Plessiez

An excellent result for Gukesh but that must have been a heartbreaking way for things to end for Caruana (and for Nepo too, but at least he wasn't forced to immediately give a press conference where he was shown how many winning opportunities he'd missed out on). Something rather depressing about watching them both hopelessly play out a drawn Queen endgame, knowing that they needed a win but weren't going to get another chance. Would be very, very surprised if Carlsen decided to challenge for the world title again (barring extensive changes to the format that I don't think should happen and I don't think anybody except Carlsen is keen on happening). He just doesn't seem to enjoy playing those sorts of matches (and historically probably hasn't done quite as well in them as he should have done, blowout win against Nepo last time aside) and it's not as if he's got anything to prove or needs the prize money. Maybe if the new champion also starts to regularly dominate tournaments and challenge for the number one rating spot Carlsen would be more tempted, but Ding definitely isn't doing that and it's too soon to say if anybody else will. For a minute a couple of years ago it looked like Firouzja might, which I think was why Carlsen seemed interested in playing him, but that really hasn't materialised at all. As well as performing badly in two consecutive Candidates Tournaments Firouzja hasn't really threatened Carlsen at the top of the rating list at all (he came into this tournament rated 6th in the world and leaves it rated 16th). If Carlsen was interested in challenging again -- which, again, I don't think will happen -- I'd be shocked if he didn't have to go through the Candidates. But he'd have a much easier path than everyone else as long as he was able to qualify by rating (the way Firouzja did this time and Ding did the time before).

Not an original observation to me but still somewhat amazing to think that today's round 14 will be the first round of any Candidates Tournament going back all the way to March 2018 in which Ian Nepomniachtchi won't start at least tied for the lead. Nepo had previously been leading or co-leading every round of every Candidates he'd ever taken part in for a run of 41 consecutive rounds. Pleased to see Gukesh managed to win -- and well predicted by @A Horse Named Stranger -- as when I gave up and went to sleep last night (around the time control) I thought his chances of getting a result weren't looking so good. Would be great to see him win the event now. Failing that, I'd like to see Caruana have another shot at the title, especially because the performance of Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa this month (as well as the rise of other young players like Abdusattorov and Erigaisi up the rating list) suggests he might not get any better chances in the future. (And I think Caruana has at least as much claim as anyone else of his generation for the status of Best Player Not Named Magnus Carlsen, so it would be nice for him if could get the title to match that.)

Caruana winning today and both the games featuring players ahead of him in the standings being drawn would definitely be the fun result, right? Would set up a final round tomorrow with four co-leaders, all playing each other, with all four of them more or less obliged to play for a win. Glancing at the current engine evaluations for today's games, it doesn't seem that such an outcome would be particularly unlikely either.

No. This is, by some distance, the closest it's been at this stage of the tournament since the double round robin format was (re-)adopted for the 2013 Candidates Tournament. In five previous years (2013, 2014, 2018, 2020/21 and 2022) there was a clear leader by round 10 who went on to win the event. In most of those tournaments the chasing pack was pretty small too (Anand had 6.5/10 at this stage in 2014, ahead of Aronian on 5.5/10; Caruana also had 6.5/10 in 2018, ahead of Mamedyarov on 6/10 and Grischuk on 5.5/10; Nepo also had 6.5/10 in 2020/2021, ahead of three players on 5.5/10; Nepo had 7/10 in 2022 again with three players tied for second way back on 5.5/10) and won that year with a undefeated 9.5/14. The two closest previous Candidates Tournaments were probably 2013 and 2016, but neither of them were this close. Carlsen had 7/10 in 2013, ahead of Aronian on 6.5/10 and Kramnik on 6/10 but Kramnik went on a late run and briefly overtook both of them to take the lead (in round 12) before Carlsen beat Radjabov as Black in round 13 to catch him (and then they both lost in round 14 to finish on 8.5/14, but Carlsen won because of superior tiebreaks). And in 2016 Karjakin and Caruana were tied after ten rounds on 6/10 each (with Anand just behind on 5.5/10), and Karjakin briefly went behind both Anand and Caruna before regaining the lead and winning the tournament (with 8.5/14 as well). But there's never been anything like this before. This year not only are Gukesh and Nepo tied on 6/10 [just like Karjakin and Caruana were in 2016], there are three players just behind them on 5.5/10 (and Vidit just behind them on 5/10, but that's probably(?) a bit too far back to be in contention at this stage). Feels almost impossible to pick a winner still and it could easily come down to rapid game tiebreaks (which were first brought it last year, instead of the the older tiebreak system that was used in 2013, but obviously not needed to pick a winner that time around).

Oh, and if we're confessing to bullet chess habits, I'm currently playing a lot of 2+1 on lichess myself (and have been since 2020, off and on). I should really stop though: my blitz rating (around 2150 at the moment) is much higher than my average bullet rating and I think playing chess that fast is not good at all for my OTB chess either. (I also don't have a mouse, which probably doesn't help.)

