The Chess Test

  The economic realities of the chess world now make two rounds a day tournaments commonplace. Magnus Carlsen is not happy with the level of preparation needed to take part in a world championship match, if you want to have a chance of winning it. He suggested that one possible solution would be to use a quicker time control and have two games a day. This would at least negate some of the advantages of excessive preparation, thus turning the battle against the workhorses. In the time I have spent as a chess professional (now over 25 years!) tournaments with multiple rounds in one day have become more and more commonplace. Weekend tournaments that began on friday would obviously have them, and that was accepted. But in FIDE rated international events it was rare, until Sean Hewitt decided to follow the American model of multiple rounds. Partly that was compelled by economic necessity as putting up titled players for nine rounds, as well as the cost of hiring the venue and other issues,

I have a theory about Vladimir Kramnik. I think when he retired, he perhaps realized he retired too early. These players are used to being the center of attention and Kramnik went from being one of the best players in the world at the center of everything to being fairly anonymous, in just a short space of time. That might explain why he is more active all of a sudden, why he is streaming, why he is compiling statistics and throwing shade on some of the regular money winners on Titled tuesday. Kramnik now seems exasperated by what he percieves as the lack of effort and care shown by Chess.com towards doing anything about this situation. The world's leading chess website has been put under the microscope by ex World champion Vladimir Kramnik. I personally applaud Kramnik and his efforts to try and clean up online chess and here's why: In my opinion cheating is often not taken seriously enough and is not punished as it should be. For example if you are a titled player and you are