Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship: The Winner Is..
...to be announced in the comments. The video, for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the video, should be available at twitch.tv/chess.
...to be announced in the comments. The video, for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the video, should be available at twitch.tv/chess.
The grand finale of the 2017 event begins Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. PT, which is 1 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. CET. Magnus Carlsen is the favorite, of course, but if anyone can stop him in online blitz and bullet it's Hikaru Nakamura. For those who haven't followed any of the Chess.com events, it will transpire in three stages: 90 minutes of 5'+2", 60 minutes of 3'+2", and 30 minutes of 1'+1", with each segment punctuated by a Chess960 game at that time control.
More info here.
The second semi-final of Chess.com's Speed Chess Championship is over, and we now know who will face Magnus Carlsen in the final, set for January 3 at 1 p.m. ET. It was a close match, and for those who didn't see it live but want to watch the replay (go to twitch.tv/chess and look up the Nakamura-Karjakin match) without any spoilers I'll put the recap in the comments section.
The second semi-final of Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship starts tomorrow (Saturday) and features a battle of the #2 and #3 seeds, Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura, respectively. The format is the same as always: 90 minutes of 5'+2" chess followed by 60 minutes of 3'+2" and 30 minutes of 1'+1". After each segment finishes there's a Chess960 game at that time control, and all the games count equally - it's the standard 1-.5-0 scoring system.
The action begins at noon ET (= 6 p.m. CET), and the winner will face Magnus Carlsen, who defeated Wesley So in the other semi-final in November. More info here.
It just finished; spoilers will be provided in the comments section. The other semi-final hasn't been set yet, but the commentators suggested that it might be on December 15.
With apologies to those who haven't yet seen the result of the Carlsen-So match, this post is kind of a spoiler. Unfortunately, since the semi-final match between Magnus Carlsen and Alexander Grischuk starts today at 1 p.m. ET, it seemed to me better to spill the beans and give fans the chance to watch the new match live than to keep the suspense about Carlsen-So a little while longer. (And while those of us rooting for So may have hoped for the best, I don't think too many of us held out real hopes that he'd manage to slay the Norwegian viking.)
Anyway, the match will have the usual format of (slightly more than) three hours' playing time, with 90 minutes of 5'+2" action, 60 minutes of 3'+2", and a final half-hour of 1'+2". Carlsen and Grischuk met in this competition last year as well, and it was pretty close until the bullet games, when Carlsen put the pedal to the metal and pulled away. Will Grischuk do better this time around? Maybe...but I wouldn't bet on it.
The last quarterfinal match in Chess.com's 2017 Speed Chess Championship took place last Saturday, and saw world champion Magnus Carlsen face off against erstwhile world #2 Wesley So. I'll post a summary of the action in the comments, and you can watch the video of the action here.
This was played a few days ago, the third of the four quarter-final matches. You can watch the broadcast here, and I'll give the result and the bracket in the comments.
Alexander Grischuk won his blitz and bullet match over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave last week in good style, and that was especially true of this game (given with my light annotations). If you play either side of the Grand Prix Attack, you'll want to check it out.
Today's match was a rout, so I'll mention it up front: Sergey Karjakin won handily against Ian Nepomniachtchi, 20-10. He'll play the winner of the upcoming match between Fabiano Caruana and Nakamura. The match just ended so there's no archive link yet, but you'll be able to find it on Twitch.tv's chess channel.