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Dubov Wins Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz For 2nd Year In A Row

Dubov Wins Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz For 2nd Year In A Row

Colin_McGourty
Colin_McGourty
Staff
| 10 | Chess Event Coverage

"It's still my favorite tournament of the year!" said super-GM Daniil Dubov, after conceding just one draw in eight games to win the 2023 Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz. Dubov, wearing a Scream mask, had overcome GM Oleksandr Bortnyk (in a Vampire mask) 3.5-0.5 in the final, with GMs David Howell (Skull mask), Laurent Fressinet (WhiteWalker), Arturs Neiksans (JokerZombie), S P Sethuraman (Chucky), and IMs Polina Shuvalova (CrazyZombie) and Irine Kharisma Sukandar (Dead) joining the masked mayhem.   

How to watch?
All the games from the 2023 Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz can be viewed on our events page. The tournament was also broadcast live on YouTube.com/Chess.

The live broadcast was hosted by MrDodgy and GM Peter Svidler.

October 31st was a rest day for the 2023 FIDE Grand Swiss on the Isle of Man, but it was also, of course, Halloween!

An axe in the playing hall!? Image: Anish Giri's Twitter/X.

That meant the return of a $5,000, eight-player blitz tournament with one huge twist—all the players would be masked until their tournament was over. In fact, even the commentators would be masked, though few efforts were made to conceal their identities.

The burning question, "why, Peter, why?" got the following answer:

"I’m not playing in the tournament, so it’s less required for me to hide who I am, and I thought I would go for a conceptual mask deconstructing the whole Halloween genre. And I can see I’m entirely successful with that, because people obviously understand what I’m going for here!"

I thought I would go for a conceptual mask deconstructing the whole Halloween genre.

—Peter Svidler

The format was best-of-three for the quarterfinals and semifinals, then best-of-five for the final. Armageddon could have come into play if matches were tied (as if Halloween wasn't scary enough), but in the end all the matches were decided before we got that far. Here's the path of our Halloween characters to the final (later in the report we've added the bracket with real names).


Let's take a look at the action.

Quarterfinals

Only one quarterfinal match was won in just two games, and that was the first.

Scream (Dubov) 2-0 Dead (Sukandar)

Scream, who we would later learn was defending champion Dubov, meant business, playing games with 98 and 97.8% accuracy, according to the Chess.com Game Review, to clinch victory. As Svidler put it, Scream was out for blood, though he was unlikely to get it from a dead person.

"Dead," who had been teased with the hint, "won a chess game in front of one million live viewers," was unveiled as two-time Asian Women's Chess Champion Sukandar.

She revealed the mask had been a success even before the event began.

"I didn’t have any involvement in choosing the mask, but when I got it a few days ago I really liked the mask. I even had a good scare to my sister just now before the match. She was just really shocked, so it’s good!"

Skull (Howell) 2-1 Chucky (Sethuraman)

"I played dreadfully, but it was fun!" said Sethuraman of his two games with the black pieces, where he was essentially lost in 12 and eight moves, though the Indian GM did prolong the match with a win with the white pieces. Can you see the key trick here to win a piece and the game?

White to play and win!

Nevertheless, it was Skull who emerged triumphant, with his bopping while playing leading inquiring minds to wonder if it was Dubov or, perhaps, GM Baadur Jobava. 

Vampire (Bortnyk) 2.5-0.5 CrazyZombie (Shuvalova)

The hint for the identity of CrazyZombie was "not a GM," which on the surface didn't narrow things down much, but in fact Shuvalova recently won the I'm Not A GM Speed Chess Championship.

As befits a crazy zombie, she never said die, and the battle was much closer than the final result. The second game was a 108-move marathon where Shuvalova had all the chances before a draw, while the first was a minor masterpiece by a player she described as "very creative and very practical." She said of her opponent's self-trapping of his queen in the first game, "It looked strange for me. Maybe I just don’t understand chess, and it was just a mating attack." It was certainly inspired.

In the final game Vampire sacrificed his queen to push a passed h-pawn to victory.

JokerZombie (Neiksans) 2-1 WhiteWalker (Fressinet)

This was the closest match of the quarterfinals, beginning with two tense draws.

In the third, however, JokerZombie managed to infiltrate with his queen and clinch victory. Nevertheless, Fressinet had done the Chicken Chess Club proud, commenting of his games, "It was very easy to recognise my style, my passive style." 

The French grandmaster revealed he'd given his opponent a handicap at the start, as it took two games before he figured out how to enable premoves on the new account he was playing from.

