Meanwhile, white to move and win.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
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In Berlin the Grand Finale of the Armageddon Series is taking place on September 14-20 at the World Chess Club. On Day 5, Wesley So (yay!), who had lost in the upper bracket and therefore dropped to the lower, defeated Sam Shankland. Wesley will face Humpy Koneru who had defeated Nodirbek, even in the upper as Richard Rapport will face Gukesh D. This is interesting because women and men are mixed in the brackets, thus responding to something I’ve wondered: how will women do against the male super GMs. The video coverage and setting is pretty cheesy and high tech and, frankly, annoying. One of the gimmicky elements is that you can see the heart rates of the players.
Also, for you historians, Chessbase is running a series of articles about 1993, when TWO World Championship matches were played, one sponsored by FIDE between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman in the Netherlands and the other by the wildcat Professional Chess Association (PCA – members – 2) between reigning World Champ Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short in London at the Savoy Theatre. In the FIDE match, during the opening ceremonies on 4 Sept, the big banner over the stage caught on fire, causing energetic reactions. Kasparov v. Short, the first match between a Russian champ and a non-Russian challenger since Spassky v. Fischer started on 7 Sept. The press center in London was at the legendary 19th chess epicenter Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. I wrote about it HERE.
Kasparov and Short broke with FIDE and formed the PCA six months before, mostly because FIDE venues couldn’t raise the prize money. Eventually the London Times stepped up and offered £1.7 million. This match had its own pyrotechnics: a bomb scare.
Kasparov pretty much wiped out Short, who nevertheless got 3/8 of the prize money, £65K.
The matches were played with analog clocks, since there weren’t digital clocks yet.
In other news, 20 years ago on 8 Sept there started the Russia v Rest of the World match in Moscow. One of the games featured Judith Polgar v. Kasparov. Judith won.
On the theme of anniversaries, I was with a priest friend last night and we reviewed (not fully) the three PODCAzTs I did back in 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the Novus Ordo. Paul VI gave three General Audience talks about the changes that would be implemented beginning on the 1st Sunday of Advent in 1969. In the PODCAzTs I give some context, what was going on in the world, what songs were popular, etc. If analog clock were still in use in 1993 for chess, in 1969 when the Novus Ordo started, Apollo 12 was just on the Moon and the first 747 was used.
