The former world champion was one of those who spoke rather disrespectfully about the level of the World Championship match in Almaty! So a bit of statistics. What did he himself achieve?<\/strong><\/p>\n January 2023<\/strong>: Tata Steel Masters; 14 participants. At that time still holding the world champion rank, he took third place with a score of 8 points (+5 -2 =5).<\/p>\n May \u2013 June 2023<\/strong>: \u00a0<\/strong>Altibox Norway Chess, Stavanger; 10 participants. Thanks to \u201areplaying\u2018 draws with blitz games, the former world champion took 6th place with a result of 4 points (+0 -1 =8); in a pure tournament table his placement would have been even worse.<\/p>\n A few years ago I devoted a whole article on my website to today's \u201afailure to recognise\u2018 the difference between classical chess, rapid and blitz, titled \u201eOn the Pillory (4) \u2013 Like Small Children\u201c. Since then the situation has worsened and in fact the chess community is just waiting for regular bullet analyses to appear on YouTube (for the less knowledgeable, here players usually have about one minute of time). The World Championship in this physically demanding discipline has already taken place.<\/p>\n I could no longer hold back my laughter when one of the many young Russian-speaking YouTubers, calling himself Maksoun, described Magnus's result on the first day of the blitz tournament in Croatia (9 out of 9) as a historic achievement, labelling his post \u201eMagnus Carlsen MAKES HISTORY\u201c.<\/p>\n I always thought that the history of records in our beautiful game was made by, for example, Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine, who won the 1933 Bled tournament by 5.5 points, when Robert James Fischer won 19 games in a row in 1970\u20131971 and crushed Tajmanov and Larsen 6-0 in Candidates matches, when Garry Kasparov (literally a chess monster of the second half of the 1990s) toured chess-developed countries to play simultaneous exhibitions with clocks against Olympic teams, or Anatoly Karpov with his perhaps unsurpassed record in the number of tournament victories.<\/p>\n The Grand Chess Tour (probably the brainchild of the 13th world champion) consists of a series of tournaments with 10 participants, each comprising a rapid section (9 rounds, a win counts as 2 points) followed by a blitz tournament (18 rounds, each player faces every other twice with both colours). It was here on the first day that the former world champion achieved that daring feat. The results of both parts of the tournament are, of course, summed in the end, and thanks to the phenomenal blitz result (16 out of 18), the former world champion managed to make up the deficit from the rapid and also win the 2nd Grand Chess Tour tournament.<\/p>\n This time a really strong field gathered in Croatia and I was naturally more curious about the \u201amore serious\u2018 rapid part of the tournament. How will the youngsters Dommaraju Gukesh and Alireza Firouzja perform here?<\/p>\n Move of the year<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Enough words and evaluations, with which, I suppose, some readers will disagree or even consider them tendentious. However, despite today's times, when in fascist parts of the world only one \u201acorrect\u2018 opinion is allowed again and others are punished (paradoxically, it was precisely because of this \u201achange\u2018 that Ding Liren became world champion!), I would wholeheartedly welcome a discussion here.<\/p>\n The tournament results will soon be forgotten, but I believe not one of the splendid moves. This time I would sign under the opinion of my favourite video author Alexey Pugachev (\u0428\u0430\u0445\u043c\u0430\u0442\u044b \u0434\u043b\u044f \u0432\u0441\u0435\u0445) that Carlsen's daring feat can confidently to compete for the most beautiful move of the year<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Carlsen,Magnus (2835) - Duda,Jan-Krzysztof (2732) <\/strong>rapid Zagreb 2023<\/p>\n The young Polish super-grandmaster has just stormed into the white camp with the move 20\u2026Qd2<\/strong>. Dear readers, can you find the answer and correctly calculate (finish calculating!) the necessary variations? (The solution can of course be found below, as the entire game is worth replaying and studying.)<\/p>\n What is happening with Firouzja?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n From the very first moments when I saw the play of the then very young Iranian chess player Alireza Firouzja, I knew that one of the greatest talents in history had joined the chess world. I wrote about him on these pages, for example in connection with the 2019 World Blitz Championship (his famous dispute with Carlsen), when he was only 16 years old, and later in connection with his participation in the Candidates Tournament.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Alireza became the winner of last year's Grand Chess Tour series and at one point even rose to second place in the world rating list. He currently still leads the \u201aELO blitz ranking\u2018.<\/p>\n However, I reluctantly see that surely not only my hopes (so far only slightly) have faded. The point is that Firouzja does not devote himself fully and completely to chess. This is very clearly seen by his coach and analyst, for example, in the choice of openings of this little genius...<\/p>\n In games against the former world champion, however, Alireza did not falter this time either and won their mini-match (of course as the only one). So first let's look at one rapid game and two blitz games.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skolasachu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Magnus_Stavanger.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA historic achievement \u2013 9 out of 9?<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Grand Chess Tour, Zagreb<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skolasachu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Chorvatsko.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skolasachu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Carlsen-Magnus-Duda-Jan-Krzysztof-19.Dd2_-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skolasachu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Firouzja.jpg\")
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