Musings on chess, and lesser things
Posts on chess
As I write this from Khanty-Mansiysk airport while the Australian team waits for our departing flight, let me apologise for the delayed coverage. The past few days have been as hectic as you could expect from the finale of the biggest chess event on the globe. To compensate, I’ll put up a couple of retrospective …
We have a very unfortunate term in chess for losing two games in a row: “kingside castling”, as the algebraic notation is “0-0”. Unfortunately, despite two rest days and a no-show in between, I have castled kingside in this tournament. Even worse, there’s a chance that tomorrow I will do the even less desirable “queenside …
Following the mammoth tusk episode, another emergence threatens our safety here in Khanty-Mansiysk: over the past few days, it seems the entire Olympiad has become ravaged by flu. Whether it’s because of the sudden cold snap, or simply the simultaneous convergence of 150 nationalities, many players and staff are finding themselves, as many throughout history …
I realised that in my narcissistic depression that resulted in my last post, I failed to recognise Yuan’s amazing win over Victor Bologan. Bologan is one of the great attacking players of the modern generation, and with a rating above 2690, is a force to be reckoned with. But Yuan, with the black pieces no …
Recently I was chatting with a fellow chessplayer from another country about the differences between chessplayers and, well, everyone else. We agreed that it was nigh on impossible for a non-chessplayer to understand how it felt to lose an important match, despite chess being ‘only a game’. At that point, I joked that I should …
Round five, the last before the rest day, and yet another chance for us to make it into the ‘top room’. The tournament hall is divided into two rooms: the larger, main playing hall for us plebs, and the smaller hall for the top boards, specifically the top 27 men’s boards. And, as fate would …
There is a curious chess phenomenon in tournaments with lots of players – or, in this case, teams. There may be so many teams that in round one, you are paired against a very weak team. After your victory, however, there are still so many teams on one match win that you have to play a …
First day, first round, and things are looking good for both the men’s and women’s teams. The men have been paired with Bahrain; the women with Nigeria. My opponent unfortunately got his queen trapped in the opening, which is why I’m able to write this while the other seven games are still going. George should …
Two tuk-tuk drivers playing the Cambodian game referred to in an earlier post. It may be called “Ouk”, although when I asked what the game was, the drivers replied with something that sounded like “Raysh”. From our brief conversation using hand signals, I gather the game is played on what looks like a regular chess …
An exciting and somewhat surprising finish to the tournament, with the Vietnamese grandmaster Cao Sang taking the title on tie-break. Cao never led at any stage and in fact was only on 2.5 after four rounds, but certainly “maketh”d the man by winning his last three games. Cao shared the title with Indian IM Sethuraman …