You cannot divide by the amount of things I understand in that game.

Head completely exploded..

That was glorious.

That was the chess equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting.

by the look of houdini, it doesn't look like they understood much of it either!

In the first round, I should have destroyed a 2600+ GM, would have been my first GM scalp. Instead of 26. Bb5?! I can play Qh4 and f5-f6 and he has to give up the queen to avoid mate, instead I lost the plot and ended up losing.

http://chessbomb.com/o/2013-ecc/01-_...-Solak_Dragan/

second round I got another GM and managed to win, but much less convincingly after he blundered in a drawn ending.

http://chessbomb.com/o/2013-ecc/02-_...-Murray_David/

unfortunately it went a bit downhill after that, we got a bye and played the local tail-enders, but still a fun tournament to be in. Fantastic result for Novy Bor yesterday, should make for a very interesting final day.

Nice games, and congrats on the first win over a GM.

Congrats RT, and a nice Friday for Novy Bor's top boards indeed, Navara-Wojtaszek-Laznicka beating Caruana-Topalov-Kamsky 3-0 is quite a feat

Congrats on the first GM win, that's a big accomplishment. And here's to many more

http://chessbase.com/Home/TabId/211/...de-291013.aspx
Karpov 4/4 as Black with (Qd6 scandi ftw), Chuky chukying it up

So while I wasn't paying attention, it appears that Wei Yi crushed the "ASIAN CITIES CHESS TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS - DUBAI CUP" with 7.5/9. Four of the games were weaker opponents (three FMs and a CM), whom he dispatched with a perfect 4/4. The other five games were against GM opposition, and he cruised with 3.5/5 (+2=3). Net projected rating result from the nine games: +13.4.

Add in rounds 11-14 of the Chinese Chess League, which I've mentioned previously on this forum, projecting to add +6.5 to his rating, as well as rounds 8-10 of the Chinese Chess League (which I didn't realize hadn't been rated yet) projecting to add +2.6, and another +1.9 from his 7/9 score at the World Youth U-16 Olympiad, and Wei Yi currently projects to see a total rating change of +24.4 when the new rating list comes out in three days. These are projections directly from FIDE mind you.

What's the big deal about all of this? Well he was 2580 in the last rating list. So it appears that in three days he will become the youngest player to ever boast a published rating over 2600. And he's getting there 292 days faster than the previous record holder (Karjakin, unless there's someone who did it faster that I don't know about) who published a 2599 rating a few days before his 15th birthday, and broke 2600 three months later. Wei Yi isn't even 14 1/2 yet.

That's pretty incredible. Almost a full year ahead of Karjakin? Wow. He didn't beat Karjakin to youngest GM, did he? His improvement post-GM has been better, is that it?

Correct, he was quite a bit slower to the GM title than Karjakin ("only" the fourth youngest GM ever), but his GM > 2600 progression was ridiculously fast.

Now the question is what's next? Some people get to 2600 super young, and then never go much higher (see Hou Yifan so far). Other prodigies do eventually take that next step and proceed from 2600 to 2700... but take quite some time to get there (see Wesley So). And others still just don't even slow down at 2600 and blaze straight on through to 2700 and beyond (see Magnus Carlsen). It's too early to tell which category Wei Yi will end up in.

What happens next, though, has no bearing on how ridiculously impressive it is for him to be breaking the 2600 barrier already.

Now that Wei Yi is getting too old to be that interesting any more, it's time for our next edition of Prodigy Watch!

I give you Awonder Liang.

Now, he was already impressive enough to have his own Wikipedia entry based on things like winning the world U-8 championship (and earning the FM title) two years ago. And being the youngest player to ever defeat an IM in a standard tournament game. And being the youngest player to ever defeat a GM in a standard tournament game. And as the Wikipedia page shows, he had a 2160 rating in the FIDE September list.

But in the last two months, he first scored 5/9 in the 2013 US Masters tournament, gaining 47.4 rating points, and then he followed it up with another 5/9 in the 2013 Spice Cup Open gaining another 37.5 rating points.

Now on the November FIDE rating list he's going to publish a rating of 2247. At the age of 10 years, 6 months, and 23 days. How were some other players rated at ten and a half? Wei Yi was 2244. Karjakin was 2250. Carlsen was "only" 2084. Go Mr. Liang, go! Just don't let your studies slip - fourth grade is important.