That left just four players to go forward to the semifinals.

Semifinals

Once again Dubov was the only player to win in just two games.

Scream (Dubov) 2-0 Skull (Howell)

After the game, Howell, who was playing from the bed of "the smallest hotel room you'll ever see" on the Isle of Man, confessed, "I got destroyed!" and wondered if his opponent had been three-time World Blitz Champion GM Alexander Grischuk.

Why not Dubov?

"My first thought was Dubov, but he played a bit slower than Dubov normally does. There was no theatrics, dramatics. I was trying to take inspiration from last year, where he crushed me as well."

It turned out Dubov, who had danced his way through the previous year's event, managed to trick everyone this year more or less by accident, since he had trouble with his mask. 

"The mask was basically killing me! I had so many issues. One of them was actually funny. First of all, I couldn’t really breathe. I had a feeling I can only play three games in a row, so finding out this final was best-of-five was sort of tough. But secondly, what’s even funnier, I could barely see a thing! This board on Chess.com, you can see it, especially with the light on, but in one of the matches my problem was literally I couldn’t play a move because I couldn’t find the mouse on the screen."

I could barely see a thing!

—Daniil Dubov

Dubov explained that was the reason he spent 32 seconds in the following position to play the only move, 12.Bxb2.   

No harm was done, however, as Dubov won an exchange and went on to win that game, before clinching the match 2-0 when Howell blundered in what had been a good position in the second.

Vampire (Bortnyk) 2:1 JokerZombie (Neiksans)

Perhaps the most invested player in this year's tournament was Neiksans, who revealed afterwards he'd even rehearsed his mannerisms. 

"This was my main event of this week, obviously. I was so much waiting for it, and I got this beautiful mask, and I was actually practicing quite a bit my gimmicks that I was producing. I tried to entertain people and I loved the format!"

I tried to entertain people and I loved the format.

—Arturs Neiksans

The hard work paid off as JokerZombie, reacting to any strange move by his opponent and seemingly enjoying a non-stop one-man party, was the star of the show, while things came close to working out on the chessboard as well. Neiksans thought 28.Ng4? was a winning blow from his opponent, but in fact he didn't need to retreat his queen as he did with 28...Qe7?.

28...Qxd4! was winning for Black.

Vampire a.k.a. Bortnyk went on to win that game, and although Neiksans hit back, he then lost a thriller on time in the next game and the match was over.

We had the final that online blitz ratings would have predicted: Dubov-Bortnyk. 

Final: Scream (Dubov) 3.5-0.5 Vampire (Bortnyk)

Dubov lost his chance at a perfect tournament when he let a fleeting chance to win a piece slip in the first game of the final.

He'd been held to a draw, which meant his worst fears about a five-game match in an uncomfortable mask seemed to be coming true. It was just a blip, however, as Dubov went on to win the next three games and clinch tournament victory and the $2,000 top prize. He could also take off the mask.

Dubov got back on track in the second game when he spotted 28...c6!, luring the bishop to c6 so that when the rook captured on c3 it hit that bishop, giving Black enough time to establish a pawn on f3. Dubov's pawns were soon unstoppable.  

"The King’s Indian game I enjoyed a lot," said Dubov of the third game, which was a case of playing with his food, as he chose the most gruesome way to win. The final position is an apt summary of the game. 

The final game was a thriller, as just when Bortnyk thought he had Dubov where he wanted him, the black king managed to thread a way out of all the mating threats. A fitting finish to a short, but highly entertaining event!

The final bracket, with real names, looks as follows.

Afterward Dubov revealed that the moment of greatest danger he faced had been before the event, when he entered a building and put on the mask to surprise a friend, only to encounter five men in the elevator: "And I realised, if they don't get scared, I'm basically killed within the next 20 seconds!"

Dubov is not playing the FIDE Grand Swiss after failing to get a visa in time, but he did give a prediction: "If I had to pick one person to qualify [for the Candidates Tournament], which means top two, I think I would definitely go with Hikaru, who basically has this perfect ability not to lose his mind."

The Grand Swiss continues Wednesday, but for the Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz we have to wait another year—plenty of time for new monsters to emerge.

2023 Halloween Mystery Banter Blitz: All The Games

Colin_McGourty
Colin McGourty

Colin McGourty led news at Chess24 from its launch until it merged with Chess.com a decade later. An amateur player, he got into chess writing when he set up the website Chess in Translation after previously studying Slavic languages and literature in St. Andrews, Odesa, Oxford, and Krakow.

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