april is supposed to be the month of flat and slow pitches, too

and here we thought viktor was bad

The First WORLD FENCING LEAGUE is happening April 25th!!! I'M GEEKING!!!

Japanese engineers developed this "Sword Tip Visualisation" tracking technology specifically for this event that will make it so much easier for the average person to see what's going on!

I MUST WATCH THIS ENTIRE TOURNAMENT

yeah, romania and august are the plan currently

that's somewhat ambiguous ngl

i understand this is div2 cricket etc but sir jimmy is on 21 wickets, avg 12.09, after the first 3 matches. i don't have a point here, i just miss him

nope, not my opinion. i think any format you put the current top 10 into will be very watchable. i wouldn't be against trying the inverse order idea, btw - but probably not with the candidates as a guinea pig.

i don't think the format matters much tbh, it will reflect the current meta anyway

yeah, as i said, i don't disagree with that too much, apart from an already stated (and admittedly unfalsifiable) belief that you won't get anywhere near to those draw %s with the current crop of top players, they approach chess very differently, especially the openings.

Black poodle resting on a rug

rant over, here's dog

anyhoo

i don't even disagree with the general 'short matches provoke dry play' idea. i just get somewhat triggered when grischuk is portrayed as a poster boy for that - those was very conscious deep decisions for that specific match play situation, and it almost got him to the title match.

these are games 1 and 5 of the finals. black survived by the absolute skin of his teeth in diag1 after be6. in diag2, there is no forced win but i don't think i need to explain how good this is for white.

those were both very specific fresh ideas, which almost worked.

10/n

..flak, but i'm still annoyed, 15 years later, that nobody even tried figuring out, or asking, if there was more to it than simply 'my best format is blitz, i'm going to crawl over broken glass and humiliate myself to get to blitz'.

9/n

...where we thought (correctly!) the chances of those ideas working was higher. sasha also felt that coming to the board and faffing about for 20 moves would cloud the mind, better to show up and offer a draw on move 8 so that there's clarity of purpose. this obviously, and understandably, drew 8/n

... that would leave us empty should we get to the finals (remember that in 2.1 and 2.3, vlad hadn't had to start thinking by the time the games were drawn, he was extremely well prepared, as always). or we could, and did, just give up on whites in this match, and hope we get to boris somehow.. 7/n

most of our time was dedicated to finding sth to play vs the qgd, and vs lev and vlad in classical, we tried, just with no discernible success. by the time we got to the rapid vs vlad, we had to make a call. either we show the remaining 1.5 ideas here, and risk him showing the replies... 6/n

... fair attempts that just went nowhere*. with that in mind, let's zoom out. very early on, it became obvious that our entire likely bracket (lev, vbk and boris) are all playing qgd, and boris & lev might have even prepped together.

*until the finals

5/n

list of grischuk's white games in kazan 2011. all the classical ones are drawn, and there are some short ones, but not all - and if you can read ECO codes, you will note it's almost entirely QGDs

grischuk-kramnik, 1st game of the semis. it's short, but grischuk actually showed a pretty fresh idea, and kramnik just blitzed out a very solid reply. by move 16, sasha was down on the clock, and vlad was still in book

grischuk-gelfand, game 3. our only failure with white in the finals, we (well, frankly, i) missed 9...b5, and were playing catch up both on the clock and otb from then on.

.. about how the finals went. with that in mind, let's go back to the event. it was very dry all round, but the focus always seems to be sasha specifically, and his white games in particular, so let's take a look. as you can see, the only real bailouts are 2.6 and 2.8 vs kramnik, the rest are... 4/n

Interview with Boris Gelfand | FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 YouTube video by FIDE chess

this is a good moment to introduce this interview:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=DaUp...

because boris is always worth listening to, and also because at around 1:30 he mentions, umprompted, a few things that support what i'm about to say re: the openings in that tournament, and also a little..

