Magnus Carlsen Invitational Puns

Official Website

Follow the games here: Chess.com | Chess24

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen tops the field for the $220,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational, the 2nd edition of the event that launched professional online chess when the pandemic struck a year ago. Magnus will be joined by Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Meltwater Champions Chess Tour leaders Wesley So and Teimour Radjabov as the 16-player tournament starts on Saturday March 13th. Breakthrough Initiatives and Breakthrough Junior Challenge are partnering with the event, which will celebrate the 60th anniversary of human space flight.

The 1st Magnus Carlsen Invitational began on April 18th, 2020 with a prize fund that was unprecedented for online chess. It came to a thrilling climax when Magnus beat Hikaru Nakamura in the final, a storyline that would feature throughout what became the $1 million Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. The 2021 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour has built on that success with a prize fund of over $1.5 million, with the 4th event featuring another incredible field.

####Participants

1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 Ke7 3. Ke1 Ke8 4. Ke2 Ke7 5. Ke1 Ke8 6. Ke2 Ke7

The fifth tournament of the Champions Chess Tour will be Magnus Carlsen Invitational again! If you did not know already, here are some resources that will give you an idea of the tournament and this is not going to be some ordinary one (as far as I can tell) as we have a special twist in this tournament!!

championschesstour.com/

championschesstour.com/stellar-line-up-for-space-themed-magnus-carlsen-invitational/

https://youtu.be/HTWNlJl8LLU

chess24.com/en/read/news/magnus-carlsen-faces-firouzja-giri-on-day-1-of-his-invitational

chess24.com/en/read/news/magnus-carlsen-i-just-want-to-win-one-more-tournament

As you are probably already aware (and if not, you are sure to find various summaries of the events in the sub), the first round of the Magnus Carlsen Invitational exposed a few flaws in the current system.

Here is the main problem with using online chess platforms to host a professional event: they were not designed for it.

Things like Titled Arenas (which have far lower stakes than this invitational), work on established conditions, there are no arbiters, there is no ruling other than the programmed one. It works fine for what it is.

Holding tournaments which are more similar to top level FIDE events, requires some specific considerations.

We need software in which only the parties involved can log in.

Having random people challenge you to a 3 minute blitz game while you are competing, having a chat window which you forgot to hide, are all distractions that while arguably minimal, we should do without.

We need a system in which only the right player can log to their corresponding game. We need arbiters to have special accounts which grant them special privileges. Which leads us to

Arbiters should be able to stop the clock and abort the game.

And not just arbiters, but players should be able to pause the clock as well. This is something that happens in classical chess. You can stop the clock if you need an arbiter to intervene and resolve a situation.

In fact, you can do this even better online, than it works OTB, because it would be possible that on pausing the game the position is no longer visible to either player, until the clock is resumed.

Organizers and arbiters need to be able to pre-program specific time controls and tie-break systems.

The players themselves having to set up the games, and challenge each other, is a very primitive notion for a serious professional chess competition.

The organizers and arbiters should be able to designate the whole structure of the tournament: time controls, tie-breaks, pairings, standings, armaggedon games, etc, etc. Even an internal rating system, if necessary.

The system itself should allow for coin tosses, and any other random designation needed.

Hikaru complained that the coin toss wasn't streamed, and with good reason, something like that should be transparent.

Having the system make the toss, would remove any possibility of tampering.

And that takes us to the last point.

Such a system needs to be open source

It's the only way to establish full transparency on how such softwa

TL;DR: I would like to see 3-4 tournaments a year with the format of the MCI also in OTB.

Watching chess competitions I noticed that one way to measure the amount of work produced is the amount of time spent in the game.

Now, from a quick survey of past classical tournaments, especially those more prestigiuos, one can see that on average a classical game lasts around 4 hours (Prestigious: tournaments where there is a spot for the WCC cycle or tournaments with a lot of history).

To adapt it to rapid conditions, as rapid still brings quite some quality, considering 20+10 games, that with a length of 60 moves could be expected to use around 3600 seconds or 1h . Thus having 4 of them would match an average classical game in terms of time spent on the board. If one wants to make an extra, add again 2 games in the case the result is a draw, to get around 6h over the board. After the regular/extra games an armageddon would be there. For armageddon I would be interesting to see what the players would like to have as time for black, given 5 minutes for white.

It would be:

• spectator friendly, exciting as rapid games, due to time pressure, allow less "engine like" solutions in the endgame while still being good in opening/middlegame;
• there would be more games, thus more statistical significance
• more chess games would be produced to be analyzed later.

Now I'll try to address the most vocal objections:

But quality!

I am not saying that the classical format should be abandoned. I like classical too. Only I would like to see more tournaments based, practically, on "minimatches" between two players. Furthermore computer chess/corrispondence chess (if people want to see human involved) is always there for quality. Also few watch a 4 hours single game with focus, let's be real (ok I can expect people doing something else with the match in background, but not really following the ton of analysis and co).

