9/5/2019 – Public appearances by Garry Kasparov are often notable, even more so at chess events and especially if the ex-world champion is coaxed into playing chess himself. At the "Champions Showdown" from the Saint Louis Chess Club, Kasparov faced Fabiano Caruana in a 'Fischer Random' match from Monday to Thursday. Although the final score is clearly one-sided in favour of Caruana, the world champion showed he still has what it takes to play against an active player of the elite. In the other match-ups Wesley So and Peter Svidler got comfortable wins over Veselin Topalov and Leinier Dominguez, while Hikaru Nakamura bounced back from a lousy start to finally beat Levon Aronian. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
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2019 Champions Showdown: "Chess 9LX"
The "Champions Showdown" has become an annual event to showcase the Saint Louis Chess Club by bringing world-class with a twist. Instead of eight grandmasters playing a typical round-robin ("all-play-all") tournament, each player has a match opponent against whom he has to play the total of 20 games. The four separate matches, running in parallel, this year feature Chess960 (a.k.a. Fischer-Random Chess) with the following pairings.
Final standings
Caruana 19 : 7 Kasparov
So 18 : 8 Topalov
Dominguez 10½ : 15½ Svidler
Nakamura 14½ : 11½ Aronian
Live commentary
Commentary by WGM Jennifer Shahade, GM Yasser Seirawan & GM Maurice Ashley
In this chess variant, the pieces are lined up on the first and last rank in a random order, with a few stipulations (e.g. the king must begin between the rooks, the bishops must be balanced). In all 960 different starting positions are theoretically possible. The basic premise is that the players can forget their theoretical knowledge in "normal chess" (a.k.a. position 518) and are instead on their own from the first move.
But what is "Chess 9LX"? The organizers seem to be pursuing a marketing strategy, something that can be more readily branded or even trademarked, but the meaning simply derives from the Roman numeral system, popular for instance in the American football Superbowl: "L" for 50 and "X" 10 - "LX" is simply "60". Chess 9LX = Chess 960.
It might have been "Chess CMLX" of course, but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, like "nine-el-ex".
Prize fund
USD $200,000 is on offer for the players.
Time control and scoring
Rapid (6 games): 30 min. / Game (10 sec. "Delay"), a win is worth 2 points
Flash (14 games): 5 min. / Game (5 sec. "Delay"), a win is worth 1 point
Schedule
A new starting position will be drawn for every four rounds, with the same position being repeated in each round. In the unlikely event that, by random chance, the "normal" position 518 is drawn, it will not count and a new draw will take place. After the draw, players have a little time to prepare, but are not allowed to use any electronic devices. A (human) second is allowed. In addition, the players will be filmed during their preparation — it's part of the show!
Throughout the video course, Sasikran shows various examples from his career to explain sacrifices for initiative, an attack, a better pawn structure and much more.
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
The Trompowsky is especially suited for faster time controls as you don‘t have to memorise endless lines of theory, and you push your opponent out of their comfort zone after your second move.
Trompowsky Powerbook 2025 is based on 53,000 computer games from the engine room of playchess.com as well as 49,000 games from Mega and correspondence chess.
Trompowsky Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 8727 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 316 are annotated.
2025 European Championship with a German double victory and analyses by Bluebaum, Svane, Rodshtein, Yuffa, Navara and many more. Opening videos by Engel, King and Marin. Training sections “The Fortress”, “The Trap” and “Fundamental Endgame Knowledge" etc.
Powerbook based on more than 618 000 games in which White already sidesteps the main variations of the Sicilian on move 2.
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