Alexey Shirov v Samuel Sevian, Stockholm 2016. How did the then US 15-year-old (Black, to move) defeat the fomer world title challenger?

Magnus Carlsen launched his campaign at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, the chess Wimbledon, in style as the world champion elegantly defeated the rising star Alireza Firouzja, 17, with an imaginative attack.

Then the script went awry, as Carlsens next five results were all grinding draws against much lower-ranked opponents, while his limelight was stolen from an unexpected quarter.

Nils Grandelius, 27, Swedens No 1 but regarded as just a journeyman grandmaster, surged at the start with three wins including an impressive crushing of Frances world No 5, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

After six of the 13 rounds, Grandelius led with 4/6, followed by the world top two Carlsen (Norway) and Fabiana Caruana (US), Pentala Harikrishna (India), Jorden van Foreest and Anish Giri (both Netherlands) and Iran-born Firouzja all on 3.5/6.

Carlsens performances throughout 2020 were commanding, nine online tournament victories plus first prize over-the-board in Stavanger, until right at the end of the year when Americas Wesley So upset his planned 30th birthday victory celebration, followed by the deep funk checkmate from Russias Daniil Dubov.

The world champions spoken thoughts in a pre-tournament interview gave a clue to his mood at Wijk. He was uncharacteristically introspective and downbeat, talking in terms of maintaining his standard in his 30s and retiring by 40 rather than seeking out new peaks and new records. Were his replies a premonition of the missed chances in those grinding draws to put his opponents under sustained pressure? Perhaps. What is sure is that the world champion now has plenty to prove before the tournament ends on 31 January.

The Norwegian can be watched in action as the games are screened live and free with running grandmaster commentaries on major chess websites from 1pm daily, excepting the rest days on 25 and 28 January. Carlsens crunch game against Caruana, who is also finding wins difficult to come by, will be in the 10th round (of 13) on Wednesday.

Despite his late 2020 setbacks, Carlsen has little to prove online. Across the board it is a different matter. His record 125 games without defeat ended at Stavanger, while his official rating is still around 35 Fide points short of his peak of 2889 set in 2014.

Carlsens interview suggests that his overall performance target has shifted towards pragmatic stability and edging tournaments by small margins. In late 2019, before the pandemic, he was aiming ambitiously for a new surge towards his 2889 record and then on to the summit of a 2900 rating.

I feel that it should be possible to maintain a very high level as long as I am in my 30s, Carlsen said. The margin of error does become smaller and smaller, and that means you have to keep working harder and harder, but with the right motivation, I should be able to maintain a level where I feel that its worth keeping going. I dont think it will be possible for me to keep playing at the top level if I struggle to score 50% in top events.

What could be the right motivation? There used to be arguments over whether Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, or Carlsen was the greatest of all time but Fischer now has fewer supporters due to his minimal period as an inactive world champion, while for many Kasparov gets the vote because of his long period at the top.

Kasparov became world champion when he defeated Anatoly Karpov 12.5-11.5 in Moscow on 9 November 1985, and lost his title when he was beaten by Vlad Kramnik 8.5-6.5 in London on 2 November 2000. That is one week from a 15-year reign.

Carlsen won the crown from Vishy Anand when he took a winning 6.5-3.5 match lead in Chennai on 22 November 2013. To surpass Kasparovs duration as champion, he will probably need to have defeated another four challengers by mid-November 2028.

Can he do it? In his optimum form, for sure. Would it be enough to make him the greatest in the eyes of the majority of chess fans and fellow grandmasters? That is less certain. Kasparov played fewer events, and the overall impression is that he had few real setbacks in tournaments, matches or individual games, and that he was always liable to blow rivals away with a dominating performance. For Carlsen, the big picture looks slightly but significantly more uneven.

Britains national chess league, the 4NCL, has tapped a rich vein of popularity as it begins its third lockdown season with more than 250 teams of four competing in the 4NCL Online in seven divisions. Matches are once a fortnight on Tuesday evenings, played to a comfortable time limit allowing up to three hours per game. A separate junior league has hundreds of players.

The pre-pandemic 4NCL had teams of eight who played on weekends at a central hotel venue, which proved too difficult for some distant teams. The over-the board version has been dominated by Wood Green and Guildford for most of its 28 years. In contrast, the online version has surging numbers, is attracting teams from Cornwall to Dundee, has two seasons a year rather than one, and is a more open competition at the top.

4NCL Online looks set to stay even if or when the pandemic is over, and its fourth season, expected to start this summer, should continue its rapid expansion. Its participant numbers are already comparable with the weekend congress Fischer boom of the 1970s.

