Wednesday 17 February 2016

Zurich Chess Challenge

I caught a couple of news reports covering the first round of the 2016 Zurich Chess Challenge, and figured  I would catch up with it later in the week. Turns out I missed the whole thing, as it only ran over 3 days.
On the one hand it was a very strong event (Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura, Giri, Aronian, and Shirov), but on the other hand, it felt more like an exhibition than a contest. This was due to the change of format to Rapid+Blitz, with the Classical time controls being pushed aside.
After all the excitement had finished, Hikaru Nakamura and Viswantahan Anand had tied for first place. This is kind of fitting, as Nakamura is probably the fastest player in the world (based on the amount of bullet he plays), while Anand used to hold that unofficial title (at least when he was younger). Oddly enough for a tournament of this type, they decided the winner on tie-break (which was Nakamura), rather than have a fast money sudden death no holds barred steel cage death match playoff.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Anything without Carlsen is sort of like of exhibition, rather than a contest?