The Schachbundesliga Championship takes place in Karlsruhe Wed 16th Sep to Sun 20th Sep 2020. After the halting of the regular Bundesliga season some German teams were interested in playing over the board chess this year and others not. 8 teams will play for a new title. Read more ....

The Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament moved to the internet this year and is hosted by Lichess. Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura are most likely the favourites in a strong 10 player field. The others are: Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexander Grischuk, Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Leinier Dominguez Perez, Alireza Firouzja, Jeffrey Xiong and Pentala Harikrishna. Read more ....

The Champions Showdown 9LX took place in online on Lichess 11th to 13th September 2019. This year the format was a 10 player Round Robin. Magnus Carlsen was the top seed and he played against Garry Kasparov for the first time since 2004. Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian, Wesley So, Leinier Dominguez Perez, Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Peter Svidler. They used a version of the Chess 960 variant in this rapid tournament. I don't have software that can display these games on my website but produced a PGN file for download. Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen tied for first place with 6/9. Most of the players will play Saint Louis' rapid and blitz event starting on Tuesday, again online. Read more ....

The FIDE Online Olympiad took place 24th July to August 30th. The four top divisions were played 21st to 23rd August and produced 8 qualifiers for the final knockout playoff stage 27th to 30th August. The final was contested between India and Russia. In the first of the two legs of the final all six games were drawn. In the second leg India lost 3 and drew 3 but two of those losses were almost simultaneous losses on time and it was determined these were caused by a worldwide technical issue. The President of FIDE Arkady Dvorkovich decided that the only fair thing to do was for the teams to share the title. While I agree this was probably the best decision in the circumstances it's becoming increasingly clear that such issues are a part of online play and affect some countries more than others. I believe that there needs to be detailed provision in the rules as to what to do in such circumstances. This article has all the games and results. Read more ....

Magnus Carlsen won the Katara International Bullet Tournament on Wednesday 26th August 2020. Carlsen was joined by 15 qualifiers on Lichess for the final of this bullet chess (1 minute) tournament sponsored by the Qatari Chess Association. It was a 16 player knockout where there were matches of 12 games. Carlsen beat Rasmus Svane, Rauf Mamedov, then Bullet Legend Andrew "Penguin" Tang (where he lost the first three games, two to dropped pieces due to pre-moves in the opening) before asserting himself and then he beat Daniel Naroditsky in the final. In the final Naroditsky got off to a slow start losing three of the first four games, he was particularly unlucky in game three to find an amazing combination to win Carlsen's Queen only to discover that his Queen could be attacked and taken at the end, something neither player had time to see in advance. Naroditsky then won three in a row to level the match before losing the last three to lose 6.5-3.5. Naroditsky had earlier soundly beaten Alireza Firouzja in the semi-finals. The match was broadcast by Fiona Steil-Antoni on her twitch channel with Alex Astaneh Lopez. The final broadcast is below, the three Arena qualifiers are also available. I now have all the games from this final knockout phase and they all seem to be correct - there is one additional Firouzja-Paravyan than was necessary played and I also included that. Read more ....

Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Final benefiting Kiva Day 11

Mark Crowther (Thu Aug 20 21:52:00 2020)

Magnus Carlsen came through to win his own tour final by winning an Armageddon tie-break. Photo © | https://chess24.com

Magnus Carlsen won his own Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour Final on the final day by drawing a final Armageddon game with black against Hikaru Nakamura. This was a fitting end to an extremely closely contested match and on a day where earlier Nakamura was one draw away from the title himself.

"It's extremely harsh on him, he played a great match and made it extremely difficult for me. It' rough, obviously." - Carlsen.

Carlsen said that he struggled to find a good rhythm to his play throughout the event, something that is usually required for good speed chess. Nakamura kept posing difficulties for Carlsen right to the very end and he would have been a very deserving winner. For it all to some down to a tie-break of two blitz games (both decisive) and finally an Armageddon meant that really no player proved their superiority but the rather brutal rules of the competition had their say. Nakamura's play impressed throughout and it's hard to imagine another player doing as well as he did against the World Champion.

Earlier Carlsen won a nice first rapid game but Nakamura struck back in the third, this game was the one that upset Carlsen the most he said afterwards. Then in the blitz Nakamura won the first game and Carlsen at that point didn't rate his chances very highly but he did come through to win the second game. Carlsen's success throughout the tour meant that he got to choose the colours in any Armageddon tie-breaks, in the Round 5 one he lost he made a rather impetuous decision to play with white and go for the win, this time he decided long before the final he was going to choose black. He also lost 19 seconds at the start of the Armageddon game by deciding to change from a large projection of the game to one on his laptop screen, obviously a rather strange thing to do as he was obviously aware as he told the story.

The event also managed to raise $50,000 for the charity Kiva. What now though? Carlsen will play the over the board event the 8th Altibox Norway Chess tournament 5th to 16th October with Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Anish Giri, Alireza Firouzja and Aryan Tari, perhaps the only over the board superGM event of the year since the lock down apart from the Candidates tournament. Also the FIDE Online Olympiad which has been going on some time on Chess.com is reaching the phase where the top nations and players are now competing. But will there be other online events? I'm going to start playing the 4NCL Online soon, I'm not expecting normal chess to resume for some time. The same will surely be true for most players, it's time to recognise there will only be limited outlets for serious over the board chess for some time.