I know the last post was supposed to be about the Grand
Chess tour and was supposed to be published around six months ago, but hey life
sometimes gets in the way. So where I have been, school is over for now, I may
go back in a few years but I doubt it, it was a second master’s degree and just
for fun. The big part was I had a new job and was giving that most of my
attention for the last six months which paid off as I recently received a
promotion. J Ironically,
it means less things to do but more responsibility and of course more payJ. That second part has
me excited because it means more chess stuff; new boards and pieces, clocks,
books, and videos. All kinds of goodies and more playing in events J more on this later.
The Candidates tournament finished this afternoon, while I am
disappointed that neither of the Americans made it through to face Magnus, the tournament
was very fun to watch and to follow. Sergey Karjakin is going to put a good
fight for the WC, which hopefully will still be held in NYC.
Today however, I would like to talk a little bit about how
people watch chess tournaments. To me there are two really exciting shows that
are must watch events when it comes to chess tournaments. First is the Chess24
live commentary. Jan Gustafsson and his team do an amazing job with their analysis
and keep the shows lively and interesting. However, there are some areas that
could and hopefully will be fixed soon. First is the time on the clocks, I don’t
know how to fix this or even if it can be fixed but, the times on the games on
Chess24 are not correct and will run out on the site when the player has plenty
of time left. This leads to confusion and lessons the overall experience. In my
opinion the banter between Jan and whoever he has on with him makes up for any
issues. Chess24 is great and if you are looking for a new place to play give a
Chess24 a shot.
The second show that is a must watch was the “Today in Chess”
show produced by the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. In this
show Grandmasters, Maurice Ashley, Alexandro Ramirez. Eric Hansen and of course
the great Yasser Seirawan walker the viewers through all completed games,
discussing theory, alternate lines, giving insights into what the players might
be thinking, and showing where players may have gone wrong. They would return
to the games that were still in progress and giving move by move analysis. No
punches were pulled during the broadcasts with GM Ashely and GM Hansen giving
there honest opinions of the position and the play of the Super GMs, Topalov
and Giri were frequent victims. GM Ramirez was great as always, he serves as a
great co-host with GM Seriawan and I hope they bring him back for the US
Championships.
The banter between the four GMs was fantastic and greatly enhanced
the tournament, I loved the format and believe that this may be the future of
Chess TV. A two to three hour recap show that starts about an hour before the
round ends is a great idea. Chess fans can get caught up on the situation that
has unfolded but will not miss the excitement of the end of the round. I would
like to see this continue for all major tournaments where the CCSCSL is not
doing a full broadcast. I would love to see this format for the World Cup, Chess
Olympiad, and three or four of the biggest tournaments outside of the Grand
Chess Tour (would like to see those as full shows), and I would like to see a
recap of the Bundesliga matches or a weekly bi-weekly show that covers what happened
since the last show. This was a great format and allows the causal chess fan to
get caught up on what is going on in the chess world in just two hours.
Hopefully CCSCSL can keep this program running
If you haven’t seen either of these programs please check
out the Today in Chess here: https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub
And Chess24’s coverage here: https://www.youtube.com/user/chess24media
