Is chess a sport? The old debate.
Although chess has officially been recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee since the year 2000, opinions are still divided. Some people agree that it should be considered a sport, while others think otherwise. Both sides bring valid arguments, but let’s start with the beginning.
The Fried Liver Attack is one of the oldest and at the same time most popular opening lines at the beginner level. You can see it played even by grandmasters sometimes but usually experienced players tend to avoid it as Black. Of course, it is not only because the Fried Liver Attack sounds scary (friendly internet users assure us it comes from an Italian saying “dead as a piece of liver”) but the attack is very dangerous for Black objectively.
After the longest half-time break ever, the Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg resumed. Ian Nepomniachtchi won the tournament with8.5 points and a round to spare and thus gained the right to challenge Magnus Carlsen for the World Championship title. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is second with 8 points. Anish Giri and Fabiano Caruana have shared third place with 7,5 points.
Kasparov wasn’t called the ‘Beast from Baku’ for nothing. He was indeed a “beast”!
His style of playing was more like a herd of full-grown African buffaloes and zebras charging toward you… as Thanos said, dread it, run from and it still arrives.
His style of chess was extremely powerful, and his opponents cowered even they pushed the first move on the board. They were lost even before the game started.
One of the first things you learn when starting out is how to read each square. Each of the 64 squares has a unique name and you will hear strong players and Grandmasters naming them constantly when they analyze. It might be confusing at first and it might take a while before you can quickly identify a square, but you will get there, with a little patience. Chess notation is the language of chess and you will eventually need to learn it, if you want to continue down this road and make your journey easier.
Can there be ten pawn structures? Really?
Yes, my man. They can and they ARE. In fact, each of them is pretty important, and you will come by them every now and then.
If you are not ready, you might just fall into a nasty trap and end up losing the game. You don’t want that, do you?
Read this article from start to finish then.
The final standings of the Fide Candidates
1. Ian Nepomniachtchi – 8½ 2. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave – 8 3. Anish Giri – 7½ 4. Fabiano Caruana – 7½ 5. Ding Liren – 7 6. Alexander Grischuk – 7 7. Kirill Alekseenko – 5½ 8. Wang Hao – 5
The last round might have been not so important after the winner was decided but still has produced some nice games.
Usually, you do not hear a lot about the Kalashnikov variation of the Sicilian, but it is an interesting line and quite a great practical choice for Black. It was used by La Bourdonnais against McDonnell back in 1834 but was not really popular until recent years. The reason is that similar to the Sveshnikov, it allows White’s knight to jump to the central outpost on d5, which used to be considered bad to allow. But modern chess is more concrete and people realized that this drawback can be compensated by dynamic factors with the interest.
Ian Nepomniachtchi is the winner of the FIDE Candidates Tournament with a round to spare and a new Challenger for the world championship against Magnus Carlsen.
Ian Nepomniachtchi vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave ended in a draw. The Frenchman has chosen an interesting double fianchetto system where he avoided moving his central pawns. This has allowed white to take control in the center and to finish his development without a problem.
This round proved to be the most entertaining from the start of the tournament.
All four games had a winner and no draws.
The game which fans were waiting for was between Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri.
The American was a bit surprised by the move order which Giri has played. Now it was not possible to switch into Svestnikov with Nd5, so he decided to go a3 and then he made a new move Qd3.
