I think he was responding to this, which I also thought seemed weird.

I think he was responding to this, which I also thought seemed weird.

betting against Mamedyarov and Svidler seems pretty good right now (marathon bet)

Nakamura makes the final 8, the farthest he has made it in a World Cup/KO

Wei needs to Ding Liren to slip in a tablebase draw to hold on. GO.

DING LIREN SLIPS.

Wei Yi now 7.1% to reach the finals!!! After tomorrow's tie breaks he'll either be about 19% or exactly 0%.

Candidates need Wei Yi. They also needed So, but that ship just sank, .

So is reasonably likely as a wildcard, right? Since it's rumoured the candidates will be in the US.

The tablebase draw looks brutal, I'd rather try to hold R vs RB any day. Not sure about the play before that, did both players show unexpectedly poor technique for 2750, or is it just that rook endings are hard?

They were both in time trouble in the ending, almost exclusively to increments at one point.

I imagine any game is hard at this point in the tournament playing basically off of increment.

Will be very interesting to see if Wei can pull it out tomorrow.

I guess So could make it as a wild card, although he rating has been dipping. If he doesn't rebound I assume they'd just go with a higher rated player. I mean, Fabi and Naka are both in it already, right? Seems a bit messed up for the wild card to be another US player if there are several young non-US players with higher ratings at that point who hadn't qualified yet.

I feel like those rumors have been pretty well put to rest. There was an interview where Nakamura flat out said that there was no bid from St. Louis, and while it's certainly possible that there is and he doesn't know about it, or that there is, he knows about it, and the statement was misdirection, I haven't heard much since then to indicate that Rex has placed, or will place, a bid.

If Rex doesn't bring it to St. Louis I can't think of any other likely place in the US for the Candidates to be held, so right now I'm suspecting it will be elsewhere. If I had to pick a favorite I would say Russia, because right now there is actually some possibility of no Russian players qualifying at all, and if that happened I suspect a Russian sponsor would quickly come up with a strong bid for control of the wild card. Even if only one Russian player is in that remains a possibility.

Does this mean that pretty much whoever hosts will put in a player from their own country (assuming they have a player > 2725, which one would assume if they are hosting)? I guess in that case So still has a shot simply b/c it seems like Rex could easily outbid or host it at any point if he wanted to.

Pro blitz tip: Grab your king, lift it past your rook, and slide them both onto the correct positions. All in one motion, it's incredibly fast. You're welcome.

http://chess-news.ru/en/node/20077

Wow. I was rooting for Ian, and it's obvious Nakamura knew he shouldn't castle with both hands, but I felt like Nepomniachtchi was just frustrated he lost the last couple games.

There's no way they should have changed the results after the games (and even if the arbiters did anything during the game, it would likely be just a warning).

I wonder if Ian would have had the same reaction if it was someone other than Hikaru.

This will probably get covered extensively in the round 4 highlights show on chess.com/tv, starting on Tuesday at 13:00 PDT / 16:00 EDT / 21:00 BST (UK and Ireland time), because GM Alex Yermolinsky - one of the hosts - is a specialist in rook endgames and adores pointing out super-GMs' mistakes there

An absolutely impotent organ is a strong phrase.

Naka seems like an incredibly unlikable person.

LOL, some of the stuff Nepo said is hilarious.

http://chess-news.ru/en/node/20074

Wei Yi won on tiebreaks!

I am still confused. Naka is a dirty player b/c of this incident or because people don't like him this is being used as confirmation bias?

Maybe I am really naive but I still think he could have done a two hands castle as part of the moment rather than some sort of sinister calculation to get a very small time edge. I have seen (in the past anyway) GMs doing such things playing casual blitz and if he is used to doing that why is it nefarious for it to crop up under pressure?

Anyway, whatever. Maybe after Naka is done with the tournament he will post some choice quotes. He much produces GOAT quotes when he opens his mouth.

17.8% to qualify for the Candidates Tournament now!

chess.com published a video interview with Naka where they asked him about it and he said basically that this is fine to do using US rules, he plays mostly blitz tourneys in the US, he forgot/wasn't aware the rule was differently here. Says it obviously wasn't done for gamesmanship or to generate any edge, just a habit from playing in the US.

I met Naka at the London Chess Classic a couple years ago. He certainly seemed friendly (though to be fair we had some friends of friends connections) and was happy to take a picture with me after his game.

Oh man, I was hoping he would spit some hot fire. I guess he cannot provide GOAT quotes all the time.