3707: 1...Qb4+ 2 Kd5 Be4+! 3 Qxe4 Qc5 mate.

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Chess: Carlsen starts well but slows as Swedish outsider impresses at Wijk - The Guardian

At the climax of the 1978 World Chess Championship, which I recalled last week in my column on The Great Yoghurt Gambit, I was approached by Dr Max Euwe, President of FID (Fdration Internationale deschecs), The World Chess Federation, with a singular proposition. Having started catastrophically and going four wins to one down, Viktor Korchnoi, the Soviet defector, had fought back to level the scores at five wins each against the defending Champion, Anatoly Karpov, the golden boy of the USSR chess establishment. In the light of what follows, it is crucial to remember that the first player to score six wins would take the match and thus be crowned World Chess Champion.

With the two matadors of the mind on five wins each (with 21 drawn games) both Korchnoi and Karpov were poised on a cliff edge, when just one more victory for either side, would determine the outcome of the contest. It was at this tense moment that the President came to me to suggest that the current match be cancelled, with a resumption to be scheduled for the following year, with Karpov to remain Champion during the interim and scores tostart at 0-0.

As Chief of Korchnois delegation, I now had a difficult decision to make. In the first instance, should I even inform Korchnoi of the offer? If I did convey the offer, I felt that it would place him in an impossible situation. Should Korchnoi refuse the offer, the lost opportunity of acceptance might haunt him in the game, or games, to come, especially if he were to find himself at a disadvantage at any time. On the other hand, having won three games from the past four, accepting the offer would forfeit the benefits of the victorious roll on which Korchnoi found himself. To continue the match might well represent Korchnois last best hope of conquering the chess Everest, which had been his lifelong ambition. A further consideration was that, in my experience and contrary to the opinion of those less well informed, Korchnoi played dreadfully when stressed or angry. Continuing the match, with the nagging thought at the back of his mind that he could have bailed out, would have been a very bad idea.

My major qualm, though, was the court of public opinion. The match had reached a peak of excitement, so, to rob the feverishly expectant global audience of the final coup de grace, from either side, seemed to me to bea moral dereliction of our sporting obligations to the planetary community of millions of chess fans, not to mention those new to chess, who had been captivated by the drama of Korchnois phoenix-like resurrection.

Consider sporting parallels: what if the Wimbledon final were called off during the final tie-break, because both players were looking a bit tired. They would have been lucky to leave Centre Court with any reputation or dignity intact, and the umpire responsible would have been (metaphorically) lynched, first by the crowd and then by the media.

Korchnoi had won by four wins to one from the point when I had taken over as Head of Delegation. With Karpov clearly struggling, Korchnoi was about to play as Black (with which it is harder to win). My plan was to draw this game quickly and then keep on a relentless attack as White in the next game against the mentally fatigued Karpov.

Having considered all these facets,I therefore declined the offer. But sadly, under advice from others in his camp, Korchnoi went hell for leather in the next game as Black, in the process over-exposed himself, and thus lost the 32nd and (as it turned out) final game.

One cancellation down. More to come, and, as you will see history will repeat itself.

Now fast forward to Moscow in February 1985, when Garry Kasparov had been battling the selfsame Anatoly Karpov, still World Champion. After an absolute record 48 championship games, Kasparov had arisen from the ashes of 5-0 defeat to bounce back with three wins, the last two of which had been consecutive. Having appeared initially as overwhelmingly dominant, Karpov now seemed punch drunk. He only needed one more win to clinch the match in his favour, but it seemed more likely that Kasparov would win his requisite three, before Karpov could reel in his crucial one win.

Now read on

For the whole of game 48 (which turned out to be the last game played) I had been in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, with Florencio Campomanes, the regnant FIDE President, and two other leading FIDE officials. Our task was, if possible, to smooth the path of the Israeli team for participation in the 1986 Olympiad, set for Dubai. On the evening ofSaturday 9 February, Campomanes was phoned urgently by Moscow, with a stunning message from the World Champions camp, that Karpov was too ill to continue and Campomanes should fly at once to Moscow to resolve the situation.

I happened to knock on Campomanes hotel room door just as the call ended, and he exclaimed in excited tones: Anatoly is unable to continue. I must do something about it!

Various emergency solutions were then put forward by Campomanes and discussed by our group in Dubaito aid the FIDE Presidentsthought process:

1) that the match be stopped forthwith; Karpov should retain his title, but Kasparov be permitted another crack at the whip later in the year.

2) that an artificial guillotine be imposed after game 60 with the man in the lead then taking the title; an even score to result in Karpovs retention of the title, but with a rematch clause.

