Calling up a bank and getting an acct balance is not out of the ordinary at all (I had occasion to do this as the secondary on an acct about a month ago, answered all the questions, no problem)

Fwiw, the way So's posts are written seems odd to me, like they are almost press releases. So I wonder if he really is writing them or they're heavily coached. But other than that, his biological mom seems crazy.

So hard to even figure out what's going on at all.

Also, while he had an atrocious tournament, he did win the most games of anyone there, which is a likely good sign. Naka didn't have to press much, so who knows how many he would have won if So was breathing down his neck, but still.

The whole story about Paul Truong makes no sense. He's mad at So for quitting the chess team so he hatches a revenge plot to bring his mother to the tournament to throw him off? Only a crazy person would find this plausible.

It's possible that So has a huge persecution complex (wouldn't be a unique occurrence for a chess player), but more likely he is just a naïve kid and is being manipulated by someone in his entourage.

I'm not believing anything Truong says, he was a total nutjob/power abuser when he was admining chess.net back in the day and RT summed up where he's shown up since then. Having a hard time picking a side here

I don't know anything about him, but the story seems totally absurd even if he is a nutjob. But who knows? Being around chess you do meet some interesting characters.

Don't know what to say about the family stuff, but regarding the forfeit I think it's worth sharing Curtains' take. Very reasonable imo:

https://gregshahade.wordpress.com/20...have-happened/

The idea of not accepting the immediate win seems absurd to me.

I don't even think it's his option to 'accept' the win or not, is it?

It was his option not to report or beg the arbiter to choose a milder penalty.

Wall of text posted by So on his FB wall. Poor dude

Yeah, that's what I linked to previously. I'm finding it hard not to sympathize almost exclusively with Wesley although something weird is definitely going on from his end too. But in his post game interviews he seems charming in a nerd/this dude only plays chess way. His motivational notes are awesome. And his responses on issues seem much more coherent and reasonable than anyone else. But, it's clear no one involved is handling this situation very maturely or optimally and it seems impossible to tell exactly what is going on.

Oops Yeah agree that the whole thing is impossible to figure out.

I don't care for Shahade's take on this. While he does place primary responsibility on So, he thinks that the TD shouldn't have threatened him with forfeiture and then followed through with a forfeiture, even though So had already been warned twice to not write notes for himself.

Even worse, he then rambles on about how people are going to forever associate Akobian with being a bad sport. I guess it depends on how many others in the chess world besides for Shahade are bending over backwards to displace some of this blame for this forfeit on everyone other than So.

I don't think curtainz is blaming Akobian at all. Instead, he's pointing out that Akobian had a more +EV opportunity than accepting the forfeit.

Given curtainz (and his sister's) involvement in the professional US chess scene I'd imagine it's not just complete handwaving and such general impressions can affect future coaching/broadcasting opportunities.

If you want to pick on something he threw in randomly, it's Nakamura's tweet. That definitely seemed unnecessary but also fairly unnecessary for curtainz to mention it. But, *shrug*, that wasn't the focus of his blog.

Regarding the bolded portion, it's not like Curtains is saying that So shouldn't have been threatened with a penalty, or that the threat shouldn't have been followed through on when the notes continued to be written. Rather, he's pointing out that a lesser penalty (time reduction) could have been threatened and then applied instead. I absolutely agree that this would have been a better way to handle it. If it gets to a point where you end up deducting time from So's clock, then threaten forfeiture if the behavior still continues.

The incremental approach would absolutely have been an option under the rules, and would have made a lot more sense. And I agree with Curtains that if a tangible actual penalty (rather than "just" a warning) had been applied, it probably would have been enough to stop the behavior. And if not, then sure, forfeit him at that point.

Curtains is right, the TD should have made a tangible forfeit (loss of 15 minutes or whatever), despite what I originally said. I still find it hard to fathom how with two warnings the arbiter didn't manage to communicate to So that this behaviour wasn't OK. After the second time you have to sit down with the player and make certain that he absolutely understands the rules, right? Still, I believe So that he didn't understand this for whatever reason. I think forfeiting him would be more reasonable if you are running a 200-player Swiss where a second offence is more like a '**** you' to the arbiter (even then, giving a token time penalty for the second offence makes everything cleaner).

