12.31.2017 My 2017 Year In Review

2017 has been an excellent year. Plenty of chess events happened this year in 2017. GM Tan Zhongyi a chinese grandmaster, won the FIDE Women's World Championship. She defeated Anna Muzychuk from Ukraine in the rapid tiebreaks. The world championship was held in Tehran, Iran from February 10th to March 4th. Sabina Foisor won the U.S. Women's World Championship this year. She scored 8/11 to gain her first U.S. Women's Champion title. FIDE President Kirsan Illyumzhinov resigned in March. Georgios Makropoulos became the new representative of FIDE right after Illyumzhinov's resignation. In the Canadian Championship, two players finished tied with 8/9 score. The two players were GM Bator Sambuev and IM Nikolay Noritsyn They were headed to a playoff. This tournament had a dramatic and controversial finish. IM Nikolay Noritsyn promoted a pawn to an upside down rook on d1. He tried to find a black queen but none were available.  He announced queen. A pawn that is promoted to an upside down rook wasn't considered a queen. In March, the Saint Louis Arch Bishops won the Inaugural PRO league title. They won the first three games in the championship march. The final score was 9-7. The Saint Luis Arch Bishops team won $20,000 against the Norway Gnomes. The two semifinals both needed extra games after 8-8 ties. The current world classical, rapid, and blitz champion and the world #1 player GM Magnus Carlsen won the Grand Chess Tour, the Chess.com's Speed Chess Championship and many other events this year. GM Hifan resigned a game in 5 moves against Babu Lalith. She made a protest about her pairings. Yifan was upset at the pairings in the tournament. It was at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival. The Alphazero computer chess engine was crowned. AlphaZero defeated Stockfish with 28 wins and 0 losses in 100 games. In early September, GM Anton Kovalyov forfeited a game against GM Maxim Rodshtein in the third round of the FIDE World Cup 2017. He was asked to change his dress and attire. He violated a FIDE Dress Code Policy and a tournament code. He was disappointed about how he was treated so he left the tournament. The tournament organizer, Zurab Azmaiparashvili told him to change his attire 10 minutes before the game started. He insulted Kovalyov and called him a "gypsy". IM Dorsa Derakshani got banned from the Iranian Chess Federation for missing some fabric around her head. She decided to not play for Iran anymore. She switched her Federation to the United States. In August, GM Garry Kasparov came back to playing competitive chess after his retirement that started on March 10th, 2005. 2017 has been a marvelous year. This is the last blog for this year 2017. My next blog will be in the new year 2018. See you next year in the year 2018.