Furthermore a lot of quality, due to the competitive nature of the game, is produced at home during preparation. (the "chess shouldn't be memorization" is not the point I am trying to discuss) Thus not really much would be lost as novelties would pop here and there anyway. On the other side, having more games would reduce the amount of preparation possible for each game, so it would be a bit more of an equalizer.

Why do you want to change chess?

There are vocal people that say, sometimes with a surprising amount of anger "why do you want to chan

Standings

• 15 pt. Hikaru Nakaruma
• 15 pt. Ding Liren
• 13 pt. Magnus Carlsen
• 13 pt. Fabiano Caruana
• 8 pt Ian Nepomniachtchi
• 7 pt. Alireza Firouzja
• 7 pt. Anish Giri
• 6 pt. Maxim Vachier-Lagrave

Format

While I love classical, I would love to see more long tournaments with rapid play as well (complementary to classical). Rapidplay still provides some good moves on average, it is viewership friendly and statistically friendly (in 4 hours one can play much more games than just one).

Moreover some very strong players, who may not be that willing to put effort in classical, or they receive few calls for important tournaments, can shine and produce interesting results and chess in rapid play. Examples: Nakamura and Korobov. Furthermore through rapidplay one can spot earlier potential strong players as their rating/results catch up earlier with their potential.

Players

I am really surprised by Nakamura. I mean, for reddit Nakamura is washed up, although he is still a super GM, he won the grand chess tour in 2018 and the US championship in 2019. Nonetheless in other tournaments his results are less convincing. One would think that is out of the top spots but exactly for this I feel that one should have more long rapid based tournaments, because he was and he is one of the best players in rapid and it is a pity to miss the chances to see him play more. In the past was similar, maybe Anand coul have shown for long time to be the man to beat in rapid, but rapid tournaments were even fewer than today.

His result in the tournament is convincingly putting him as the man to beat, maybe together with Magnus.

I thought another beats would have been MVL, as he in rapid was quite dominating in 2019- He somehow disappointed after the good form in the Candidates.

Caruana also surprised me positively, I was no expecting him to reach the top4.

Nepo is another, like MVL, that somehow disappointed a bit. I was expecting him to get in the top4.

Ding performed as expected, if not better. Magnus maybe went too often for too dubious lines.

Giri performed as expected but in an impressive way. I was expecting him to have chances with Alireza or Caruana. Instead he went to beat Magnus and Caruana. Very well done.

Firo performed better than expected, compared to the performances of Ian and MVL at least.

In general I would say t

Heute ab 15:45 wird auf RBTV das Halbfinale des Schnellschachturniers "Magnus Carlsen Invitational" übertragen, kommentiert mit dem aus Zugzwang bekannten Experten Jan Gustafsson und Eddy sowie später Fabian Krane.

15:45 Pre-Show mit Eddy & Jan
16:00 Start der Partie mit Eddy & Jan
18:00 mit Fabian K. & Jan

Das heutige Halbfinale spielen Magnus Carlsen (Weltranglistenerster im Schnellschach) und Ding Liren (Weltranglistendritter im Schnellschach).

Das Ganze wird laut Plan bis 19 Uhr auf rbtv übertragen. Zugzwang hat jede Menge Spaß gemacht und Jan ist sehr unterhaltsam gewesen. Könnte vielleicht auch heute gute Unterhaltung sein, selbst wenn man sonst eher weniger Schach verfolgt

The distribution of prizes for the Magnus Carlsen Invitational has been revealed:

1st place: Lichess Patreon (you get a cool badge). Worth 250k$

2nd place: big congrats

3rd place: 2 months chess24 premium

4th place: Nigel Short tweets something nice about you (unless you're Ding)

Anish Giri: Chess24 discount

6th place: Chessable's "100 endgames you must know"

7th place: 1 month chess.com premium

8th place: 2 months chess.com premium

Hello Everyone,

For my course in Expert Judgment we are working on trying to predict real world events when the data is limited by asking experts in the field what they think will happen. So r/chess: YOU ARE MY EXPERTS. At first I wanted to predict the Candidates tournament, but since it has been postponed indefitely I had to switch to the Magnus Carlsen Invitational. If you fee like helping me you can fill in this survey:

https://forms.gle/n5Xf57iGwg9JsWGE6.

​

In the form you will be asked to first make some prediction on the how many points the players will get in the first phase and about some marquee matchups. These are called Calibration Questions. Then you will answer some questions about the end of the tournament, these are the Questions of Interest.

Basically the better you do in the Calibration part the higher the weight of your answers for the Questions of Interest will be, so try your best. If you want more information on the tournament here are the links to the chess24 website:

Format and general info:

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/magnus-carlsen-launches-online-chess-super-tournament

Player list reveal:

https://chess24.com/en/read/news/magnus-carlsen-invitational-line-up-revealed

I will post the results when the tournament is finished.

Thanks so much in advance

Big Congrats to Anish Giri on winning the Magnus Carlsen Invitational, the 4th event on the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour and the 2nd Major.

He beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in the final to take the $60,000 top prize and qualify for the Tour final in September.

Photo by Lennart Ootes

Magnus Carlsen defeated Wesley So to take the 3rd place.

