I'm officially an Annie Wang fan!

What a vicious, merciless girl!

Rut roh! Not so vicious and merciless this game. We might be in for an Armageddon. Let's hope she gets black.

And she does get black!

Agreed that it seems too favorable for Black. Commentating team kept talking about how Annie might choose White, but I don't see that. Tough break for Nazi. Hopefully she has more good prep, I'd like to see her win. Spent too much time on her instagram to root for anyone else, lol.

They are having trouble picking a favorite. I mean, it's gotta be at least slightly Black, yeah? Surprised Jenn, a somewhat or fully a professional gambler, went with Nazi.

Annie is going to find some miracle perpetual. Mark my words!

I love how when Maurice insists a player will play a specific move he's wrong such a high % of the time. It's pretty great.

Lol, perpetual hasn't been a possibility at all in this 3rd game.

Hasn't Nazi gone something like:
2015: 2nd
2016: 1st
2017: 2nd
2017: 1st

Seems she should actually try to play chess the rest of the year!

I didn't say perpetual. I said miracle perpetual.

Well, yeah. But, I mean, she didn't even have more than 1 clean check the entire game. But, yeah, she seemed to be trying to make it happen.

I mean, as a German, I should definitely root for Nazi, I guess.

Still, Annie would have been so deserving after the run she had.

Also, it seems ridiculous to list Annie Wang as a WIM. Pretty sure she, and the other WIM women (or most) are FMs already.

Also, lol at this.

Annie really botched the last round strategy. She has a little too much Fedoseev in her at the moment. Also weird to repeat the 2nd game after only a couple of minutes of prep. I mean, yes her coach could say where Nazi went wrong, but Nazi would also probably know that and in general it's the type of game Nazi likes (lots of pieces, strategic/positional stuff going on the entire time).

Yeah, repeating the opening move by move in which she just received a smackdown seemed weird.

As (ex) poker players, this sort of thing comes natural to us. Not everybody views these things in terms of math and EV automatically, though. And as much as I hate Jennifer as a commentator (she's just bad at it, imo), she's usually the one holding the other two accountable math-wise, and poker savvy EV-wise. Not this time for some inexplicable reason, though. She spouted some, "winner of the flip should maybe choose white" BS, too.

Btw, I really wish they could put Hansen or Chirilla on the analysis board and/or the postgame interview. Is Ashley really that much more appealing to the casual player? I get that his energy has to be worth something and some of his phrasing is actually pretty great or at least entertaining. Ramirez is suuuuuuper arrogant when he does the analysis and Chirilla is a bit, but I think Hansen or Chirilla take the actual analysis even more seriously and I have to imagine they've worked with a computer more than Ashley.

Actually, I think they should go full ChessBrah with Hansen/Seirawan/Chirilla even though I really like Jenn. I think all those guys are even better on the St. Louis broadcast than their ChessBrah coverage of big events.

Oh, for some reason I initially scrolled past this. You basically said the same thing.

As for the coin toss pick (which they were wrong about since no one got to pick anything) She did say that due to Annie doing so well with White and struggling with Black, would Annie maybe pick White. Which I think adds some potential suspense to the coin toss. But, yeah, I have noticed that she sometimes has to reel others in when certain claims are way too "Skip Bayless" or whatever.

I think Jenn made it clear Black was the obvious objective pick. However, it very well could be +EV for someone like Annie who seems to be just going with whatever to choose White. If it gives any real psychological boost to her that maybe worth more than the X% she is objectively giving up.

Meh, it seems Maurice and Jennifer are polarizing. I'm fully in the pro-Maurice and anti-Jennifer camp. Yeah, he spouts engine lines a bit too much, but I've always just liked the dude. Jennifer's voice gives me Ear cancer, though. And her analysis is in no way better than Maurice's. Yasser is beyond any criticism bar one. He's a legit Super-GM, but for the love of God, don't let him handle the mouse on the main board. He's just slow computer-wise, and his arrow drawing is hilarious at best. Then sometimes he ****s it up royally and doesn't even find the current position, etc.

If you're going to have Jennifer, give her the mouse. Let Yasser do what Yasser does best. Chess. No distractions of handling the main broadcast board.

Well, I mean, if with black she was going to repeat the line in which she just got crushed in, maybe white was indeed the better choice for her.

I am somewhat the opposite of you. I like Jenn's commentary as I think she does a pretty good job of just supplementing Yasser - although I agree he shouldn't have the mouse.

Maurice I like in much smaller doses. Like, when he just does the interviews (which I think is what happens on GCT coverage in Europe) and Chirilla or Hansen or someone does the analysis I enjoy it better.

I also feel Chirilla prepares and tries harder than the rest of them. I saw him at St. Louis Blitz/Rapid last year just doing the in between round interviews and he was taking extensive notes and very closely following all of the games. He then only gets, like, 2 questions to ask but the focus he put into it seemed way higher than the other ones who are professional but kind of just hang out as far as I can tell.

Yeah, Chrilla is great. We can agree on that.