Nepo - it's just embarrassing for the game now.

Yes I think so - but anyone who thinks Nepo has a chance can get 100:1 at the on-line bookies

he broke nepo and now he is depressed without any meaning to keep going :/

You guys are seeing something different than what I'm seeing.

Players were complaining about Nepo playing "safe" ... so he played ...h5 and put his king on f8! Nothing safe about that. Then spectators groaned that he still lost that game, so he played the English, and nursed the idea of a queenside pawn promotion ... he lost that game too, so players groaned even more. He wrestled with Magnus in the longest World-Championship game in history, and viewers shrugged and said, "Yeah, well, he lost, so what?"

When he plays solidly and draws, viewers complain about him playing "safe" or "scared". When he plays risky and loses, viewers complain about him being "weak" and an "embarrassment".

"He's not even trying anymore!"

"Even a 1500 would do better!"

"I took time off to watch this match! What an insult to my valuable time!"

Me? I see a super-GM who's trying whatever he can to break through ... but he's running into the brick wall of a stronger player.

nepo is doing the best he can, people just cant understand that he simply is not the next magnus carlsen or even close to ever becoming better than carlsen. his only positive record just came from their younger years but now things are different and worse for the best russian player who hasnt even gotten a single win yet. he is frustrated, sad, upset and our rambling isnt helping him in any way, nepo was always meant to be broken regardless

Well if that is what u are seeing then u are wrong. Nepo playing stupid moves(like kf8) with black is something no one was asking for since he should have played for a win with white, who plays to win as black? that's chess 101

Next, you are wrong in saying that nepo is "running into the brick wall of a stronger player"... not really... blundering your bishop does not mean running into a brick wall. Missing a queen double attack which wins a pawn isn't running into a brick wall either...

I don't know why people are so hell bent at defending nepo's frankly outrageous blunders. Any 1800 should be able to see that c5 traps the bishop, if someone rated 1000 points above u is missing that and making two move blunders constantly then yes, he will get criticism and pretty harsh ones.

This is disrespectful imo

b5 and c5 were more disrespectful tbh

isnt he the one who faces his horseys backwardz ? i mean right there that outta tell u s/t right  ?

c5 was the most natural move since it moves that pawn up and tries to preserve it... however the response c6 was also extremely natural just in general. A very very common move people at all levels play to stop the pawn from getting connected with that very deep bishop. It's honestly absurd how nepo would think for FIVE MINUTES and still not calculate c6. Judit and caruana's examples are not good since they had what? like 2-3 seconds before they looked at the move?

Don't get me wrong, c6 trapping the bishop was not "that" obvious. From all the streams i saw only anand was able to spot  within a second that the issue is that it traps the bishop. I watched svidler, karjakin and their reaction was also c6 but it took them a few seconds to realize that c6 simply wins the game by trapping the bishop.

However i will say it again, given nepo took 5 minutes to calculate c6, he should have absolutely been able to see it. His horrible blunder of b5 was even more outrageous, how can he miss that the bishop was being attacked? he only had to see 4 moves ahead. In chess.com that would have been a 1300 rated puzzle

I'm not defending his blunders. I was as shocked as most viewers were, when they happened.

But I can assure you, nobody in the world is more upset over those blunders than Nepo himself.

To call his performance "an embarrassment to the game", though, is ridiculous.

Especially when such declarations have been coming, primarily, from low-rated amateurs ... most of whom have no idea what it's like to compete on such a stage.

"I don't know why people are so hell bent at defending nepo's frankly outrageous blunders. "

I would think people are defending him being human.

I don't care how low rated some player is, such kind of ourtageous blunders are only passable when there is time trouble, not when u have 50 mins on the clock.

U are dissing on how "low rated amateurs" are criticizing his move, however nepo's only job is to play chess. he studies chess all the time, has a huge team behind him, has been playing chess since he was able to comprehend the world, had super GMs from russia like karjakin supporting him in person and this guy makes a blunder which even your "amateur" probably won't make. Yes, amateurs who have jobs and families to attend to, can only give chess like 1 hour each day, does not have a chess regime behind them working for them, does not have 10 guys working day and night to find best opening theories and variations and does not have 20 year long professional training.

Sorry but this "you low rated he high rated so no criticize" attitude lacks any brains whatsoever. Sure, reverse the clock, give me 20 years worth of professional training, pay my bills so that all i do is work on chess everyday and when situations are similar then and only then can i criticize the moves?

Point being, nepo has absolutely no excuse for making blunders which are rated like 1500 puzzles in chess.com (like Qa3+ idea) in classical chess. It's definitely embarrasing for chess to have such outrageous blunders by a contender. What's next? blundering a knight fork when u have 2 hours remaining?

I hope for nepo's sake that the match is fixed. There is no other excuse for making such blunders man, this is embarrassing indeed

"Point being, nepo has absolutely no excuse for making blunders ..."

Of course he does...he is human.  And none of us are perfect...no matter how much some of us want to believe they are.

As if you’d perform better ???

Laughable. Your reasoning ? Non- existent. You understand nothing about human nature.

He isn't just "a human", he has dedicated his life and career to chess so he literally has no excuse to miss a double attack from the queen when he has an hour left. This is outrageous. 

Such tactics should come naturally to him... what's next? formula 1 champion forgets to drive as "he is human"? soccer player botches kicking a non moving ball as he is "human"? sorry but no, such excuses don't fly

It's like the blunder svidler played in his candidates 2014 game against mamedyarov. Ben findgold rightly said there is no excuse for such a blunder unless you are a low rated player and u missed it. However in svidler's case his blunder of a pawn still had an idea behind it of pinning the bishop... nepo just throws pawns and bishops away, idk man

Yes, exactly. It's really impossibly hard to face Carlsen, as he's been so ridiculously precise in his play aside that oversight in game 2 where he ended up the exchange down. But even then, he recovered fairly quickly, planted his knight on d6 and played amazingly well until the end of that game. It's easy to forget that Carlsen has such a merciless playing style, where he'll just completely exhaust his opponents physically and mentally. Nepo's mistakes come after 5 hard-fought draws that were anything but peaceful. It's totally understandable why that happened, and this similar thing would happen to so many GM's facing Magnus in the championship match.

Just to highlight how dangerous Carlsen can be with black pieces, there was a really great game that Carlsen played against Svidler in 2014, where Svidler was being somewhat passive and inattentive in the opening as White, and Carlsen built up the attack so well and nearly crushed him. Luckily for Pete, he found several amazing defensive moves and Carlsen got a bit imprecise, so Svidler escaped with the draw, but he barely managed to. Here it is:

https://www.365chess.com/game.php?gid=3898001

Again, carlsen being the best is not the issue here. Karjakin was leading vs magnus, caruana drew all games vs magnus. Hell, even anand was outplayed by magnus in 2013 and did not blunder pieces in one move... nepo's blunders are way too much

Then dont watch...problem solved.

I didn't say that low-rated amateurs shouldn't criticize. Viewers (of any sport or game) are free to criticize all they want.

What I said was that most low-rated amateurs have no idea what it's like to compete on such a stage, nor at such a level. As a result, they can't possibly understand all the various factors that can affect a player's performance.

This is a factual statement. You can take offense at it all you like, but the statement still remains true.

We can look at blunders and criticize them (or the player). Sure. Go for it. The argument that a player of Nepo's level should've seen his mistakes is a valid one.

But until you've been in a similar situation, you can't possibly know what it's like to be the one at the board, making those moves ...