Rensch Quenches Our Thirst for Chess Entertainment!!
Chess.com/TV has come a long way over the past several years. From airing only one or two shows per week, the programming is regular and full, averaging 1-2 shows per day, with the occasional 4 shows in one day! Programming has grown by leaps and bounds and 2015 seems already on course to be the biggest year in its 5+ year history.
The shows during the past couple weeks, and even more so the weeks to come, Chess.com/TV will be airing broadcasts you won't want to miss. For the full schedule, check the Chess.com/TV page. For now, here's a bit about some of the programs.
In just a few days, from February 25th-March 6th, Chess.com/TV will be bringing you daily streaming of the 2015 European Individual Chess Championship, an 11-round swiss style tournament with 250+ players from 33 European countries, with a 100,000 euro prize fund. The tournament will be taking place at the Ramada Hotel in the Holy City of Jerusalem. The official tournament website is here.
A very popular show in our programming line-up is "Old School Analysis" with Uncle Yermo and his show is not to be missed! GM Alex Yermolinsky is very schooled in chess history, having lived through some it and played some of the more recent players himself. He is very engaging with the crowd, many times sticking around in the chat room once the show is over just to chit-chat with the members. It's always a great show.
Chess.com/TV's flagship show (which used to be Pardon our Blunders), is now IM Danny Rensch's The BIG SHOW, with a SPECIAL AWARDS EDITION this past week and another scheduled in a few days. During a typical show, Danny picks 10 members, either from the chat room who challenge him in LIVE Chess, or players already in LIVE Chess (usually a mix of both), and plays a simul against them with 15|30 time controls. But while Danny is playing, switching from one board to another, he's also doing--to the utter amazement of his viewers--the other thing he's very good at: talking, and talking a lot; he commentates on all the games and teaches as he works his way through the boards at lightning speed. Danny is absolutely entertaining. He'll take movie references from out of left field, talk in different accents (sometimes with varied results) and has countless combinations of phrases like "you gotta risk it for the biscuit" or "he's playing like a honey badger." Those are just two you're likely to hear during the course of a show. But if you want chess, this is one of the best places for it. Danny's constantly talking tactics and when the games are over, he'll postmortem almost every one, or at least those that gave him problems. To give you a taste, below I'm going to shortly recap each game, using the games from his Game Archive and Chessbase 11.
Since Danny began doing The BIG Shows, he has only had about a handful of perfect shows, going +10/=0/-0, so it's a rare thing to have happen. Below are the games listed in the order of when they were finished, the first game listed having been the first game finished and so on.
Danny in the heat of battle!
Game 1 vs chess7777 - Opening Used: B01: Scandinavian Defence
Game 2 vs. umang-mehta123 - Opening Used: C47 Scotch Four Knights with Four Knights 4. g3
Game 3 vs. ThomasJEvans - Open Used: C45 Scotch Game
Game 4 vs. Healthy_Scratch - Opening Used: D00 1. d4 d5 unusual lines
Game 5 vs. PATOMARK - Opening Used: B72 Sicilian Dragon: 6. b3, lines with h3+Bc4 and sidelines
Well-played by PATOMARK for being the first one to defeat Danny on this session of The BIG SHOW. Now let's see how Danny fairs in the final five now that he has gotten his first loss of the day.
Game 6 vs. jdcannon - Opening Used: B01 Scandinavian Defence
Game 7 vs. Journification - Opening Used: B21 Sicilian 2. f4 and Morra Gambit
Game 8 vs. coolchess64 - Opening Used: D00 1. d4 d5 unusual lines
Congrats go out to coolchess64 for drawing with Danny, not a very easy thing to do.
The next two games were the two longest games of this session, so let's see how they played out.
Game 9 vs Khallyx - Opening Used: D40 Queen's Gambit Declined (QCD) Semi-Tarrasch with 5. e3
A very hard-fought draw and well-deserved for Khallyx. Good job.
10th and Final Game vs.roninreturns - Opening Used: A29 English Opening Four Knights Variation with 4. g3
So that ends this session of The BIG Show. For anything Chess.com/TV, you can join the Official Chess.com/TV Group, check out the schedule on the Chess.com/TV page at the bottom, or follow Chess.com/TV at Twitter @ChesscomTV and @DanielRensch or follow on Twitch.
Watch for more blogs here, not just about Chess.com/TV, but the world of chess as well along with my own dealings with the King's Game.
Have a good weekend everyone!
-Mark
