What A Year: A 2023 Recap
2023. I must say, we all have a good amount of experience in this year, having lived in it for a full revolution around the sun. And in this year, many things have happened. Some good, some bad, but regardless they are important events. And in this blog, we will be looking at this year in chess, including cheating accusations, a new World Champion, and more. So let's get started!
In January, Chess.com was starting to hit an all-time high, thanks to a few reasons. One major reason was because of this seemingly lovable cat. But soon we would all find out, that this fluffy little Feline, was a terror on the board. Just listen to one of her quotes.
"*ominously* All chess players eventually crumble under my mighty paws…I mean, meow! Hehehe."
-Mittens
Yeesh. Now, I wanted to see if these really were threats that she was making, or if it was a pile of baloney. And it was not pretty what unfolded next. Just look for yourself.
Yeesh, I did not play too great in that game. However, this result was not too surprising considering that I am only 1000-rated. But it was not just my lack of expertise, let's look at some of the moves that she made.
- 13. Bxf3: Mittens takes advantage of my unprotected pawn, and after trading my knight on f3, the queen swoops in and wins over the pawn.
- 19. Qxe1+: In the move before, Mittens offered a trade to take my rook later. I miss it, and Mittens sees the open rook, and takes it accordingly.
But obviously, it was hard for Mittens to make headlines without a little push from others popularizing her. And boy did they do just that. Content creators flocked to the Bots page, ignored all the other cats being showcased, and hopped straight into action. We saw creators such as GothamChess (IM Levy Rozman), GM Hikaru Nakamura, and more play against this lion of a cat. And this is where we saw the true power of Mittens.
After Rozman's and Nakamura's videos dropped, Mittens blew up in fame. Many popular news platforms even reported on it. Many bloggers on this site decided to take their hand in battling Mittens, only to come up short, while other players reportedly beat her, although many are suspicious of this feat.
Mittens left Chess.com on February 1st, marking the end of her initial fame. Though she returned on December 1st for a month, Mittens did not get as much fame as the first time. All in all, Mittens was a great way to help out Chess.com in general, and a fun addition to the site.
By far one of the highlights of 2023, the World Chess Championship took place in Astana, Kazakhstan, from April 9th-30th. This was a HUGE deal, as it was the first time in 10 years that GM Magnus Carlsen did not compete to keep his title. Instead, GM Ian "Nepo" Nepomniachtchi and GM Ding Liren fought for it, as they were the winner and runner-up in the 2022 Candadites Tournament.
Many things happened over the course of these 21 days that made headlines. One thing in particular, was when Ding Liren and his friend Richard Rapport supposedly played games on Lichess.org, which included openings that Liren would play in the match with Nepo. It is unknown if this was Liren and Rapport, but it sure did make headlines.
Eventually, game 1 started. Hundreds of thousands of people were watching, as they duked it out on the board. Eventually, after 49 moves, the game ended in a draw. However, game 2 would go differently.
In Championship matches, usually, it takes a few games for somebody to get a win. The Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi 2021 match took until game 6. The Carlsen-Caruana 2018 match did not get a single in the first 14 games. But in game 2 in this match, Nepo won with only 29 moves.
Nepo came into the tournament as the favorite to win, and here he was showing why. Pressure was put on Liren, as he was now down a whole point. Game 3 went and passed with another draw, but in game 4, Ding evened the score with a victory.
The next games just went back and forth, with Nepo taking a win, and then Ding responding almost immediately. This was until game 7, however. Nepo won this game, but Ding did not win the next game. Or the game after that. It was looking worse and worse for Ding Liren as time went on.
But then game 12 rolled around. Nepo just had to hold his lead for 3 more games, and then he would be the champion. But Liren did not want this to happen. And the result was this game.
With that, the score was 6-6, and they were tied again. Games 13 and 14 were both draws, so tiebreaks would ensue. This is where the champion will be crowned. The first 3 games in the tiebreaks were all draws, but not game 18. You may be wondering, who won? Well, this photo says it all.
After 18 games, the new World Champion was... Ding Liren! Even though he was lower rated, was never ahead in points until this point, and potentially had leaked preparation, Liren had taken the victory after an amazing 68-move-long game.
Youth have been in the talk for Chess for the past few decades, influenced by the younger and younger top players are getting. In fact, the youngest grandmaster ever was only 12 when he got the title. Recently, over the past few years, many Youths have been improving and even taking top spots in tournaments. Let's look at some things that these young players have achieved this year.
Viswanathan "Vishy" Anand has been the top-rated player from India for quite a while now. 37 years to be exact. In this time, he has accomplished many things, including even becoming the World Champion. But during his reign of dominance, many have attempted to take his spot on the top. And one of these players is Gukesh D.
Gukesh D. is only 17 years old and has been playing chess for almost his whole life. And he has been strong pretty much the whole time, even achieving the title of Grandmaster at only 12 years, 7 months, and 17 days, being the third youngest ever to get the title. Since then, he has been steadily improving his rating, slowly catching up to Anand.
Gukesh has recently come close to the level of Anand, and soon enough, he would have his chance to beat him. In the Grand Chess Tour: SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz, he would face Vishy on day 3. But this was the perfect scenario, as beating Anand here would result in Gukesh becoming the highest-rated in India. This is the game that took place:
Gukesh ended this game as the India top 1. Anand was shocked to find out, even though he had been expecting it.
It's still a shock to realise that something you expected to happen eventually, and you never define eventually in your mind, eventually means eventually, when it finally happens.
- GM Viswanathan Anand
Since then, Anand has taken back the Top Indian Player spot, but Gukesh showed that it is possible to achieve what may seem impossible.
