The world chess champion Magnus Carlsen was in free fall, losing game after game at the beginning of the Norway Chess 2015 in Stavanger, one of the three tournaments of the newly founded Grand Chess Tour.
Failures of famous players attract as much attention as their successes. Misfortune was being played out on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time Tiger Woods stopped swinging his golf clubs and was eliminated from the the U.S. Open, Carlsen lost three times and drew once in the first four rounds, inhabiting last place. It was the worst start of his career.
In the first round Carlsen lost on time in a winning position against Veselin Topalov. The 40-year-old Bulgarian grandmaster turned this lucky break into first place with a string of victories reminiscent of his triumph at the world championship tournament in San Luis in 2005. In the last round Topalov held Vishy Anand, 45, to a draw.
Nobody expected the two oldest players, old enough to be fathers of a number of the young players in the tournament, to dominate the event.
The U.S. champion Hikaru Nakamura had a fabulous year and he caught Anand with a last round win over Levon Aronian.
What happened to Carlsen? After he lost on time in a winning position against Topalov, he was outplayed by Fabiano Caruana and Anand. He was trying to recover in the second half of the event, but lost in the last round to his countryman Jon Ludvig Hammer. Here is the finish of his game against Caruana.
"The winner is lucky, the runner-up plays the best chess." It is an old adage, confirmed in Norway this month. Anand played very creatively. He scored a fine win against Carlsen, but his best performance was a sharp attacking game against Maxime Vachier Lagrave in the Najdorf Sicilian.
Walter Browne, a chess grandmaster and six-time U.S. champion, died in Las Vegas on June 24. He was 66 years old.
I watched his brilliant career first hand since 1968. We played together or against each other at U.S. championships, international tournaments and Olympiads. He was an undisputed king of the open tournaments in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s.
I liked his devotion to chess and the will to fight. He was an intense player, calculating everything back and forth and putting a tremendous amount of energy into his games, often wrestling with lack of time.
In 2012, New In Chess published his autobiography The Stress of Chess...and its Infinite Finesse, My Life, Career and 101 Best Games.
Walter was a good friend and a memorable presence at chess tournaments all over the world. America lost one of its chess giants.
Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post
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