The action began early on Tuesday, so early that it preceded the start of Game 4.

It’s common for strong players in a match of this magnitude to organize extended training camps to prepare. Typically, they find a team of strong players and even stronger computers and take them to an isolated location where they can focus on chess and hide from chess media. These sorts of things usually have CIA-style, don’t-even-tell-your-spouse levels of secrecy. The nightmare scenario is that your opponent will learn what you’re planning to play weeks before the match starts, and have all the time and CPU power in the world to consider their response.

Speaking of the nightmare scenario…. The St. Louis Chess Club released a video early Tuesday morning on their YouTube channel. In the video, Fabiano Caruana is seen at his training camp on the Osage River. He’s joined by his team of GMs. They sit at a table filled with laptops and books, everyone is hard at work. In one moment the camera pans in closely to the screen of one laptop, revealing exactly what they are working on.

This morning a 2-minute clip from one of Caruana's training camps was uploaded on YouTube (now deleted). It featured various activities, chess included. Viewers could also see a laptop screen with a ChessBase file laid open. The greatest intel blunder in chess history or a hoax? pic.twitter.com/nwHL75M2cC — Olimpiu G. Urcan (@olimpiuurcan) November 13, 2018

The video was quickly deleted, but the internet never forgets. Caruana had no comment when asked about it, neither did any of his team members or the St. Louis Chess Club. Theories for how this could happen abounded. Some thought the video was supposed to have been scrubbed of sensitive info or released after the match. Some thought the mistake was so terrible that it couldn’t be real, it must have been deliberate misinformation.

Interestingly, his opponent Magnus Carlsen released a similar video a week ago. His video, however, was heavily blurred, not even the identity of some of his team members was revealed.

Oh! And before I forget! Game 4 was played! Magnus played the English for the first time in the match and never seemed to have much of an advantage before agreeing to a draw on move 34. "He seems to have out-prepared me so far as Black," Carlsen said after the game. It will be interesting to see if Magnus pushes harder for wins in this match or is happy to go to Rapid and Blitz tiebreaks.

https://lichess.org/study/fCum15PU/nRRHALbA

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