Your Chance to Play Carlsen!
Feel like playing a world champion next week? Probably every one in the world, short of Viswanathan Anand, would likely say "Yes!" Here's your chance.
GM Magnus Carlsen, just two months removed from becoming the second-youngest world champion in history, will play a six-board simultaneous match on January 16, 2014 in Mountain View, California, USA. The organizers probably realized it still wouldn't be too competitive, so they decided to blindfold Carlsen too.
The event is presented by the Churchill Club and is in partnership with First Move. The setting is the Computer History Museum at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Advance tickets are $40 for members of the Churchill Club, $55 for non-members (prices go up for on-site registration). College students are free, as are minors with a paying adult. You can register and read more about the event here.
Doors open at 5 p.m. with a drawing to soon follow. One or two spots will be filled this way, and you must be present to play (obviously!). If you want to guarantee one of the six openings, you can make a $5000 donation to First Move. To do so, email info@churchillclub.org.
After Carlsen either dispatches the field or someone wins and crafts the story of a lifetime, a buffet dinner will follow. There will then be a brief question and answer session with the audience, and hopefully you'll be able to come up with better questions than some members of the press corps did in Chennai.
The evening will conclude with Carlsen being interviewed by entrepeneur and investor Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and United States Chess Federation Life Master.
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Mike Klein began playing chess at the age of four in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, he lost to Josh Waitzkin at the National Championship featured in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." A year later, Mike became the youngest member of the very first All-America Chess Team, and was on the team a total of eight times. In 1988, he won the K-3 National Championship, and eventually became North Carolina's youngest-ever master. In 1996, he won clear first for under-2250 players in the top section of the World Open. Mike has taught chess full-time for a dozen years in New York City and Charlotte, with his students and teams winning many national championships. He now works at Chess.com as a Senior Journalist and at ChessKid.com as the Chief Chess Officer. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, he was awarded Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. He has also previously won other awards from the CJA such as Best Tournament Report, and also several writing awards for mainstream newspapers. His chess writing and personal travels have now brought him to 99 countries.