Really been enjoying this year's Candidates so far, although to be honest I'm rather hoping Nepo doesn't win again. One player repeatedly winning the Candidates would be the ideal outcome if they were clearly the second best player in the world (assuming the current champion was the best player, of course, which doesn't apply at the moment) but Nepo doesn't seem to be that. Rather, it feels like he's benefiting quite a bit from the competition rules meaning he only needs to focus on the Candidates every other year and not worry about qualifying for them, while players like Caruana and Firouzja expend a lot of energy (and preparation) qualifying and then repeatedly disappoint at the actual event (whether because of nerves or lack of energy or the slightly unusual time controls or whatever else is going on) On the other hand, if Gukesh manages to win and goes on to beat Ding (which, on current form, seems pretty plausible) I'd have to face living in world with a world champion who was less than half my age, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

Nomination details are out now and seem to be somewhat confusing. File770 has a discussion thread. Highlights include Babel coming third in the nominations for best novel but being declared ineligble (for no reason that I can see), Xiran Jay Zhao being declared ineligble for the Astounding (despite, I believe, having been declared eligible for the first of two years last year), the Sandman's two nominations (in long form and short form dramatic presentation) apparently canceling each other out and rendering both ineligible and Turing Food Court somehow coming both tenth and twelth in the nominations for best novelette. I'm not really up to speed with the current Hugo nominations process, but this all seems pretty weird, doesn't it?

Not sure when I last posted in this thread (or its predecessors), but since I remember talking quite a bit about the first two books in the series several years ago I feel compelled to note that I’ve (finally!) finished Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series. I enjoyed Perhaps The Stars a lot too, even though (if I’m being honest) I suspect I didn’t really understand a good deal of what was going on. I’d been planning to reread the first three books before starting this one, but in the end I just reread Too Like The Lightning and then skimmed online summaries of the the next two books in the series to refresh my memory of the plot. (Rather than preparing by reading the complete works of Hobbes and Diderot and Voltaire, which I couldn’t help but feel was what I was supposed to have done.) Also finished Kate Elliott’s Furious Heaven this month, which I liked quite a lot (though perhaps not quite as much as Unconquerable Sun), and Django Wexler’s Ashes of the Sun and its two sequels (which were all a lot of fun, with two very engaging POV characters, even if the plot was a bit predictable at times).

Ding Liren is the 17th world chess champion. Very happy to see him win (I remember rooting from him in the 2020-21 Candidates, though that didn't exactly go to plan), although after a decade of Carlsen (and for some years Anand before him) it's going to take time to get used to a world champion who isn't even the second highest rated player in the world. Very strange to think, looking back, that Ding only qualified for the Candidates' Tournament at all after Karjakin got himself disqualified; didn't even have a positve score in the Candidates until round 10, only pipped Nakamura to second in the final round, only qualified for the match itself after Carlsen refused to defend the title and never led in the classical portion of the match. And as late as the last rapid game, it looked like it would be Nepo, not Ding, who had all the chances to win. Still, one of the most entertaining matches I've watched in a while (even if -- or, well, because -- the quality was often not quite as high as we might have grown used to).

When was the last time a world championship match had as many as four decisive results in the first six games? Doesn't feel like that's happened for a very long time.

Well, after today it definitely looks like the Carlsen-Niemann thing isn't going away any time soon...

Congratulations to Ding Liren on qualifying for a world championship match, I suppose.

The engines seem to dislike 16. g4 too (and both of Firouzja's next moves as well, especially 18. g5). And Nepo definitely looks to be better now. I don't think we're going to see second-half collapse. (Apparently Firouzja's prepartion for today's game included staying up late playing hundreds of bullet games, which ... well.)

Replying to myself since I realize I worded this badly: "later that year" means "in 2000, when the Kasparov-Kramnik match was played", not in 1998. And having googled, Anand only become FIDE world champion in December, a few weeks after Kramnik beat Kasparov. But Anand won the Chess World Cup (which was in part a qualifer for the World championship tournament) in September, before the Kramnik-Kasparov match. (Bonus fun fact: I've seen it alleged in a few different places that Kramnik won a prize fund of a few hundred thousand dollars for losing to Shirov, while Shirov was told that he'd only get his share of the prize money for that match after playing Kasparov. Which ... well, he never did.)

