Perpetual Chess Linkfest #21, January 20, 2023
Happy Friday everyone! We had a bit of a slow news week, but we have had some beautiful chess games played in Wijk aan Zee, and discussion of the World Championship cycle’s demise turned out to be exaggerated, or at least premature. Although in my biased opinion, Mexico or Argentina might have been preferable locales to Kazakhstan, where it will take place. Oh well. On to this week’s links…
Chess Improvement Posts
GM Gregory Serper with another great post about how many classic chess maneuvers are credited to the wrong people. “As a matter of fact, it seems to me that chess ideas are rarely named after their true inventors.” (Chess.com Blog)
“ChessCorner” Shows some Instructive Examples of Castling into Open Air in Order to Attack on the Other Side of the Board as Black (Chess.com Blog)
IM Jakob Pfreundt shares some of the tools he is trying out in his continued pursuit of 2500 FIDE. (LiChess Blog)
Tata Steel
“Carlsen had not lost two classical games in succession since Stavanger 2015 and the double defeat will raise questions about the wisdom of his controversial decision to opt out of defending his world classical crown.” (Leonard Barden for The Guardian)
Magnus Carlsen steadied the ship today with a draw against Jorden Van Foreest in Round 6, but surprisingly lost two days in a row preceding that. Meanwhile, GM Norbirek Abdusattorov is in the lead. “The Uzbekistan prodigy looks to be on the cusp of becoming an absolute monster.” (Colin McGourty for Chess24 News) (GM Daniel King Video Recap of Carlsen-Abdusattorov )
JJ Lang with a nice rundown of some of the highlights of the Challengers Section (Chess Life Online)
GM Jon Speelman annotates a few games from the young Indian phenoms playing in Wijk aan Zee. “When I turned to the January FIDE list of the top juniors of 20 or under, it was utterly terrifying.” (Chessbase News)
Long Live the World Championship
The Ding-Nepo will take place as scheduled in Kazakstan beginning on April 7. (Colin McGourty for Chess24 News)
Misc.
R.I.P. to long time Chess Life Magazine Columnist, FM Alex Dunne (Chess Life Online)
And that concludes this week’s linkfest- see y’all next week- Ben