Isle Of Man International (Fide Grand Swiss)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Not all going to plan though: https://twitter.com/DavidHowellGM/statu ... 1729656227

Nice bit of unintentional photobombing by Caruana there! Who is the other chess player in the background?

England's number one player! Note the somewhat unsympathetic tweet from Magnus: https://twitter.com/MagnusCarlsen/statu ... 1077608823

Thank you! I really must create that Twitter account to be able to read threads properly. Though I have learnt two things today, both I feel I should have known already...

(1) The selfie function in phone cameras acts like a mirror and writing in the photos is 'reversed' like in a mirror.

(2) Waving at a phone camera screen in 'selfie' mode triggers the taking of a photo. This was a bit of a shock to me when it happened just now as I was experimenting with the function.

[Mick Norris]

Chessbase

The Candidates Tournament and the Women’s Candidates Tournament will be played simultaneously next year in Toronto. Four spots are still up for grabs in the open event, while three participants remain to be decided among the women. In both cases, two spots will be decided in the upcoming Grand Swiss tournaments. Let us recap who already qualified, and who are the frontrunners to get the remaining spots.

[LawrenceCooper]

The chief arbiter explaining the fines for late arrival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpXfKesP2Jg

[LawrenceCooper]

I'm not sure how many players were unable to get visas but Sara Khadem, Dubov & Grischuk are the ones I've heard about.

[LawrenceCooper]

A great start for Shreyas: https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tourn ... 023/1/1/55

[MJMcCready]

A great start for Shreyas: https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tourn ... 023/1/1/55

I thought he played the endgame very well, outclassed his opponent for sure.

[Mick Norris]

Great result for Shreyas, he has black against Sarana next

Vitiugov drew and has white against Gledura

Caruana v Niemann

[LawrenceCooper]

Caruana beats Hans Niemann (to take their personal score to 5-0) and passes 2800 again.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Caruana beats Hans Niemann (to take their personal score to 5-0) and passes 2800 again.

Hmm. As an 11-round tournament, with 9 rounds left, and Caruana gaining 6 points already, I wonder what score Caruana would need to get to claim the number 1 spot from Carlsen?

Caruana 'only' needs to gain a further 27 rating points, so Caruana would need to score around 11/11 to do that (i.e. win the remaining 9 games). Possibly a couple of draws against high-rated players would still see him to number 1 in the live ratings.

Seems unlikely, but you never know.

And as this event ends in November, Carlsen would have time to either regain rating points (or lose more!) in the 9-round European Team Championship 2023 (11-20 November).

Caruana also has the 9-round Sinquefield Cup (21-30 November).

But I am not sure if the Sinquefield Cup results will count towards the December 2023 rating list - possibly not as it finishes so close to the end of the month.

From 9-16 December, both Carlsen and Caruana take part in the 'Chess.com Global Championship Final 2023' - which has a knockout format including some classic time control games. We might very well see a clash between between Carlsen and Caruana at that event deciding who starts 2024 as world number one.

Or that reckoning might be delayed to the Tata Steel Chess (Wijk aan Zee) event in January.

Carlsen has been World Number One continuously since July 2011 (over 12 years) but would need to be number 1 for about another 8 years to match Kasparov's time at the top.

(Sorry, back to the IoM chess!)

[MJMcCready]

Why is his rating sliding? He's dropped 40-60 points hasn't he?

[Paul Habershon]

Why is his rating sliding? He's dropped 40-60 points hasn't he?

'Events, dear boy, events'. (pace Harold Macmillan)

[Mick Norris]

Shreyas lost and has white against Bartel

Nikita Vitiugov won and has black against Narayanan

English results

Only 7 players on 2/2

L'ami has beaten Vidit and Fedoseev and now plays Caruana which is a tough sequence of pairings

I can't remember seeing the name of Zhalmakhanov previously

[MJMcCready]

Shreyas is the exchange up and unlikely to lose.

[LawrenceCooper]

Shreyas is the exchange up and unlikely to lose.

Yes, was a draw in 55 moves.

[MJMcCready]

Got result for him. Never really looked at Shreyas play before. He's definitely got talent. How old is he?