NICK BARNETT CHESS

AS YOU READ this, the second leg of the Grand Chess Tour will be half way through the tournament in Zagreb, Croatia. It started on the June 24 and will end on July 9, 2019. This is the first of two classical events which will see all 12 full tour participants compete over 11 rounds of classical chess for a prize fund of $325,000. The participants include in alphabetical order: Viswanathan Anand, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Anish Giri, Sergey Karjakin, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Wesley So and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. To follow go to https://grandchesstour.org. For results see Results and Standings. * * * MAGNUS CARLSEN made the national news on Tuesday after he launched and funded a new chess club that sparked instant controversy. It aims to force the national chess federation (Norges Sjakkforbund, NSF) to promote changes that would liberalize both gambling in Norway and sports sponsorship rules. He offered to pay the membership fee (NOK 520 or R875 for adults and NOK 260 or R475 for juniors) for the first 1,000 members of his new club, in return for a binding agreement that they’d vote for a certain proposal, namely the Kindred agreement. Critics claim Carlsen is essentially buying votes to challenge the federation’s democratic principles: ‘He wants to buy a victory for the proposed agreement (between Kindred and NSF),’ the chairman of Bergen Schakklub, Eirik Gullaksen. Carlsen’s manager Espen Agdestein stressed that Carlsen alone was behind the establishment of the new club and not Kindred. At heart, this political move has to do with the fact that Carlsen felt that the federation didn’t (or couldn’t) help him much earlier. ‘He thinks there’s great potential within Norwegian chess,’ Agdestein said, ‘but it’s completely impossible for the young players to really commit themselves to chess with the (low) budgets Norwegian chess has had and operates with.’ ‘This is a bit of a surprising move by Magnus,’ the federation’s president, Morten L Madsen, told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK). He says that he’s asked federation officials to evaluate whether what Carlsen is doing complies with regulations. Carlsen’s stated goal is to form a large new club with enough members who’ll be able to vote at an upcoming federation meeting in favour of a proposal to accept a sponsorship agreement with Kindred Group worth NOK 50 million (nearly USD million). By Tuesday 25th June Carlsen’s new club had attracted its first 1,000 members with Carlsen paying as much as NOK 520,000 to cover their membership fees. Agdestein said ‘He wants to mobilize the young and engage himself in the (chess financing) issue.’ For comment or news write to thechessnik@gmail.com

White to move and mate in 2