Airthings Masters Finals - Games and results

Nepo is a great talent , no doubt about it ; but to me he will never be a great player ... how can he blitz his games against the world champion ?! to be finally in worst positions ... I can't understand

Let us sing a song of hope for Ukraine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEAcs2B-kNc&list=RDMM&index=3

After the loss we saw the expected "Meltwater Meltdown" by Nepo. Sadly, this is something he will probably never be able to correct. It was as inevitable as...tanks of a despot rolling over the border.

Carlsen is a true W. Ch. // anno 2022, last time peace in Europe?

I feel so sad for the Ukrainean people, i studied in Krakow (Poland) in 2001 as a Western Europe (rich?) exchange student sharing a room with an Ukrainean student as well... Poland wasn't even a member of the EU yet.

He was so poor and so kind.
His way of talking and behaving still lingers in my mind. So honest and pure.

I feel sad why Russia decides to attack and continue to attack the whole country of Ukraine.

It makes no sense, to me.

Pretty similar pattern to the World Championship... Nepo goes toe to toe with Carlsen for the first few games but goes down eventually.

Magnus delivered a hammer-blow as black with Rxc2!!! to beat Nepomniatchi. A triple exclam move indeed. A powerful performance.

Magnus the Great!!!!

Hoping it won't be Nepo nor all other Russian chess player's last match....now almost every country is banning Russia.
Can Russian players defect to the West anno februari 2022?

There you go, Minnesota, what a match. The boys mean business.

Ps people here , try a bit to be more friendly on the quotes! seems like a battle of frustrations . Time to make the effort to not post all our frustrations on a comment!

Carlsen vs Nepo.. what a match ! Will this be the revenge of Nepo?

Comments like? It's absolutely true that some of these participants were picked because they brought something 'other' than a comparative chess strength to the table vs the likes of Magnus, Nepo, Ding, etc. Also, you don't consider Puma pretty 'mainstream'? Chess sponsorship is more and more 'mainstream' today and it is the 16 yr olds and girls and streamers with their MANY followers that ARE attracting them! Mainstream wants EYES on the events they sponsor. It's simple capitalism.

@Leavenfish: comments like that being pervasive are why chess will never attract mainstream sponsorships.

As a community, we truly and completely do not deserve them. And won't get them. Chess is too attractive to... various -ists and despicables.

@fede666 So...is Bacrot a girl? He got an invite despite to the recent World Cup despite being 111th player in the world?
But events like THIS one are for spectacle and drawing in eyes...'just another 2700' will not do that...so they invite streamers and kids. That's...the organizers choice.

fede666 - yawn.

invitations should be bases on rankings and Fide points...obviously not on a gender basis....the results are clear to everybody (but the woke idiots),,

@jc1483: Sorry, you do not seem to understand. I'm saying discussion "should end there"...because the fact that it never does only proves something about these nay-sayers who claim they know better than the women who chose or chose to not play in those tournaments. But then males have been doing that to females...forever.

@mc1483 there are some people who are tolerant to any ideas as long as they agree with them. I quite like to see different opinions, as long as they are presented in an honest, civilized manner. I quite welcome ladies in open tournament. They might get trounced sometimes and they can be victorious at other times (like Hou Yifan in Gibraltar). Chess is a competitive game and, if we ignore the possibility of an all-draws situation, somebody has to be the loser and that's determined by performance, not by gender. Here Kosteniuk had a bad tournament, that's all in my opinion. Maybe she is overrated. Or, she just had her worst tournament. But I would not rely on rapid games when we determine the strength of players.

This is an online rapid tournament. It would be stupid to think Hansen is a far better player than Aronian. It wouldn't be smarter to conclude that Kosteniuk is overrated.
Whatever her level, she continued to play fighting chess throughout the event despite her horrendous results; many players would have adopted a no-risk, draw oriented approach.