Blaming Akobian still seems ridiculous.

Nakamura tweeting a dickish tweet shouldn't be news. It doesn't really matter whether he's trying to play up to some public image as a bad boy or whether he's actually a c***, making the story even partly about him is still wrong.

Naka is an amazing troll.

Nakamura's postgame interviews are always the best though.

"So how does it feel being US Champ again?"

"Ehh, I mean, obviously it's better than not being US Champ but it's not like it matters."

"Well, some of your fans are pretty excited."

"Obviously. But it really doesn't mean anything."

"So, what you're saying is that you don't care about US chess or its fans?"

"Well no, obviously I care. But I mean, this was just a meaningless tournament in my schedule."

"How about being world #2?"

"Obviously ratings and world rank doesn't matter."

This is when Maurice Ashley's head exploded. RIP Maurice.

So was warned that he could not write notes on his score sheet. For some reason he took this literally and wrote notes on a second sheet of paper under his score sheet which then lead to the forfeit. That's what he didn't understand.

Is that really Naka's interview? Jesus. Guy says obviously a lot.

Obviously, if I was #2 in the world and #1 in the world continually skull****ed me in classic time controls I would obviously spend every waking moment obviously telling everybody that obviously world ranking obviously doesn't matter.

naka taking interview lessons from belicheck it seems

That really happened? Yikes.

I am paraphrasing. I assumed everyone had seen some of his postgame interviews, lol.

I mean, he doesn't come off quite that bad but it's almost what he's saying. He spent most of his last round interview, after being congratulated on winning the tournament, talking about how the tournaments he's won so far this year are super meaningless but "obviously" it's better to have won them than not. I think his focus is solely on getting into the world champ challenger tournament (I'm going to assume despite having such a high rating he's struggled to qualify in past years) and the next event is one he has to do well towards that goal, not any of his recent ones. I get where he's coming from but he doesn't have to be such an ass about winning an historically tough US Champ field and performing well in it, even if it's "expected."

Wesley OTOH is pretty great in his postgame interviews imo.

This isn't exactly true, he only two chances in the last cycle. During the FIDE Grand Prixe 2012-2013 and the luckbox World Cup and no opportunity the prior cycle (Kasparov's rookie mistake telling Nakamura to avoid the weak US championship in 2013 when it was a world cup qualifer) And he's not the only one with high rating that hasn't qualifed, there are only so many spots available.

You could say the same for Caruana who has had a higher rating during this same 3-4 year time frame and has also had the same difficulty except Caruana had one more chance with the cycle prior (World Cup).

But this Candidates Tournament should be pretty much be the changing of the guard, when the older generation gives way to the newer. Let's see if Aronian will be part of the former or latter. Anand, Kramnik and one of TopalovGelfand/Ivanchuk trio probably should be ceding their perennials spots for the 2018 cycle and beyond. That frees up 3 spots (or 4 if Aronian doesn't massively reclaim the #2 ranking) for the young guns going forward.

Hou Yifan has 3 years to nab one of them.

Had he devoted as much time and energy to chess as to football I bet Belichick would be at least an FM. Guy talks with acute precision about formations that used to be run in the 1960s. You know he would have an encyclopedic knowledge of master games as well as fantastic opening and defensive theory. Plus, he'd be great at cheating.

There are plenty of celebrities it would be fun to play against. Anyone speculate as to Stanley Kubrick's rating*? I don't think he officially had one. Maybe we can estimate based on information I've heard. Such as him and George C. Scott played "a lot" on the set of Dr. Strangelove and Scott never beat Kubrick, but was described as a strong player himself.

A cool photo of them playing. Apparently it was like the only time Kubrick would stop work on the set. To play chess, and only against Scott (who was probably the only one worth his time?)


If we make assumptions on Scott's rating, and assumptions about how many games they may have played, and Kubrick's expected points with nothing but wins and draws, maybe we could determine how many points ahead of Scott he was. Or, we could just be like who cares.

*Peak. Current is 0.