The Unfinished Chronicles Edition 1
I was looking back at some interesting articles I wrote but never finished and/or published and I decided that there was some valuable analysis and information. From now on, I will be regularly publishing articles in this format, so enjoy!
Draws Galore To Kick Off World Championship
The sweat. The stress. The dive. The kill. The win.
The 56th Chess World Championship* kicked off in rainy London on November 9th. Reigning champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway sat down at the board to defend his title. Challenger Fabiano Caruana took a seat across from Carlsen, staring at a wooden board with carved pieces made out of well, let's see...wood. And then, of all people, Woody Harrelson is standing right over the board asking Caruana what his first move should be. Caruana's team of elite grandmasters and fans were watching him from all over the world, most notably the Saint Louis Chess Club, the most prestigious venue for chess events in the United States.
The Saint Louis Chess Club itself full with a...giant wooden chess piece. | Courtesy livestly
One of those people was Mike Kummer, International Arbiter and manager of the Saint Louis Arch Bishops, a team led by Caruana, in the PRO Chess League (and perhaps the equivalent of Harrelson himself in the chess world), although it's hard to know if he can even pronounce Caruana's name. Also at the club is four time US Chess Champion** Yasser Seirawan and two time US Women's Champion Jennifer Shahade doing commentary for the match, which is available live at twitch.tv/stlchessclub as well as their YouTube channel. Seirawan is an expert on Bobby Fischer, the last and only American World Champion to date, who won arguably the greatest world championship of all time. Speaking of commentary, many commentary teams gave their opinions on the games in live time, like Chess.com's Daniel Rensch and Robert Hess at twitch.tv/chess or chess.com/tv live as well as replays available on their Youtube channel.
The Chess.com team! | Courtesy Twitch/Chess.com
Other teams include Chess24's Peter Svidler, Alexander Grischuk, and Anish Giri, the Chessbrahs, and the official broadcast, just to name a few. Going back to the game, Caruana whispered that he wanted to play e4 as his first move into Woody Harrelson's ear. However, creating some drama, Harrelson misheard and pushed the d-pawn instead. Caruana informed Harrelson that he pushed the wrong pawn and Harrelson switched pawns, starting the first game.
Game 1 (The Opening)
To start, let's look at the opening, which was a Rossolimo Sicilian. The choice tells us that Carlsen prepared this and thought a Sicilian was the best way to break Caruana.
While I was watching the opening fold out, I was riding on the subway.***
"Next stop--42nd Street Grand Central Station!" shouted the announcer. In the meantime, I was huddled over my mom's phone, watching the position update itself. I was trying to think of a proper way to analyze the position. Here is a summary of what was going through my head during this tumultuous ride:
Well, I'd probably take White's position here as an unexperienced player. This is because although White doesn't have much play and is probably just playing for a draw, they are safer than Black and can't easily be attacked if they sit on the position and do nothing. If I were a more experience player, like Carlsen, I'd probably take Black without even thinking about it.
Game 1 (The Middlegame)
The middlegame was certainly the most exciting part of the game and this was the point when people started to wonder if Carlsen could actually win the 1st game and have a lead so early on.
his stage of the game was filled with blunders in time trouble, with Carlsen constantly missing this idea of moving to the long diagonal to threaten Qb2 and Caruana missing e5 with the threat of Qxc6.
Game 1 (Endgame)
After all that action, Carlsen likely played on for another 70 moves out of frustration although this stage certainly wasn't all that exciting.