Awonder Liang is indeed a very impressive player. Didn't he break the USCF record for youngest NM? I think so but I can't remember exactly.

I know I'm a homer for the Dallas kids, but mind if I suggest Jeffrey Xiong? He turned 13 yesterday and is currently rated 2471 USCF (been over 2500 before) and ~2350 FIDE. He is #9 in the world in the U-14 division, which is pretty impressive since he literally just turned 13. He has all 3 IM norms and is just waiting for his rating to cross 2400 to officially get the title. He just won this year's USCL MVP award, going 8-0 on boards 2 and 3 with a performance rating of 2700+. Pretty incredible. I looked at his rating progress, and he was right in line with the other promising youngsters on his rise from 1700-2200 USCF, but that just kept going and didn't really slow down like many do. He hit 2200 in 1/2011, 2300 in 9/2011, 2400 in 5/2012, and 2500 in 3/2013. Going from 2200 to 2500 in just 2 years, 2 months is pretty fantastic.

He's definitely one to watch. The sky is the limit for him.

Nice nomination. Xiong's peak FIDE rating of 2376 last May, when he was 12.5 years old, was definitely spectacular. Higher than Carlsen or Wei Yi at the same age.

At this exact moment the Xiong star has dimmed just the slightest bit because in the six months since that May peak he's actually dropped rating points, down to 2344, and he no longer is quite as impressive in direct comparison to some of the other famous prodigies. By their 13th birthday, Carlsen was 2450, Caruana was 2381, Wei Yi was 2376, Karjakin was 2547(!), Hou Yifan was 2509(!), Wesley So was 2411, Richard Rapport was 2371, Daniil Dubov was 2372, and Parimarjan Negi was 2396. And Sam Sevian hasn't turned 13 yet, but is already 2384. So that's a relatively sizable list of people who were rated higher than Xiong at the same age. Yes, I have rating (by age) in a spreadsheet for all of those players, plus Nakamura, Wang Hao, Giri, Liang, Anton Smirnov, and Andrey Esipenko.

However all of those players have seen rating dips at some point that weren't permanent. And while all those players I mentioned were rated higher than Xiong at the age of 13, most were only about 30-50 points better, and like Liang showed twice in the last two months, that can be gained in one great tournament! So yeah, Xiong definitely has "sky's the limit" potential. As long as the last six months are the anomaly, and he throws down some big rating gains soon, he's definitely got a fantastic chance to keep pace with the benchmarks set by past prodigies.

Not a one of them is welcome on my lawn.

I enjoyed this blog post: http://stinarscyanide.wordpress.com/...logy-of-chess/

Quotes from Magnus - thought dropping it off here would be a decent idea:

http://thechessworld.com/learn-chess...magnus-carlsen

Yeah, pretty good. Although the color combo on that blog is pretty damn tilting. I had to highlight the opening/ending quotes just to read them without my eyes bleeding too much.

Online documentary about Carlsen. Its on the website of a Norwegian newspaper, but its in English.

http://www.vgtv.no/#!/video/73427/ma...last-big-title

I solved that puzzle they showed in the beginning in 3-5 minutes. Carlsen you suck.

cool documentary..
didn't liked how much they tried to make an "alien" out of him

A few days late, but the Financial Times had a pretty interesting article on Vishy and how he's preparing for the upcoming match:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b531e...#axzz2jiQ5sPWZ

Just finished reading 2 amazing articles on chess.com
(I am beginner so this is probably gonna be boring to some of you, but players like myself.. could find it helpful , and some of advanced players might find it interesting to refresh their knowledge and see some examples/puzzles)

1) http://www.chess.com/article/view/em...-consciousness

and

2) http://www.chess.com/article/view/ho...ain-your-brain

Altho Article 1 is written before article 2 (for less experienced players) I would say go an read 2nd one first as article 1 is more advanced and assume you are familiar with article 2 (A2 is an explanation of A1)

Hi. There is a chess-themed werewolf game that will run in POG next monday (if there will be enough partecipation, that is).
If you're intrigued by werewolf, you should consider joining.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/59...gn-up-1385867/