3) that the match be postponed for a month or two to permit Karpov to regain his strength.

All of these answers seemed to me to be excessively favourable to Karpov. My clear view at the time was that the match should continue normally. But if the World Champion were truly under too much stress to continue, after his two most recent hammer-blow defeats, then he should gracefully concede and then claim his inalienable right to a revenge match in September 1985. In spite of the inordinate length of this match, already a record 5 months, the World Title contest, as with any sporting battle, should undoubtedly contain an element of stamina-testingand it seemed to me that Kasparov was bearing up to this aspect with considerably greater success than his rival. There are rules for sporting contests and things become arbitrary if they are ignored. Facing stress and tension while displaying stamina and endurance are all part of being a champion. Its no use setting a world record over 99.999 metres, if you fall over and miss the tape at the last microsecond.

On Sunday 10 February Campomanes flew to Moscow, well aware that western media regarded him very much as being in the pocket of the KGB and the USSR Chess Federation, who, in turn, were widely suspected of favouring Karpov. This was doubtless a residue of goodwill from Karpovs prior victorious performance against the defector, Korchnoi. There was a further reason for officialdom to favour Karpov, a staunch party member, holder of The Order of Lenin and Moscow resident. In comparison, Kasparov came from the outlying province of Azerbaijan, was half Jewish (he started life under the name of Weinstein) and was somewhat doubtful where loyalty to communist doctrine was concerned.Indeed, he was to become an outspoken foe of Communism and remains a bitter critic of Vladimir Putin. A Freudian blunder let slip at the time by one senior officer of the USSR Chess Federation said it all: we have one World Champion, so why do we need another one? It is incontrovertible that the true sons of Lenin were less than favourably inclined towards the young interloper from Baku, as might be inferred from their attempt in 1983 to cancel Kasparovs participation in the Semi Final of the World Championship Qualifying Competition.I am delighted to say that I played my part in foiling this dastardly Soviet plot, but that is another story for another column.

Campomanes arrival in Moscow led to an ominous and immediate break in the match schedule. Then onFriday 15th Februarythe crunch came a press conference called by Campomanesat noonMoscow time, in the Hotel Sport.Around 300 Westernjournalists were present. I reproduce this reconstruction of the astonishing proceedings from wire services the fastest way to obtain breaking news before the internet.

Moscow, Friday the President of the World Chess Federation ordered a halt without result to the 160-day-old Championship match, which means that Karpov still retains his title. Nevertheless, titlist Anatoly Karpov, and challenger, Gary Kasparov, rebelled against the move in an angry public debate. Chess Federation Chief, Florencio Campomanes, told a news conference in Moscows Sport Hotel that he had decided to stop the match and ordered the two Soviets to play a new, 24-game contest starting on first September and that this would determine the new World Champion.

Campomanes pronouncement was predictably greeted with pandemonium. In fact this might well have been the first official press conference of any sort, on any topic, to have been staged in the heavily dirigiste USSR, which had spiralled completely out of control.

With members of the audience loudly heckling, Kasparov then shouted out that the authorities were trying to deprive him of his chances, and that he wanted to continue play with no time-outs and no intervals. I have said more than once that I am absolutely healthy, he continued, they have tried to convince me otherwise and to end this match on all sorts of pretexts.

The wire service carried on: Campomanes was asked if Karpov was too ill to continue. He said he had seen Karpov 25 minutes before the news conference and added, Mr Karpov is well and appealed to me to continue the match until the very end. He said he decided to end of the match at this stage because 24 times 2 equals 48, a reference to the 24-game limit under old rules. Campomanes said he had made the decision impartially in the interest of world chess and denied his friendship with Karpov influenced him.

He was asked again if it was true that Karpov was at the point of physical collapse, but had no time to answer before the world champion himself burst into the auditorium, shouting: I want to make my statement! and strode to the microphone to a round of applause. We can and want to continue the game, he said. I do not agree with the decision to end it and to start from scratch. I think Mr Kasparov will second this position. Kasparov had been sitting at the back of the hall with five visibly agitated members of his team Invited to the podium by Campomanes (Gary do you want to comment?), Kasparov took the microphone and shouted at the FIDE Chief inEnglish: You said that 25 minutes ago the champion was objecting to breaking off the match. Then why are you making all this show? Will you please answer this question?

With members of the audience booing and heckling, Campomanes told the angry players he would have been happy to discuss the decision, but had not been able to get in touch with them Kasparovs supporters booed and shouted at Campomanes: You said you just met Karpov 25 minutes ago. At this point Mr Campomanes declared a recess in the news conference to discuss the situation with the players.