A Shocking World Cup Performance:
R. "Prag" Praggnanandhaa is an 18-year-old from India, who has been one of the top youth in the world for years. In fact, he is the fifth-youngest person to become a Grandmaster, at 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days. He has had great performances in tournaments, including the first leg of the Polgar Challenge in 2021, and making it to round 4 in the Chess World Cup the same year. But in 2023, he would top that performance by a MILE.
Prag came into the 2023 World Cup as the 31st seed, a major improvement from the 90th in 2021. The first round was free, as he had a high enough seed to get a first-round bye. But in round two, nobody would receive byes. This meant that Prag had to face his first opponent.
His opponent was French Grandmaster, Maxime Lagarde (not to be confused with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.) Lagarde was the 98th seed and won his previous match 1.5-0.5. However, Prag was able to defeat him 1.5/0.5, securing his place in the third round.
His third-round opponent would be a little more of a challenge. Prag's opponent was 12-time Czechia (Czech Republic) champion, David Navara. Navara was the 34th seed, only 3 spots behind Prag. Prag was able to get a win and a draw, meaning he would go against his next opponent to be the winner of his group. However, there was a problem. His opponent was GM Hikaru Nakamura.
Hikaru Nakamura is considered to be one of the strongest players in the whole world, being the Champion in many different time controls, including being the 5-time Blitz Champion. He was also high enough rated in Classical Chess, being the 2nd seed in the WHOLE tournament. The first two games were both draws, sending the two into tiebreaks. And this is where Praggnanandhaa decided to show how well he could play.
After this game, Prag seemed ecstatic. He just had to keep Nakamura from winning the next game, and he would move on. But he did not just keep Nakamura from winning. Prag ended up winning a second game in a row, against the #2 seed, sending him to the top 16.
Praggnanandhaa's fifth-round opponent was Ferenc Berkes, an 8-time National Champion for the country of Hungary. Prag was able to win 1.5-0.5 with ease, moving on to the quarterfinals. His opponent there was Arjun Erigaisi, an at-the-time 19-year-old prodigy. But this was the most intense match to this point, ending with a score of a whopping 6-5! Prag was the player who emerged victorious at the end, moving him to the semi-finals.
But this is where Prag would have his highest chance of losing. 3rd seed Fabiano Caruana was arguably the second strongest in the whole tournament, just behind Magnus Carlsen, who was already moving on to the finals after defeating Nijat Abasov. In fact, Caruana is one of only a few to reach a rating of over 2800, meaning he would be a very difficult challenge to beat. Over the span of 6 games, only one win would happen. And this was the game:
Prag was moving on to the finals! He had taken down one of the world's greatest and was now moving on to face Magnus Carlsen. Afterward, he said this:
I didn’t really expect to play Magnus in this tournament at all, because the only way I could play him was in the finals.
-R. Praggnanandhaa
Prag went on to lose to Carlsen in the finals, but he had an amazing performance overall. At only 17, he had made it to the finals of one of the biggest tournaments in the whole year. This also granted him a spot in the 2024 Candidates Tournament, allowing him the chance to potentially fight for the World Champion Title.
Cheating scandals or accusations are not common in Chess, but they are not rare either. Although the accusation this year was not as major as the Carlsen-Neimann Allegations last year, this still managed to cause ripples throughout the chess community.
Events Leading Up:
The players involved were GM's Hikaru Nakamura and Vladimir Kramnik. For background, Hikaru Nakamura is the 5-time Blitz Champion and is almost always on top of the Blitz Leaderboards. Recently, he went on an insane streak of games, winning a whopping 45.5/46!
The last time this record was broken, was over 3 years ago in 2020, also broken by Nakamura. However, soon, Vladimir Kramnik released a statement, regarding Nakamura's play.
Kramnik's Accusations:
Kramnik is accusing Nakamura of cheating in his games. In his words, the games that he played were "interesting" (basically a chess player's way of saying someone is cheating, without saying it outright). He claimed that he hired a professional mathematician to do the calculations about his games.
Furthermore, Kramnik stated that many players, including titled players, came to him with concerns about Nakamura's play. Vladimir Kramnik seemed to be certain that Hikaru Nakamura was a cheater, but would his evidence stack up well?
Nakamura's Defense:
Hikaru Nakamura has many different things going in his favor here, to debunk Kramnik's accusations.
1. The said games were all played on stream.
Hikaru Nakamura is best known for being a content creator, most recognizably a streamer. All of the games that were accused of cheating were played on stream. You could see Nakamura showing what he was thinking, and you could see if he was using engine support.
2. He played multiple games with the same opponent.
Another thing going for Nakamura is that he played the same opponents many times, at least 8 times for many. In fact, he played the same International Master 16 different times, winning all of the games.
3. He was higher rated than many.
All of Nakamura's opponents were significantly lower rated than Nakamura. He ended up playing only one Grandmaster during all 46 of those games, and even then, the Grandmaster was 300 points lower rated than him. The rest of his opponents were only International Masters or FIDE Masters.
In short, Hikaru Nakamura appears to not have been cheating. Vladimir Kramnik ended up getting muted on Chess.com for repeated accusations, and Nakamura went on to win another 43 games in a row shortly after, further debunking Kramnik's claims, showing that he can do it multiple times.
Well, we made it to the end. Thank you all for a great year, and I hope you all have a wonderful New Year. Also, a shoutout to @1cbb for getting both games correct in the thumbnail of my previous blog. Happy New Year, and let's make this next year even better than 2023!
