NICK BARNETT CHESS

THE SECOND leg of the Grand Chess Tour (June

24 - July 9) is taking place in Zagreb, Croatia. There have been six rounds and as of the 3rd of July

Magnus Carlsen and Wesley So had caught up with Nepomniachtchi on 4 points out of 6. Fabiano Caruana and Levon Aronian had also won, while the only draw of the day was seen in Anish Giri versus Vishy Anand. Former World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov was interviewed during the live stream event in round 5. He spoke about the hectic schedule today’s players have and said that when he was playing chess, sixty to seventy games were the most he would play in a year’s calendar, now the modern elite master plays double that amount. There had been a lot of strange blunders made by the players and he felt that there is no chess-related explanation for these mistakes, concluding that the players were tired.

With this in mind his admiration for Carlsen was immense: ‘Carlsen definitely belongs to the greatest of the greats. The way he dominates chess reminds us of the three years of Bobby Fischer (1970-72). It reminds of my best years and I think that’s enough to already to recognize his great contribution to the game of chess.’

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A RECORD PRICE of 735 thousand pounds has been has been paid for a medieval chess piece (more than R13 milion). The piece was pronounced to be part of the famous Lewis chess set. To quote Wikipedia: ‘The Lewis chessmen, named after the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other game pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets.’

This one piece was kept in a drawer of an Edinburgh home and its previous owners had no idea that the object was one of the long-lost Lewis Chessmen. The Edinburgh family’s grandfather, an antiques dealer, had bought the chess piece for £5 in 1964!

Sotheby’s expert Alexander Kader, who examined the piece for the family, said his ‘jaw dropped’ when he realised what they had in their possession.

The newly-discovered piece is a warder, a man with helmet, shield and sword, which ‘has immense character and power’.

The Lewis Chessmen are among the biggest draws at the British Museum and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.

There is more about them on Wikipedia ‘Lewis chessmen’ and on Youtube ‘The Lewis Chessmen Masterpieces of the British Museum’.

For more comment or news write to thechessnik@ gmail.com

PUZZLE BY C Planck

White to move and mate in 2.