After the meeting, the President and Karpov both agreed to a halt that categorically aided the current World Champion, and Kasparov was forced to abide by the ruling.

Campomanes sought, implausibly, to defend himself but, of course, nobody was convinced, least of all the challenger, Garry Kasparov, as the wire service continued:It is quite evident that FIDE shows complete inability to deal with such things as this World Championship, Kasparov told reporters. Referring to Campomanes, he said that the press conference reminded him very strongly of an attempt to stage a well-rehearsed spectacle in which everyone knows his own rle.

The main conclusion I draw from this is relief that I rejected the then FIDE Presidents identical offer back in 1978 and thus avoided being complicit in the chaotic maelstrom of opprobrium, which instantly descended on those considered culpable in the 1985 debacle.

What else is one to make of all this? Karpov has always suffered, unjustly in my opinion, from the stigma of a champion who won by default (against Fischer in 1975). That he should have been allowed to duck out of a critical situation by the intervention of adeus ex machina, in the persona of the FIDE President, did his reputation nothing but damage. He would have been much wiser to play on and risk the consequences. As for Kasparov, after a highly shaky start, he had produced what was almost certainly, the most impressive rear-guard action in any discipline in the history of recorded sport. Remember that the first player to win six games wins the match. From games 1 to 9, Kasparov went down by four losses and five draws. He seemed annihilated and no one came to his rescue at this point. From then on, displaying remarkable tenacity and maturity, he held Karpov at bay in the long war of attrition from games 10 to 26. The public may have seen these games as tedious draws, but they were an important part of Kasparovs process of mental reconstruction. Losing game 27 made Kasparovs position desperate but his opponents inability to deliver a knockout blow permitted Kasparov to complete his psychological repairs and ultimately take over the initiative. Indeed, Kasparov won convincingly over the 39 games, from games 10 to 48, by 3 to 1 with 35 draws. Kasparov had the knife at his throat for four months, yet he never gave up, and at the end his chances may even have been superior. He was certainly playing much better chess, and many observers now preferred to regard his claims to be the legitimate World Champion as more valid than Karpovs.

As it was, Kasparov won the rematch, defended his World Title on three further occasions against Karpov (one of which I was instrumental in organising in London 1986, opened by then Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher) and the rest is history, now that FIDEs probity is assured with Arkady Dvorkovic as President and our own Nigel Short as Vice President.

This entire farrago resembles an operatic plot, in fact it formed the inspiration for the Tim Rice, Benny Andersson and Bjrn Ulvaeus (of ABBA) musical Chess: The Musical, and in particular the Arbiters song.

As you settle down behind your pawnsPower passes to meYou may play like Fischer,Capablanca, Tal combinedI dont mindPlease feel free!

They all thoughtthey were the big fromageBut they dont have my cloutI control the matchI start it, I can call it offKasparovFound that out.

This weeks gamewas number 48 from Moscow, the one which convinced FIDE, the USSR Chess Federation and the KGB, that the contest had to be terminated.

We are the only publication thats committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one thats needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.

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Chess: Two cases of cancel culture - TheArticle

Four weeks after his first win, GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov won the January 19 Titled Tuesday tournament as well. The Azerbaijani grandmaster finished in clear first place with 10/11.

This week's Titled Tuesday tournament, our weekly blitz event for titled players, had a total of 741 participants. It was an 11-round Swiss with a 3+1 time control.

The live broadcast of the tournament.

An interesting game early in the tournament was @NewBornNow vs. @Hikaru. The white player is GM Victor Bologan, the Moldavian grandmaster who is FIDE's Executive Director. It's nice to see that this chess official still enjoys his evening blitz sometimes.

Bologan's strong opening knowledge (he has published numerous books and DVDs) helped him to leave GM Hikaru Nakamurawith little chance in a Modern Defense:

Speaking of openings, let's look at the clash between GM Oleksandr Bortnyk and GM Anton Korobov (@GOGIEFF) where the white player tried the Wing Gambit against the French, a popular variation at club level. It looks like one of the ways to get a satisfactory position as Black is to simply accept it:

That brought Korobov to 7/7, but he was not the only one. The Ukrainian grandmaster Alexander Zubov, also on a perfect score, was his next opponent. This game was a good example of why "weakening" the kingside with ...gxf6 is not always bad for Black. Zubov was already winning when Korobov suddenly allowed a mate in one:

Zubov even won another game to make 9/9 but found his Waterloo in Mamedyarov:

The tournament was decided in a hectic game between Mamedyarov and Korobov. An online blitz game like this perhaps doesn't deserve a serious analysis, but surely the readers are interested in the many twists and turns:

Jan. 19 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Mamedyarov won $750 for first place, Sadhwani $400 for second, Zubov $150 for third, and Xiong $100 for fourth.The $100 prize for the best female player went to GM AleksandraGoryachkina (@Goryachkina), who scored 7.5/11.

