I'm leaving for Atlanta tomorrow, to participate in the biennial Gathering For Gardner conference. Martin Gardner's interests were math, magic, and fighting pseudoscience. My kind of guy!
While I'm away, you can discuss Sergey Karjakin's surprise win in the big chess candidate's tournament. His victory gets earns him a title match against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Current plans are for the match to take place in November in New York. I'll believe it when it happens!
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It would be a serious dereliction of my bloggily duties if I did not comment on the big Candidates Tournament, recently concluded in London.
My comment is this: Wowee wow wow! What a great tournament!
This was the tournament meant to determine the next challenger for the current World Chess…
If you'll forgive another chess post, the annual grandmaster chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands is now complete. It was the first major tournament of the year, and it had a pleasingly unexpected outcome. Young phenoms Levon Aronian of Armenia and Magnus Carlsen of Norway were the…
In chess news, Hikaru Nakamura took clear first place at the annual chess extravaganza in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, ahead of world champ Viswanathan Anand, former world champ Vladimir Kramnik, and current world number one Magnus Carlsen. Here's Gary Kasparov explaining the significance of…
Magnus Carlsen of Norway has won the big chess match against the defending champion Viswanathan Anand of India. This result was not surprising, though some were probably expecting Anand to put up more of a fight than he did. Only ten of the scheduled twelve games were played, with Carlsen winning…
Well, I must say Karjakin fully deserves Hikaru Nakamura's praise for his "fablulous nerves both in Baku and here in Moscow." Just to play such a last-round game against your challenger, where all you need is a draw and you are White, and to play aggressively into a complicated position, sac first a pawn and then a whole Rook -- well, that's Tal-like nerve. A wonderful "this is it" move 39 Qf5! removes any doubts as to the "correctness" of the sacrifice.
Much as I was rooting for Caruano, I tip my cap to Karjakin and hope he can present a real challenge to the reigning champ Carlsen. Be nice to see it in NYC, but I have the feeling Moscow's going to ferret the match away.