I got kind of caught in the opening, said a subdued Caruana at the post-game press conference. The US champion got into heavy time pressure, and after 20 moves was down to 10 minutes to reach move 40, with no per-move increment.
Caruana was second to the former Russian, Mikhail Antipov, in the Saint Louis Masters, though he was unbeaten with 7/9, so this was still a good result. But then, in the American Cup, a double elimination format knockout, he lost to both Wesley So and Levon Aronian in similar fashion, winning the first classical game with White, losing the second with Black, then losing the speed tie-break 1.5-2.5.
Starting on February 26 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET and finishing on March 2 at the same time, the Marathon server slam is an opportunity for players to get their hands on the game ahead of launch. It'll also allow Bungie to test its infrastructure before the full Marathon release date lands.
Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, visited Central London last weekend and won the chess.com speed championship for the fourth time in a row. The Norwegian, 35, defeated France's Alireza Firouzja, 22, by 15-12 after a three-hour struggle. Last year in Paris the same two players met, but Carlsen's winning margin was a much wider 23.5-7.5. The format for speed chess is 90 minutes of five minutes blitz, 60 minutes of three minutes blitz, and 30 minutes of one minute bullet. All the segments had additional increments of one second per move.
Hastings is the grandfather of international chess tournaments, first staged in 1895 and then every year since 1920, with breaks for war and pandemics. Its vintage years were the 1930s, 50s and 70s, when world champions and challengers lined up to compete, while the badminton legend Sir George Thomas and the Bletchley Park codebreaker Hugh Alexander both shared first after defeating renowned opponents.
Meet Neuro-sama, a cutesy AI-powered character which is now the top streamer on Twitch by active subscriber-count, according to Twitch Tracker. At the time of writing, Nuero-sama - streaming via the Twitch channel Vedal987 - has 165,268 paid active subscribers, well above the second-highest channel, the human-ran Jynxzi. On Twitch, each paid subscriber is valued at $5 a month, some of which is split with Twitch. According to an estimate by Dextero, that means Neuro-sama is raking in at least $400,000 a month just from subscriptions - and that's on top of random viewer donations, sponsorships, and ad revenue.
This time he led early, had a wobble with three draws and a loss, but was strong in the final two rounds. It was a long way for me, he said. I was very close every time and I failed year after year. I'm extremely happy to finally be able to win this tournament and to win in a very nice style.