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (19:00 Central Europe).

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Mamedyarov Grabs Another Titled Tuesday - Chess.com

Please note that no changes have been made to the existing Scholastic National Invitational Event and Award Requirements posted at https://new.uschess.org/invitational-information. The regulations as posted will be used to calculate the lists of qualifiers and/or invited players for this years events. The US Chess rating supplement and rating systems used are specified for each event.

However, for sections 1-8, 13, and 15-18, per an Executive Board motion passed on December 22, 2020, all regular US Chess rated games played since March 1, 2019 until the date of the respective supplement specified for each event will be used as the period for establishing whether a player has met the activity requirement as in section 20.2. Games played under any of the online rating systems will not count towards this calculation.

Also, please note that the Executive Board recently reaffirmed the motion (https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-suspending-international-event-participation) to not authorize delegations for any international events until further notice due to U.S. State Department Level 4 travel warnings. It also reaffirmed that US Chess will not provide any financial support to any participants for international competition until further notice. This motion affects events such as the World Youth, World Cadet, Pan-American Youth and other international events listed in the aforementioned requirements.

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Updates: Scholastic National Invitational Event and Award Requirements - uschess.org

Granted, the rooms are quite nice, but players can only leave them to go to practice, shootarounds and games. Interacting with non-team guests at hotels is no longer allowed a change that was announced earlier this month.

Were just taking the lead from the league and certainly trying to follow every protocol that gets put in front of us because thats the only way that were gonna emerge from this and endure it, but it is pretty limiting, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.

The Thunder has had two games postponed this season due to COVID-19 protocols: Dec. 23 against the Rockets and Jan. 17 against the 76ers. In both cases, it was the other team that didnt have the league-required eight available players to play.

Thunder forward Josh Hall was out Friday due to health and safety protocols, but hes the only Thunder player to have been ruled out this season with that designation.

For a Thunder team with a new coach and several new players, this season isnt an easy one to build chemistry. Hanging out off the court isnt an option.

FaceTime and video calls have become common between players and staff.

And then when we come together and get the chance to bump into each other we try to make sure that those interactions are of quality and make the most of the circumstances, Daigneault said. Weve got a group of guys that has had a great mindset toward this whole thing as Ive mentioned all along.

Muscala, who started a new game of chess with Adams on Thursday, is one of those whos staying upbeat.

The rest is here:

Thunder players passing time with chess, video games on long road trip: 'Still a lot to be grateful for' - Oklahoman.com

The Botez sisters, who live in Austin, are on the forefront of chess' entry into streaming. The highly regarded players recently signed with Dallas-based esports org Envy Gaming.

A chess match is often quiet. Whether played in an outdoor park or inside a stuffy room, the only racket during a professional match could be the sound of the clock or the occasional cough coming from the background audience.

But for Alexandra and Andrea Botez, chess has become colorful and loud. See, the Botez sisters play chess without a board in front of them. The two sit side-by-side in their Austin home, playing chess online.

The Botez sisters both in the top 97.5 percentile on Chess.com star in a growing chess industry and are turning to the wonders of the internet and streaming age to grow their sport in a previously unexpected manner, recently becoming the latest chess gurus to sign with an esports organization.

I never expected to have a career in chess, said Andrea, whose family and chess roots trace back to Romania. It was always a side hobby that I was really passionate about.

Thanks to streaming platforms like Twitch, they can share that passion more easily than ever.

BotezLive reached 4,585 spectators in the first half hour of a recent Monday-afternoon stream. They spent some of that time getting situated, with Alexandra sitting directly in front of the microphone since Andreas voice carries more. The sisters reached nearly 10,000 concurrent viewers during the four-hour stream.

There were computers quite literally built to take down chess champions in the 1980s, but the Botez sisters use theirs to teach and entertain. Lengthy streams are common, as is frequent interaction with viewers and other content creators.

The stream was hardly an aberration, and thats what made signing them so attractive to North Texas esports powerhouse Envy Gaming in December 2020.

Their signing, as well as the recent release of the wildly popular Netflix miniseries The Queens Gambit, has once again positioned chess to the forefront of mainstream entertainment.

The growth of chess has been so healthy on Twitch, and its one of those games that is never going to die out, Alexandra said. Chess has really survived the age of time. So I think its gonna survive on Twitch as well.

Alexandra, 25, and Andrea, 18 have been in the business of live-streaming since early 2017, but 2020 was their big break.