Official Website

Follow the games here: Chess.com | Chess24

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen tops the field for the $220,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational, the 2nd edition of the event that launched professional online chess when the pandemic struck a year ago. Magnus will be joined by Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Meltwater Champions Chess Tour leaders Wesley So and Teimour Radjabov as the 16-player tournament starts on Saturday March 13th. Breakthrough Initiatives and Breakthrough Junior Challenge are partnering with the event, which will celebrate the 60th anniversary of human space flight.

The 1st Magnus Carlsen Invitational began on April 18th, 2020 with a prize fund that was unprecedented for online chess. It came to a thrilling climax when Magnus beat Hikaru Nakamura in the final, a storyline that would feature throughout what became the $1 million Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. The 2021 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour has built on that success with a prize fund of over $1.5 million, with the 4th event featuring another incredible field.

####Knockout Bracket

####Format/Time Controls

The Magnus Carlsen Invitational starts Saturday and runs for 9 days, with a 3-day preliminary stage followed by a 6-day knockout. In the preliminary stage each player faces each other player once, with the bottom 8 then eliminated – it’s going to be a cut-throat battle with so many top players fighting for onl

Official Website

Follow the games here: Chess.com | Chess24

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen tops the field for the $220,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational, the 2nd edition of the event that launched professional online chess when the pandemic struck a year ago. Magnus will be joined by Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Meltwater Champions Chess Tour leaders Wesley So and Teimour Radjabov as the 16-player tournament starts on Saturday March 13th. Breakthrough Initiatives and Breakthrough Junior Challenge are partnering with the event, which will celebrate the 60th anniversary of human space flight.

The 1st Magnus Carlsen Invitational began on April 18th, 2020 with a prize fund that was unprecedented for online chess. It came to a thrilling climax when Magnus beat Hikaru Nakamura in the final, a storyline that would feature throughout what became the $1 million Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. The 2021 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour has built on that success with a prize fund of over $1.5 million, with the 4th event featuring another incredible field.

####Knockout Bracket

####Format/Time Controls

The Magnus Carlsen Invitational starts Saturday and runs for 9 days, with a 3-day preliminary stage followed by a 6-day knockout. In the preliminary stage each player faces each other player once, with the bottom 8 then eliminated – it’s going to be a cut-throat battle with so many top players fighting for only 8 spots. The knockout stage again sees the players compete in two 4-game matches over two days, with a playoff featuring two 5+3 blitz games and potentially Armageddon if the match score is tied at 1:1 on the second day. The winner of the knockout will ear

Official Website

Follow the games here: Chess.com | Chess24

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen tops the field for the $220,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational, the 2nd edition of the event that launched professional online chess when the pandemic struck a year ago. Magnus will be joined by Hikaru Nakamura, Alireza Firouzja and Meltwater Champions Chess Tour leaders Wesley So and Teimour Radjabov as the 16-player tournament starts on Saturday March 13th. Breakthrough Initiatives and Breakthrough Junior Challenge are partnering with the event, which will celebrate the 60th anniversary of human space flight.

The 1st Magnus Carlsen Invitational began on April 18th, 2020 with a prize fund that was unprecedented for online chess. It came to a thrilling climax when Magnus beat Hikaru Nakamura in the final, a storyline that would feature throughout what became the $1 million Magnus Carlsen Chess Tour. The 2021 Meltwater Champions Chess Tour has built on that success with a prize fund of over $1.5 million, with the 4th event featuring another incredible field.

####Knockout Bracket

####Format/Time Controls

The Magnus Carlsen Invitational starts Saturday and runs for 9 days, with a 3-day preliminary stage followed by a 6-day knockout. In the preliminary stage each player faces each other player once, with the bottom 8 then eliminated – it’s going to be a cut-throat battle with so many top players fighting for only 8 spots. The knockout stage again sees the players compete in two 4-game matches over two days, with a playoff featuring two 5+3 blitz games and potentially Armageddon if the match score is tied at 1:1 on the second day. The winner of the knockout will earn $60,000 and a guaranteed place in the $300,000 final of the Tour, planned for the Meltwater headquarters in San Francisco t

Magnus Carlsen defeats Hikaru Nakamura in the final 2.5 - 1.5 to win the tournament and $70,000.

The Magnus Carlsen Invitational is being played online from the 18th of April to May the third.

8 players will play for a $250,000 prize fund, with $70,000 for 1st place

The tournament is in 2 parts.

The first is a Match Format Round Robin with the 8 players meeting each other once over four 15 minute + 10 Rapid games, if the mini-match is tied an Armageddon game will decide the result.

The second is the top 4 players contesting a knockout final stage to decide the winner.

First round is 16:00 CEST, Saturday the 18th. Further round times updated when info provided.

Official website

Live video Commentary GMs Svidler and Gustafsson & IM L.Trent

This event may also be followed at the usual places: FICS, ICC, Playchess, ChessBomb, 2700chess, chess.com, Chess24, lichess etc.

Other coverage:

GM Daniel King's analysis of the games.