Re: 2020 Chessable Masters
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:24 pm
I confess I have once or twice successfully won totally drawn positions on time - but never quite as ridiculously so as K/R vs K/R.
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The Chessable Masters semifinals started today with wins for Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri but the main story was yet again Ding Liren's problems with his Internet connection. Ding has had disconnections throughout the series with his, sometimes this has led to a loss on time, as it did today in game one, in a drawn position. The rules are clear that the players are responsible for their Internet connection and will lose on time if they can't reconnect before their clock runs out. While Carlsen isn't 100% in charge of these events he obviously has a big say in the rules. Today he made it clear this regulation isn't working for him and he fixed the problem by giving up game two almost immediately it started, thus levelling the scores at 1-1. This surely indicates Carlsen wants a change for the rest of the tour. For myself I think Ding clearly isn't doing this on purpose, he probably has the best Internet connection available to him but it could be that no connection will work from China. The organisers may have suggestions to provide greater stability for him (perhaps a mobile data backup?) and should at least look into what the issue is and possible solutions as we want to see Ding play his best.
They've started the trolling already.... Anish Giri on playing Magnus: "He's the favourite always and he's shown good chess in this tournament so far. He beat Fabi and Ding like they're babies, but they don't have active Twitter accounts and they don't have the social media skills I possess!"
In general, I think that the competition is not so great in chess. If, to put it crudely, you ask me how many people in the world: a) work at least 4-6 hours a day long-term, b) take care of their physical fitness, c) have a strong-willed character, a desire to fight and win, then I’ll surprise you. There are maybe 5-6 people like that in the world – who manage to combine it all. And among those, he’s the best.