They eclipsed 500,000 followers on Twitch, as well as 222,000 YouTube subscribers and a combined 350,000 Twitter followers.

The Botez sisters didnt need to travel the globe and win championships to earn money playing chess. Instead they pivoted to esports, joining Envy as the organizations first official content creators.

Esports is still in its infancy but is already a billion-dollar global industry. Chess is a game over a thousand years old. Both benefited in online presence from the global pandemic. Now the two have combined to usher in one of the most popular, and accessible, stages of the game since Bobby Fischer was winning championships in the Cold War.

Twitch has become a dominant medium for entertainment in the past half decade. The platform started in 2011 and has developed into a service that makes watching other people play video games easy, but thats not all the site is used for anymore.

Music, politics, gaming, sports, art and even just talking theres a streamer for everyone on Twitch.

It made sense for the Botez sisters to take chess online and make Twitch their platform. And Alexandra, a Woman FIDE Master, was certainly early to the game, along with Grandmaster and streamer Hikaru Nakamura. She would only hold a couple hundred viewers in her first year. As time passed, she grew her audience incrementally playing on Chess.com.

She and Andrea grew their channel by nearly 10 times what it was at the start of 2020.

I mean, its really hard to explain how different it was before the explosion on Twitch, said Alexandra, a Stanford graduate. I mean, this was a life-changing year, if theres been any.

2020 wasnt just massive for the Botez sisters. Chess also had a boon because of The Queens Gambit, based on the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. The proof is in Chess.coms own growth.

The website the Botez sisters and 51 million others use from the comfort of their own homes experienced a monumental jump in participants after the Netflix series brought more casual players to the scene.

Before The Queens Gambit, now Netflixs most-watched limited series after reaching 62 million households in the first 28 days, Chess.com gained around 25,000 new members a day.

In January that number was at 130,000 a day, Chess.com Vice President of Business Development Nick Barton said. Members of Chess.com knew the show was coming, but its impact was staggering.

Now the Botez sisters have casual Mondays playing chess with 10,000 spectators.

Its not just content creators who have noticed the bump in chess popularity. Julio Catalino Sadorra, the chess coach at the University of Texas at Dallas said his program one of the top chess schools in the country has seen its rise too.

His team had to pivot to online play using Lichess.org, a site similar to Chess.com in its purpose of organizing online competition.

When they streamed their annual Gligoric Transatlantic Cup in the fall with the help of Grandmaster and analyst Robert Hess the viewership was striking to the 34-year-old coach.

It went from very few students watching in the venue to almost 9,000 views, said Sadorra, himself a Grandmaster and UT-Dallas graduate. Now we want to keep doing that to make our chess club more well-known.

Chess and streaming just seem to mesh, he added. And hes recognized its entry into esports as a positive sign.

For Envy, the partnership with the Botez sisters is a way to expand its brand. A championship-driven team like Envy, which won a Call of Duty League world title in 2020, gets to spread its horizons.

North Texas already had some notable personalities in the esports scene. The winningest Call of Duty player in the esports history, Ian Crimsix Porter, has 432,000 Twitch followers of his own. Dallas-native gaming streamer Preston PrestonPlayz Arsement has over 8.8 million YouTube Subscribers.

But chess? Only a handful of other chess streamers were signed with esports organizations before the Botez sisters.

Its really great to expand our brand to something like chess, something that is gaining traction and getting watched more and more in age-old competition, Envy chief gaming officer Mike Rufail said. We really just wanted to diversify the types of personalities we are supporting and the community we are supporting.

Neither Alexandra nor Andrea are the best chess players in the world, though their ranks on Chess.com put them in elite company. But they can make their money with Twitch and YouTube subscriptions and donations, along with any future partnerships.

They are also continuing a tradition of chess helping their family survive and thrive.

Their grandmother taught their father, Andrei, how to play when the Botez family was still in Romania. Grandma had a family of seven living in a small, two-room apartment. They all shared a bathroom, and heat was a problem.

On the first floor of the apartment building was a much warmer room, but it was also home to the strongest chess club in the country at the time. To stay warm, they learned to play chess.

Andrei and his wife brought chess with them to the United States in 1994 when they fled Romania to seek political asylum.

Raising his daughters to eventually become chess stars wasnt on his radar.

I consider something like that to only happen once in a million years, Andrei said. If you look at the overall picture, the stars aligned.

Andrei started teaching Alexandra, who was born in Dallas but grew up in Canada, when she was 6. It didnt take long for her to win tournaments, as she was the Canadian National Girls Champion five times.

