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The 4th ChessBase India online Chess960 tournament will take place on the 29th of January 2017 at 6 p.m. IST (13.30 server time) in the "Chess960 tournaments" sub-room under "Thematic chess" room on the Playchess server. The tournament is held in the honour B. Adhiban. No money for guessing why Adhiban! The 24-year-old from Chennai has shown utter disdain for playing well known openings at the Tata Steel 2017. As Adhiban plays his final game on the 29th, ChessBase India would lik to give a tribute to the beautiful chess he has played by inviting everyone to participate in the chess960 tournament!
The third ChessBase India online tournament was dedicated to India's best player Vishy Anand. This one goes to B. Adhiban, who has won the hearts of millions of people with his play at the Tata Steel 2017! (picture by Alina L'Ami)
Where will the tournament be held?
The tournament will be held in the "Chess 960 Tournaments" room under "Thematic chess" at 6 p.m. IST (server time 13.30)
The Chess960 tournaments room is open to all. The procedure to participate is explained later in the article
It will be a nine round event with 3 mins + 2 second increment.
Winner: 12 months of ChessBase Account Premium Membership
2nd place: 9 months of ChessBase Account Premium Membership
3rd place: 6 months of ChessBase Account Premium Membership
4th place: 3 months of ChessBase Account Premium Membership
5th place: 3 months of ChessBase Account Premium Membership
The first, second and third places get the to-be-soon released ChessBase Magazine - CBM 176. The CBM will deal with some extensive analysis of the Carlsen-Karjakin match as well as a lot of other instructive material.
Apart from the top three prizes there are also seven lucky prizes. The following places will win three months of ChessBase Premium Account:
10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th, 90th
The condition to claim the prize is to play all the rounds of the tournament. If you have not played all the nine rounds, you won't get the lucky prize.
Halsagar Chincholimath, chess trainer from Bangalore, will be the admin for the tournament and will ensure that the event is smoothly conducted
1) Download the free windows software of playchess
First you have to download the free native Windows software. You should go to play.chessbase.com and scroll down to the bottom of the screen. Click on the Free Download button.
2) Login or create an account
After you have installed the Playchess client. You must login.
Enter your playchess username and password if you have one. (Note, for all the ChessBase Account Premium members, your login credentials will work). If you do not have a Username, you must click on "Create New Player Name" and create a new account. This is free of cost and gives you free access to Playchess for a few days. It is important that you register, because "guests" will not be enrolled for the tournament.
3) Go to the tournament room
On the right hand bottom corner you will see the different rooms. The tournament will be held in the Chess960 Tournaments under Thematic Chess. Click on the tab "players" on the top and then on "Join Event." The sysop will accept your entry.
GM Deac Bogdan Daniel, GM Nikola Djukic, IM Anwesh Upadhyaya, IM Srinath Narayanan, IM Crg Krishna, IM Rohan Ahuja, IM Abhishek Kelkar, Siva Mahadevan were some of the stars playing at the 3rd ChessBase India online blitz tournament on Playchess!
The final standings of the third ChessBase India online tournament
The tournament witnessed record breaking participation of 132 players!
IM Abhishek Kelkar was one of the participants and this is what he wrote on Facebook:
IM Anwesh Upadhyaya is studying medicine in Ukraine and took out time to play in the event
Anwesh's experience:
"The timing suits me perfectly. I think I will be a regular here. It's good to finally get some practice. I was losing to some 1200, completely was getting outplayed! Somehow won on time! Will be very careful the next time!"
Chess960 (also known as Fischer Random Chess) is a variant of chess invented and advocated by former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer. It employs the same board and pieces as standard chess; however, the starting position of the pieces on the players' home ranks is randomized. The random setup renders the prospect of obtaining an advantage through the memorization of opening lines impracticable, compelling players to rely on their talent and creativity.
There are 960 possibilities in all. This starting position was used in the game between Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian in their Mainz Chess960 World Championship. This is position number 666.
All the pieces move in the same manner as chess. Two important rules while arranging pieces on the last rank is that the bishops should be on opposite coloured squares and the rooks should be on the opposite side of the king.
The only complicated rule that is to some extent different from normal chess is castling. In chess 960 the king and the rook end up in the exact same position after castling as in normal chess after castling.
The king is on f1 and the rook on g1. So in order to castle short, I do not need anything. I can just touch my king on f1 and move it to g1 and the rook jumps over to f1.
You have already castled!
Now let's go to the initial position again:
How do we castle long?
When we castle long, the king moves to c1 and the rook to d1. Both these squares are taken up by the bishops. Hence after five moves I try to vacate these squares. The position looks something like this:
Now I drag my king from f1 and place it on c1...
The rook on its own moves to d1 and you have successfully 0-0-0!
Now that you have learnt all of the key rules of chess960, See you all on 29th of January at 6 p.m. for the 4th ChessBase India "B. Adhiban" online chess960 blitz event on Playchess!