@Leavenfish: we're lucky, then, you're not the owner of this board, otherwise discussions would be invariably cut off.
@Mamacki: no-one really thinks Kosteniuk is worth 2000 or less. But she's by any means overrated, maybe she is 2400-2450. Not all women are overrated, but many are. Shuvalova and Zhu, for example, also are, as we saw last January in Tata Steel, but at least they're still very young and could improve a lot.

People are aware that Kosteniuk has beaten Carlsen before, right? (and in 2009, when he was already a super-GM) She played well in a few games here too, but had little luck.

@ e-mars - then it's even better than I thought! Reward those wins even more!! :)

Eric Hansen, what a true gentleman

"We"...don't 'need' to do anything. Let there be female only tourneys...if they want to play in them, fine. Those who don't...or want to play in them and/or 'open' tourneys, fine. Really, the discussion should end there.

@dumkof: you're sadly right. Problem is, you don't earn enough if your rating is 2500-, so you must do something else in life. Just a dozen women have a rating of 2500+ (and some of them are overrated), and without female-only tournaments they would always score Kosteniuk-like, soon quitting chess and doing something else, just like Hou did (and she was much stronger than Kosteniuk). But if they quit soon they will never reach elite level, unless strongly supported by family/federation/sponsors (that's why Polgar sisters succeeded), so many people think female-only tournaments are the lesser evil, letting some women earn enough and play as long as needed. But if women do not want to risk and never leave the comfort zone of such tournaments, the situation will never change... so there's not an easy solution.

In a closed tournament, there shouldn't be a rating difference of 350 points between the highest and lowest rated player. That is the whole issue. As an organiser, you shouldn't just think about publicity, but also about the damage you might inflict.

Women rating is different from men rating, although they're calculated with the same formula. This is because they're generally playing in their own pool. Ratings don't show the playing strength itself, they show the "relative strength" among others.

Create a second World B, put the same number of chess players but only worst of amateurs, let them randomly play eachother, and soon you'll have players with 2700's and 2800's. We will most probably see smilar ratings and rating distributions with world A, but they're still all amateurs after all.

This is why we should stop this male-female categorisation in chess, or any other categorisation at all, and put every single player in the same pool. This is the only way to keep the rating system healthy. Why would we need gender categorisation in a brain game like chess?

These are just online games. Not at all the same as facing your opponent across a table. Just some light entertainment and not to be taken too seriously.

Problem is, Kosteniuk is not used at playing in mixed tournaments, as Polgar and Hou always did, so her real rating is just a guess. In the whole year 2021 she played about 50 games, but just 5 against low rated men, and she obviously will never improve that way. And most women do the same, in order to earn something in female-only tournaments, a trend that someone thinks is beneficial for them but that will never help to close the gender gap.

@Masquer I believe it is more because of the $750 for a win (250 for each point)

Ouch....I always advocated for women and men in the same tournaments.....but seeing the results of Kosteniuk (12 losses, zero draws, zero wins) I might reconsider my view on that....

No player in the tournament has drawn as many as half their games, so it looks like the 3 points for a win is achieving the desired effect. Hope Kosteniuk can get something out of her last three games, even considering the quality of the field she's having a pretty rough time of it.

Kosteniuk lost all of her games so far?!!! Ouch.

Ding-Carlsen was a pathetic short draw, but they've lost ground in the standings because of the superior scoring system.

3 points for a win is the way to go. Punish those short draws! About time!

Dang I think jinxed Eric. Now he's gotta face Magnus. See what happens the rest of the way!

@AlexeyIgorevichRatchkov my understating is fine buddy.. I know that, but my point genius was his 3 losses are a hit to his rating he will lose pts...Get it? smh.. Oh really? Eric should have beat ding with KxP in that end game, if you care to check. lol he's on a tear so pay attention.

@Green22, so much for your understanding that a single tournament is not enough a sample size to determine someone's performance over a meaningful statistical sample. And Erik will soon show his inferior rating, given enough games. LOL @ you

that is why you need women tournaments and men tournaments... just like you have juniors and kids tournaments...the gap is too wide and getting larger