Andrea started at 7. She was coached by dad for a while too, and Andrei still coaches children today. It became a passion of his. Chess runs in the family like blood.

Skip forward to their young adult lives and now its Andrei watching BotezLive every day for his own amusement.

Its unbelievable for me, Andrei said. Even now, the fact that I can watch and listen to their stream, some of them are extremely funny. Sometimes I cant stop laughing and thats saying something that this entertainment is even for an old man.

Now that the Botez sisters have the backing of esports power Envy, they want to ensure their content is better than ever, Alexandra said. She was inspired by Envys success as a competitive esports organization, and that sparked her interest in matchmaking with the esports industry.

Imagine what [Envy] can do now that theyre entering content, and this is why I have a ton of confidence in them, Alexandra said. I know they can execute. I know theyre professionals. I know theyre passionate. So their success in one area is certainly going to translate over.

Andrea was ready to go to school, but she put herself on a one-year hiatus from higher education to pursue this project with her older sibling.

Finding new ways to entertain fresh faces that found an interest in chess is a priority, along with the laughs and concentrated videos that make their way to YouTube.

Alexandra and Andrea can also inspire more women looking at chess after The Queens Gambit made its rise.

Approximately 25% of new Chess.com members were women before the show, Barton said. Now that number has climbed to 33%.

Twenty million of the sites 51 million total members joined in 2020, many of them young.

Its exposing new audiences to chess, especially my generation, which is all over social media and Tik Tok and Netflix, which is really the population that I think is most important [for growth], Andrea said.

Both esports and chess have benefited in popularity during the worldwide pandemic, providing entertainment but also cutting costs. Live events are still missed by both, though, including at UTD

The UTD program, which has 17 appearances and four championships at the Final Four of collegiate chess (Presidents Cup), would usually travel across the country and abroad to compete, Sadorra said.

Its more hands-on, but it takes more time, Sadorra said. Now that everythings online, its more convenient and inexpensive.

When live chess returns, the industry will also return with the knowledge of the games entertainment value.

Our expectation is that at some point, the popularity of chess will die down again, to some extent, Barton said. But that the baseline popularity for the game itself will be elevated from before COVID happened and before The Queens Gambit came out.

In-person chess will return someday. But the future may be on the computer, and the Botez sisters can cash in on their early entry.

They will likely be live sometime in the next 24 hours, and they may still be growing.

Age: 25

Job/org: Content creator/Envy Gaming

Chess ranking: Woman FIDE Master

Twitter handle/Twitch channel: @alexandravbotez, BotezLive

Notable: Neither Botez sister planned on a career in chess, but Alexandra actually lived in China for a bit as an entrepreneur after graduating from Stanford. It was only after this plan fell through that she pursued a streaming career. Shes known on stream for accidentally giving up her queen, which her father calls a Botez Gambit.

Age: 18

Job/org: Content creator/Envy Gaming

Twitter handle/Twitch channel: @itsandreabotez, BotezLive

Notable: Andrea was ready to study political science in college before the Twitch stream started to boom. She opted to take a gap year from starting school to keep the momentum going on the stream with Alexandra. On stream, she likes to come up with jokes to get under Alexandras skin.

Find more esports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

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Texas' Botez sisters are at the forefront of an unlikely, and booming, partnership: Chess and esports - The Dallas Morning News

It's one of the most famous board games of all time, but until recently chess wasn't getting a whole lot of attention on Twitch. That began to change last year, however, when chess streamers started to raise the profile of the game on the streaming platform - and thanks to the release of a certain Netflix series, those numbers have now reached new heights.

In January last year, chess was averaging 3298 concurrent viewers over 24 channels on Twitch, peaking at 29,820 viewers. This month, that average is 24,048, with around 132 channels streaming chess at any one time - reaching a peak viewership of 161,968 on 16th January (via TwitchTracker). That was thanks to the efforts of siblings Alexandra and Andrea Botez, whose BlockChamps event - a crossover tournament with popular Minecraft streamers like Pokimane, LilyPichu and Fundy - pulled in over 91,000 concurrent viewers and over 1m unique views, breaking the chess viewership record for a single stream (via Chess.com).

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So, why the sudden enthusiasm? The Covid-19 pandemic has forced real-world chess tournaments to move online, with Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen holding an online invitational in April 2020, and a FIDE Online Nations Cup taking place in May. Some professional players like Grandmaster Hikaru "GMHikaru" Nakamura found an audience in online streaming - and collaborations with big-name variety streamers gave chess a Twitch boom in the summertime. But the real game-changer, of course, has been critically-acclaimed Netflix series The Queen's Gambit. Since the series was released on 23rd October, chess viewership on Twitch has increased dramatically - as has the number of channels and streamers choosing to play chess.

