BOOOOOM! MAGNUS!

A French chess livestreamer finds out he's playing Magnus Carlsen online. A Grob is assayed. Hilarity ensues.



H/t Tarjei J. Svensen

Another Boring Catalan

FIDE's World Cup Tournament kicked off today. The format is 128 players in a knockout format. Agadmator provides some video analysis of a boring Catalan from the first day. I recommend it.



You can find an interview with the player of the White pieces here.

Master Class

Today in the sixth round of the Altibox Norway Tournament in Stavanger, Levon Aronian smashed Vladimir Kramnik. I recommend playing through the game once yourself. Just give it a casual run through if you don't have a lot of energy. And then watch Peter Svidler's recap of the game. I'll embed the video here, but the video is on YouTube if you want to watch it on your TV instead.



Svidler's recap is pretty much a master class. I'm particularly struck by the section from the 6:30 to 8:24. The analysis flows quickly in the more tactical phase of the game, and I'm not going to pretend I caught all of it, especially in my current brain-dead state. But I'm going to go back to this again a couple of times this week - it's just that good. It's just over 22 minutes long, and I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Hikaru finally wins!

He finally beat Magnus! And with the black pieces! Quite a day.

Here is a link to Chess24's coverage, including video analysis.

And here is a link to Chess.com's coverage, along with some more analysis.

Jaideep Unudurti made the following excellent point on Twitter.

Naka's win over Carlsen can be seen in the context that Adams, Shirov and Gelfand never beat Kasparov in their entire careers #BilbaoChess

— Jaideep Unudurti (@Unudurti) July 13, 2016

I knew about Kasparov's record against Shirov & Adams, but somehow had missed that he had such a record against Gelfand, too. 

And don't forget that he had a monster score against Judit Polgar, though I believe she finally won a game shortly before he retired. Record Check: Nope, she beat him, but only in one rapid game! Really, Garry's record against Judit practically constituted a hate crime. So make that four top players he blanked in their primes at "Classical Chess".

And finally, a bit of fun from the spoof account NakaFacts: This tweet went out before today's round, but it's still funny.

.@MagnusCarlsen is playing @GMHikaru in the first round of @BilbaoChess! Here is a quick comparison. #BilbaoChess pic.twitter.com/YeAhNLzgiM

— NakaFacts (@NakaFacts) July 13, 2016

ADDED: First, IM Daniel Rensch of Chess.com has a nice ten minute long analysis of the game. It's quite good, and I recommend it, as he gives you the ideas of the position in a clear manner.

Second, I can't resist adding one more tweet, this one from Follow Chess:

How the chess world probably reacted to Nakamura's "shocking" 1st win against Magnus Carlsen with Black #BilbaoChess pic.twitter.com/iILKwsVjxX

— Follow Chess (@FollowChessApp) July 14, 2016

Bonus points if you recognize everyone.

Chess on YouTube

YouTube.com has a lot of chess videos these days. For example, GM Simon Williams even has his own channel. Here's his latest video, on his game against GM Nigel Short at the Bunratty Chess Festival from last weekend.

Karpov, grandmaster on ice!

BRRRRR!