Sunday, September 18, 2011

Chess960: Some thoughts on the St Louis Kings vs. Queens competition


Here is some snippits of observations from the Kings vs. Queens for 2011:
  1. Somebody provided over $50,000 to sponsor the event! Thank you sincerely.
  2. Nakamura I think may be the first Chess960 player in history to play a pawn gambit opening in competition!?
  3. Judit Polgar was going to play for the women but pulled out because of her other chess commitments!
  4. Anatoly Karpov was going to play but pulled out at the last minute!
  5. The women's 960 world champ Alexandra Kosteniuk just got better and better as the tournament went on and her interviews are great!
  6. Yasser Seirawan claims to have played and won a serious Chess960 competition in Holland recently and that's great. But where, when and what?
  7. Yasser Seirawan doesn't like the Titular Bishop combination in Chess960 because he thinks that the bishops have a lack of options, but the games showed otherwise.
  8. The pure form of Chess960 was broken by revealing the start positions to players before the game. Consequently white tended to do better than black as you would expect having the tempo and pre-knowledge.
  9. The commentators were broken free of the burden of opening theory and were actually playing each other for ideas during the opening and having some fun!
  10. Suggest that next year's competition (if there is one) should start with the women playing white. Then whatever sex is leading in score, they must play as black next round. That would be a lot of fun!
What do you think?
Enjoy 960!

1 comment:

  1. All FRC-chess960 setups that start with any bishop on any corner square should be banned.

    As Kramnik noted, such bishops have only one way to develop. That is not good enough. Besides, there are plenty of better setups available.

    Thanks, GeneM, 2011/Oct/16
    CastleLong.com

    ReplyDelete