NICK BARNETT CHESS
IF GM MAGNUS Carlsen wanted to offer hope that the crown of the World Championship was something his opponents could still aspire to, then GM Wesley So’s win at the the online Opera Euro Rapid, should do the trick. Part of the 2021 online Champions Chess Tour, it showed Carlsen first blundering against Daniil Dubov. Carlsen ruefully conceded that he was in a ‘deep funk’ and later that it was ‘a sorrily disgusting performance’. Dubov said: ‘We both played like idiots. He plays like an idiot quite often, but not everybody manages to exploit it.’
In the end Wesley So won, Magnus Carlsen came second and GM Teimour Radjabov, third.
The Champions online tour finishes in September 2021.
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FIDE has announced that the Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg, Russia, will resume with the 8th round taking place on April 19th, 389 days after the event was stopped midway. The chess world should finally get to know who Magnus Carlsen will face in his 5th World Championship match, scheduled for Dubai in November.
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NEW IN CHESS began publication in 1984. In the days before the internet, this little magazine was the first global source of news about top chess.
The chief editors were International Grandmaster Jan Timman and Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam. It contains notes by top players and chess prodigies about their own games. Typical contributions are from players such as Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, Péter Lékó, Judit Polgár, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Veselin Topalov, Alexander Grischuk, and Hou Yifan.
It appears eight times a year and publishes Yearbooks four times per year which offer opening surveys and theoretical articles.
Along with most ‘in print’ offerings it probably suffered from the preponderance of online publishing, so it is good news that the Play Magnus Group company has acquired New in Chess. The latest NiC includes an article about who may have been the model for Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit. GM Larry Kaufman suggests it may have Dianna Lanni, board two for the US in the 1982 Lucerne Olympiad and thus known to the book’s author, Walter Tevis.
Lanni progressed from beginner at age 19 to her peak result, an Olympiad draw against the legendary Nona Gaprindashvili, women’s world champion from 1962 to 1978.
To subscribe to NIC and see the plethora of other books they publish go to www.newinchess.com. * * *
REMEMBER to check facebook.com/SACHESSPLAYERS for tournaments in South Africa. You need to do it often because notice is usually quite short.
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