13 April 2013

'I wish there were more opportunities to play'

American GM Hikaru Nakamura has figured in many posts on this blog, for example CCM9: Nakamura, Grischuk, and Rybka (for more, see 'Search This Blog' in the navigation bar on the right). I was pleased to see a comment in the April 2013 Chess Life (CL): Cover Story; 'The Resolute Grandmaster: Hikaru Nakamura’s slow progress towards the top' by Macauley Peterson (p.24).
Highlights from Nakamura at the London Chess Classic: In general, I try to surprise my opponents much more, as opposed to having a set repertoire of one or two openings. The more weapons you have -- the more chances to surprise your opponents and reach positions that you're more familiar with -- the better off you are. That's why, I would say, Carlsen has such great results. He's very good in pretty much every structure that's out there. He knows the concepts and the piece play a lot better than some of the other players.

With the computers now, you can't just be successful with one opening. You look at players like Karpov or Kasparov. Karpov for almost his whole career played the Caro-Kann, and some Frenches as well, and he did great. And with Garry, he played the Scheveningen and then the Najdorf for the better part of 20 years, whereas nowadays you really have to know more than that because with the computer you can analyze any opening and probably within one day you can have a very good understanding of it. So, because of that it's really changed the whole landscape of chess.

I really like Chess960 [also known as Fischer Random chess - MP]. I think it is the future of chess. For now classical chess is still very much alive, but at some point I think ... most people will be playing [960] ... The pieces are more random but still the skill factor is there, and I really enjoy it because it's really playing pure chess, there isn't the same preparation the way there is now ... I wish there were more opportunities to play it.

The same issue of CL (p.10) had 'Benko Remembers Fischer : Three compositions in honor of Fischer’s 70th birthday (born March 9, 1943)'. Two of the compositions used chess960 castling rules.

1 comment:

HarryO said...

Cannot we the fans sponsor Aronian and Nakamura to play a Chess960 two game match for us?

I cannot understand why costs are so prohibitive.

Just contact Nak and Aronian, give them an account on ChessCube and Youtube and we raise money on Facebook/Paypal to give them some prize money for their efforts. Heck even ChessCube would probably put up some sponsorship money themselves.

To earn their prize they play a ChessCube random Chess960 game both as black and white at classical time controls. At the end of each game they both do an independent 15 minute youtube video presentation for us to enjoy aiming the difficulty level the same as PowerPlayChess does for his videos (not too complicated, just right).

We can get PiewalkerMatt at ChessCube to setup the details for these pro's since he has plenty of experience and talent at doing ChessCube 960 videos. He's a great presenter I'm sure he'd be interested.

It's not rocket science! No need to organize hotel rooms and fly across the world! All they need is an internet connection, a webcam and a Youtube account same for Aronian.

We the fan's can do the promotion ourselves by hitting all the big sites with the news. Costs us nothing but a bit of time and organisation.

All in all these Pro's would have to dedicate one day for each game and video upload. Even if just 5000 of us fans donated $1 each a $5000 prize tag should be enough to attract these pro's for a two game match. I wouldn't knock back the potential of $5000 for two days of online Chess960 play would you?

The verification that it is actually them playing is the video youtube evidence itself and so we cannot be ripped off.

C'mon fans show some interest in this proposal.