3/n

to begin with, the claim is fairly correct - sasha made 13 classical draws in a row, and then famously lost one. let's take a look at some context, though. there were, by my count, 16+8+6=30 classical games played in that event, with only 3 decisive ones, 2 by boris and 1 by kamsky 2/n

ok take 2

the reason i appear to care - i was there when it was written etc etc, i was part of team grischuk in kazan 2011 (together with bacrot and riazantsev) so i had a front row seat to it

i just lost a 10-skeet thread i typed up on the phone, with alt text for images and everything. i might redo it anyway, but i need to untilt first ssaaaaassssrgifulfupclh

admittedly i haven't seen that many live, but this was a unbelievable leg side stumping by jurel

welppppp I just had my trusted Seattle dogsitter cancel last-minute before I leave town for 9.5 days starting Saturday. this is a Seattle SOS for anyone who has a trusted or favorite dogsitter they know who has last-minute availability for this incredibly sweet doodle mix

an email from chess.com that goes 'do you know the difference between you and magnus? - he never gave up on Chess'

how very dare you. also - he didn't? oO

yeah that's a fair description too. what i think happens in that spot is - you get to qa5 and stop, because you don't have an attacking response, and switching to defence, even for a move, feels wrong. the lines aren't hard if you force yourself to keep calculating, but you probably just don't

black poodle with three headbands, snoot on front paws

i'll try to organize some final thoughts eventually, but for now - congrats to the deserved winners!

it's been a blast doing a live event with jan once again, after so many years. the sea here is gorgeous, i will miss all this when i'm back home, but i need to hug my dog pronto.

.. and the game ended in a draw, eventually giving vaishali clear first and the title match vs ju wenjun later in the year.

elsewhere, there were wins for goryachkina, who ended on a good note and finished in a tie for 3rd, and giri & caruana in the less important open section, but oh well..

6/n

divya-bibisara, move 12. white can keep the pressure with 12.na3, and if black wants the benoni with exd5 cxd5, white has a very good version of it. instead she played 12.dxe6 fxe6 13.bf4 ne5 14.bxe5 dxe5, resulting in a very dry and pretty level position.

divya-bibisara, move 22. white is better here with 22.nxe5 bb7 and then a calm retreat with 23.Bg2! which i guess they both missed. instead divya played 22.Rad1, allowing Rxd1 23.Rxd1 Nxe4!, and suddenly black is fine

divya-bibisara, move 25. instead of 25...Nxf2, black was fine with 25...Bxe5 26.Bxe4 Ba6, or even 26...Bxe4 27.Qxe4 Qf6, but bibisara wanted more. her move loses though, in a spectacular fashion after 26.Rd7 Qf6, white has 27.Nd6!! bxg2 28.ndf7 kg8 29.nh6 bxh6 30.qxh6 (are we giving mate?) nh3+ (are we getting mated?)

divya-bibisara, line from the previous note 31.Kh2!! no, we're giving mate after all. white wins what's very odd is that the cameras were there for their post mortem, and divya clearly saw this entire line at some point, and the question remains - when? when did she spot it? why didn't she play it if she saw it after rd7 qf6? how did she find the time to calculate all that in the tense endgame afterwards? a mystery

..worse out of the opening, but divya chose stability over favourable chaos, and the game evened out. however, after mutual miscalculations, the game became quite sharp, and divya missed a beautiful win (diags 3-4). however, she managed to refocus and found a very precise move not to be worse..

5/n

..but luckily for her, kateryna didn't want the draw either, and her choice of 38...R8a4 gave white a direct win, which vaishali found confidently.

meanwhile, in divya vs bibisara, a very strange game ended peacefully, but not without its own drama. bibisara came ready to take risks, and was.. 4/n

..and vaishali drifted a bit, leading to the critical moment on moves 36-40. white has a win (see diag2 in prev post) but it's very hard even when you have time, and they were both in time trouble. vaishali repeated once, and told me in the studio she had no idea what to do if lagno plays Kh7..

3/n