various masters are not bad -- but missing from every list is Judit Polgar's three volumes on her ga...

For a chess book, in the thousands. A serious monograph by Quality Chess -- maybe 2,000? For a book like Gillam's "Simple Checkmates," maybe 100,000 over a period of years?

What kind of book? A chess book? Or the latest novel by Dan Brown?

I always got the impression that Chess to RDK was kind of a means to an end after a while. Achieving the GM title gave him the credibility to write books, get on telly and make money - something he did very liberally after he retired. RDK has long been an entrepreneur in the Thatcher era sense (pro...

RDK is the greatest. I start frothing at the mouth when anyone questions his divine status. Some of his books aren't half-bad -- I'm thinking of the one on Nimzowitsch. Likewise his book on the flank openings. The books on the Pirc and Modern he coauthored with Botterill aren't bad for their time (o...

He has defined "poisoned pawn" as "A pawn whose capture is a precursor to a strong attack. That doesn't sound accurate. A poisoned pawn is one whose capture leads to a lasting initiative and/or positional pressure for the side offering it. That lasting initiative and positional pressure may or may ...

But it takes some chutzpah to put up for the LibDems these days What are the Lib Dems about? The Tories with kid gloves on? Oops, sorry, that's Labour. Sod it, I haven't the foggiest. Admirable politician? Oxymoron -- and I say it matter-of-factly, not bitterly and not cynically. It's a politician'...

It's all over for Anand now. He's run out of road. By the end of the next WC cycle, he'll be 46. That's too old at this level. And I doubt he'd been keen to rejoin a doomed battle with a maturing 25 year old Carlsen anyway, not that Caruana et al will allow him the opportunity. Probably. But I thin...

I haven't really followed top flight chess for the last ten years (or more!) but are Leko and Radjabov busted flushes as far as the title is concerned? Probably not Leko. He plays technical chess par excellence -- which is simultaneously his strength and his weakness. Maybe not Radjabov either. Nei...

This is looking like Round 2 of the famous Balboa-Drago fight ("See? He's human! He's not a machine.").

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:

Arshad Ali wrote:Where can I watch the game unfold?

http://live.fide.com/sochi/index.php

Cheers.