Hikaru Nakamura won the $37,500 first prize at the Paris Grand Chess Tour after a dramatic day with more blunders than ever. Sergey Karjakin collapsed a few rounds before the end, while Wesley So drew too many games.
On the fifth day in Paris, the number of big mistakes, blunders or howlers, however you want to call them, was rather high. It was probably a combination of starting two hours earlier, and having played four days of chess in a row, shortly after the Leuven tournament...
With one day of blitz to go at the Paris Grand Chess Tour, Sergey Karjakin is one point ahead of Hikaru Nakamura. Wesley So, who lost two games today, is half a point further down.
Today the Paris tournament switched to the blitz time control of five minutes and three seconds delay per move. In this type of chess, Karjakin and Nakamura are known to be specialists, and it showed.
The playing hall during today's fourth round. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Karjakin's inspiration...
At the very end of my article about MVL's trapped rooks, I mentioned that Tal was famous for his queen play. There was even a joke that a regular queen is worth nine pawns and Tal's queen is worth 12 pawns!
The Chess.com member "fiercebadger" asked in the comment section: "Perhaps you can show us these classic Tal 12-pt queen games?" Thank you for a very good suggestion, fiercebadger!
If a beginner tries to determine a queen's value based on Tal's games, he will be confused for sure....
It's fun to play from a winning position, but do you have the stomach -- and strong will -- to defend a worse position in chess? Learn from some of the best players ever on how to put up the best possible resistance on the chessboard, and the mindset required to do so.
In a video from 2006, GM Seirawan talks highly about my favorite player, David Bronstein, and how, in 1990, playing in Reykjavik, he played the White side of a Najdorf Sicilian against the famous Walter Browne, a renowned Najdorf Sicilian expert and multiple US Champion title-holder.
In the video, GM Seirawan tells about how Bronstein, after reading an article written by Browne about the Najdorf (published in Chess Life and Review), decided to test the variation, which included a pawn sacrifice...
Despite drawing all his games today, Wesley So retained his lead at the Paris Grand Chess Tour. Before the start of the blitz, Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura are trailing him by one point.
"So" mostly stood for "solid" today, as the tournament leader split the point with three of his closest rivals: Nakamura, Karjakin, and Anand. Asked whether he was happy with his score, So replied: "I don't think it could have gone any other way."
Wesley So (2851.8) after winning...
1886 was an epic year. Though past players were viewed as the world chess champion, there never was an official title. Now the two best players in the world (Zukertort and Steinitz) would butt heads and the fans of both players would have to accept that the victor was the real deal.
The match was played in three cities: New York, St. Louis, and New Orleans (in honor of Morphy, who died in 1884). It started badly for Steinitz, who won the first game but then lost four games in a row.
After...
Wesley So has a slim lead going into the final day of rapid at the Paris Grand Chess Tour. On Thursday the Leuven winner scored 2.5/3, and is chased by Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin.
At noon, two hours earlier than the first day, the second triplet of rapid games took off in the Canal+ studio. This way, nobody (but in particular the French TV crew!) had to miss a minute of the French national football team playing Peru at the FIFA World Cup.
Not all the players looked as fresh as they...
Every day at Chess.com we get a lot of suggestions, feedback and bug reports—and we really appreciate it!
One of the most common bug reports looks something like this:
In my game, I moved my pawn to h4 and somehow his pawn from g4 managed to kill it and jump to h3. Smells suspiciously like hacking.
Or...
During my last game, I moved the pawn forward double space. Which places it beyond the enemy's pawn reach. But his pawn illegally cheated and killed my pawn. Hit replay and you will...