The Queen's Gambit has significantly boosted interest in chess across the board: the leading platform for online play, Chess.com, told Dexerto that 50,000-60,000 new members were joining the site each day in March 2020, a number that jumped to 125,000 after the release of the series in October. Physical chess sets, meanwhile, started to fly off the shelves, with one US toy and games company reporting its chess sales increased 1048 per cent from the same period in the previous year (via NPR). I witnessed the impact of this first-hand, having scrolled through dozens of sites trying to find a nice board that wasn't sold out. (Don't worry, I eventually got my hands on a rather lovely '80s Soviet set.)

Of course, the viewing figures for chess still pale in comparison to Twitch behemoths like Fortnite and League of Legends (which pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers), but chess now consistently ranks in the top 30 categories on Twitch. It's lovely to see the game getting a digital revival, and it's particularly encouraging to see women headlining this movement on Twitch. As someone who only recently started playing thanks to The Queen's Gambit, let me tell you: visibility makes a difference.

If you're looking for more reading material on The Queen's Gambit, meanwhile, you should take a look at this piece by Jefferson Toal on the series as a love letter to play - and how chess allows you to lose yourself in a "temporary sphere of activity".

Link:

Chess is having a moment on Twitch - Eurogamer.net

Warcraft 3 modders created a new genre with Defense of the Ancients, a custom game mode that eventually spun off into mega-popular MOBA games like League of Legends and Dota 2. Dota 2 modders created a new genre with Auto Chess, a custom game mode that spun-off into moderately-popular titles autobattler games like Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics, and, er, Auto Chess. Now, the Auto Chess devs are bringing it all back around by creating their own MOBA.

The, erm, creatively-titled Auto Chess MOBA was announced earlier this month, as Kotaku notes, and as the title suggests, its a MOBA game from Drodo Studio, the devs who created both the original Auto Chess mod and the standalone game, Auto Chess.

It looks like Auto Chess MOBA is going to be a mobile game, which is not normally the sort of thing we cover at PCGamesN, but hey, this is too weird not to talk about. The devs say that all heroes will be free, so that all players can start on level ground, without needing to pay to unlock additional characters.

The studio also promises no pay to win and no stats growth outside games in an effort to ensure fairness. In terms of play mechanics, its going to have a big emphasis on vision, with a day/night cycle thatll affect your visible range, and destructible objects that can block line of sight.

Now, we can only hope that Auto Chess MOBA will come to PC, develop its own mod scene, and then develop some sort of ultra-popular RTS spin-off so that we can truly complete the circle.

Read more:

Auto Chess, the Dota 2 spin-off, is getting its own MOBA - PCGamesN

In this weeks position, black is slightly better. Blacks two rooks against whites extra pawn is enough for black to either win or draw, but white will have to defend well to draw. It would not be hard for black to eventually employ the power of its rooks and queen to break open whites king-side. White, however, has an option that will likely secure a draw with little risk of losing. With this hint in mind, please try to find whites best move.

Blacks king-side is weak, as the black king sits in the corner. This allows white to strike by having its rook captures blacks pawn on f6. If black does not capture the rook, white picks up a pawn and the now the game is even.

Black avoids any risk of losing with the loss of a pawn by capturing the rook with its g7 pawn. Whites queen next captures blacks pawn on f6 with check (see next diagram).

From here, the game is drawn by perpetual check. If the black king moves to g8, whites queen checks along the 6th rank. If the black king flees to h7, whites queen checks by sliding back and forth between f7 and f6.

The lesson this week is that certain themes are repeated over and over, and one of those themes is that year in and year out it is perpetually proven that positions are often saved by a creative draw.

Reach Eric Morrow at ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com or (505) 327-7121.

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Chess Corner: Over and over - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

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For Tom Brady, this is old hat (or old helmet?). The quarterback is playing in his 14th championship game.

Eighteen seasons, his teams have made the postseason, and only three of those times did Brady not win at least one playoff game.

But this is a new experience for these Buccaneers.

The franchise is in the conference championship game for the first time since 2002. In fact, they had played only 15 postseason games in franchise history before Bradys arrival.

The Bucs are along for Bradys ride.

Hes the greatest player to ever play the game, Evans said. You add him on any roster, and Im sure the outcome would be somewhat like this. He always gets his team to the playoffs. Hes a winner. Hes a natural-born winner, leader, all that. At this point in his career, hes just playing chess, and were definitely very happy hes on our side.

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Mike Evans: At this point in his career, Tom Brady is playing chess - NBC Sports