Cancelled events but the World Chess Championship is still going on

This is great because everything from the NBA to the now Olympics is gone.

They call it the FIDE Candidates tournament. A few guys, the top Grand Masters in the world, fight it out to see who will get to play the current world Champ, Magnus Carlsen



en.wikipedia.org...

They seem not to have the usual audience and they are practicing the elbow bump most of the time rather than a handshake but this esteemed chess tournament is going full blast.

The 2020 Candidates Tournament is an eight-player chess double round-robin tournament being played in Yekaterinburg, Russia, from 17 March to 4 April 2020.[1]
The winner will earn the right to challenge the defending world champion, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, in the World Chess Championship 2020 match.

Greta Chess site


A nice diversion from all of this coronavirus attention.

Hoping for Nepo vs Carlsen as Carlsen has a score to settle against him.

Also, feel for the 2 Chinese players whose performances were clearly affected by the Virus protocol they had to submit to.

Too bad it wasn't in Vegas...I might have gotten some work finally...its been months now.

a reply to: Tucket


I like Nepo too, but he lost today to Maxime.

The Candidates Has Been Postponed | Reactions From Officials and Grandmasters


Sorry to say the match has been postponed

a reply to: Willtell

A very interesting situation has developed now that Radjabov, who withdrew before the tourney started, is vindicated. FIDE hasn't issue an apology to him or other players who called for postponement awhile back. They certainly appear incompetent since they started the tourney while other major world sporting events were shutting down.

a reply to: Tucket

Azerbaijan is oil country and oil was potentially signaling a crash Feb 28th.
As Nakamura explained the dominoes were in place but the degree of global lock down was not really foreseeable by people that weren't in the loop.
Does Vishy Anand always blink like that?

a reply to: Tucket


Yeah. And I liked Radjabov's chances, I was disappointed when he didn't play but I'm sure he had good reasons.


I think Ding's bad play is proof the guys were preoccupied.

a reply to: Willtell

Really just a time of day announcement.

World chess players working in the limelight have learned they must conform.
Remember the Bobby Ficsher incident that occurred while Yugoslavia was under a United Nations embargo? His participation led to a conflict with the US government, which warned Fischer that his participation in the match would violate an executive order imposing US sanctions on Yugoslavia. The US government ultimately issued a warrant for his arrest. After that, Fischer lived his life as an émigré.

On 1 March 2020, the UN released US$15 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to help vulnerable countries battle the spread of the COVID-19.

Not all countries are in the CERF loop however:

"In 2018, six Member States that had not donated for at least a year returned as donors: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Guyana, Iraq and Mongolia."

Chinese wu? The Siege of Wuhan?

originally posted by: Slichter
a reply to: Tucket

Azerbaijan is oil country and oil was potentially signaling a crash Feb 28th.
As Nakamura explained the dominoes were in place but the degree of global lock down was not really foreseeable by people that weren't in the loop.
Does Vishy Anand always blink like that?

Radjabov himself said he had connections to people in the loop and that the decision to withdraw was the obvious thing to do. Either way, Radjabov was right, but FIDE has already said that when the tournament resumes, it will not be started over, and Radjabov wont be included. He's pissed, and you can't really blame him.

a reply to: Tucket

Looks like they were having air transport difficulties getting home.

www.theguardian.com...


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