Disappointing answer, but I don't think there have been any big upsets since the Candidates switched to its modern double round robin system back in 2013. Or any small upsets, either, really: the winner of the tournament in recent years has always been somebody who was in first place (either tied or outright) within a couple of rounds, and more often than not they've stayed in first place for almost the entire tournament. (So if Nepo were to somehow lose from here ... well, it would be quite an achievement.) That said, there was almost a big upset in that very first 2013 tournament: at the halfway point Kramnik had made seven draws and was three points behind Carlsen and Aronian, only to win four of his next five games and become sole leader after twelve rounds. But Carlsen managed to beat Radjabov in round 13 to tie for first again, and then both players lost in the final round, allowing Carlsen to qualify based on his tie break. Before the title reunification in 2007 the system used to determine who got to play a world championship match was ... well, a mess, but single tournaments like the current system have historically been a pretty rare way of selecting a challenger, at least since the 1950s. Actually, thinking about it, arguably the biggest technical upset involves Kramnik again: he lost a match to Shirov in 1998 whose winner was supposed to go on to play Kasparov for the (non-FIDE-approved) title, but that match never happened. Instead, Kasparov decided his next opponent would qualify based on rating alone. The highest rated player after Kasparov at the time was Anand, but he refused to play (I'm not sure why, but he was either already the FIDE recognized champion at that point or would become so later that year). So Kasparov played the next person down on the rating list, who was ... Kramnik. So arguably Kramnik managed to play for (and win!) the world title despite twice failing to qualify: he didn't beat Shirov and he wasn't the highest rated player. Which is improbable enough that I don't feel too bad for him missing out in 2013. (Probably not what you had in mind though, I know.)

Caruana has White against Nepomniachtchi in Round 9. Looks like that could be the crucial game of the tournament. Not that it particularly matters which of those two wins if Carlsen's serious about not playing the winner: they're so far ahead of the pack (Nakamura is in clear third place on 50%, 1.5 points behind Caruana and 2 points behind Nepo) that the odds must be that whichever of them doesn't win the tournament will finish second. Though given how their respective matches went, you'd think that Carlsen would be a lot more willing to play Nepo at this point than Caruana, wouldn't you?

I almost didn't notice that the Candidates had started. Early days yet (we've just reached the first rest day), but Nepo and Caruana are tied for first at the moment (with Ding Liren trailing at the bottom again, sadly). Given Carlsen's threats not to play the challenger if it's anybody but Firouzja, it would be pretty funny if we ended up having a Nepo-Caruana World Championship match next year. (At least, I believe that FIDE's position is that there would be a match between the winner and the runner-up of the Challengers in the event that Carlsen doesn't play?) It would definitely be a very strange situation though, and I hope it doesn't happen (whether because Firouzja wins or Carlsen turns out to be bluffing). Of course, FIDE have stripped an existing world champion of their title before, but Fischer had stopped playing professional chess already by that point while Kasparov kept calling himself world champion and set up a whole rival title qualification process, which was treated at least as seriously as FIDE's by most people (at least while Kasparov retained his version of the title). It doesn't seem like that would make sense for Carlsen to do, if he's really just unhappy about having to keep playing matches (I guess he could try arranging a match against Firouzja, if it comes to it, but I hope Kasparov's example shows why splitting the title like that is a bad idea). But having the world champion just stop being the world champion but carrying on playing chess (and being very obviously the strongest player in the world) seems pretty unsatisfying all around. Would people consider either Caruana or Nepo genuine world champions at that point? (I do think the pace of world championship matches is a bit excessive though. One long match every three or four years seems far more sensible than the current pattern of short matches every other year.)

Yeah, that's official now. So the more interesting part of the Grand Prix's over already. I feel rather sorry for Aronian, given how close he got. Have to admit that it looks very unlikely that he'll be qualifying by rating either (despite my earlier guess). Even if there's no special exemption made for him, Ding Liren has now scheduled a lot of games over the next month and is already back up to number two in the world on the live rating list after winning the first few. Specifically, he's more than 35 points clear of Aronian, so he'd have to have some unbelievably terrible results in April to let himself be overtaken. At 39 years old, I really think this must have been Aronian's last chace to reach a world championship match. Although looking at the rating list, I'm surprised at how (relatively) old everyone on it seems. Other than Firouzja, Duda is the only player under 25 years old in the top twenty, and there are only three others in the top thirty. Feels like a few years ago that was very different (mostly because it was the same people on the list a few years ago, I guess?).

Yeah, I think Rapport must be safe now. The other big recent development is that Karjakin looks to have been disqualified (I think he could technically still appeal, but that doesn't seem likely). Apparently his place will be taken by whoever has the highest rating of the not-already qualified players who has also played at least 30 games since June 2021. (The 'played at least 30 games' clause seems to be there just to stop the spot automatically going to Ding Liren. Honestly, it seems to sit rather oddly with FIDE's gifting of a place in the Grand Prix to Nakamura, when he hadn't played any rated games in years.) But I think the upshot is that Aronian is probably going to the Candidates too, one way or another. He's up to #4 in the world now and Firouzja has of course already qualified. I don't think DIng Liren is going to play the 20-odd games he needs to before May 1st to qualify by rating, but I suppose he could if he really wanted to.

Richard Rapport just beat Dmitry Andreikin in the final of the Belgrade GP, which (when combined with his semi-final place in the first Berlin GP) seems to put him in pretty good place to reach the Candidates. But Rapport's qualification is not guaranteed yet: there are six players left who've only played in one leg so far and at least reached a semi-final, and any one of them could match or overtake him after the second Berlin GP. And -- for example -- if Nakamura reaches the final but loses to Andreikin, I believe that both of them would qualify ahead of Rapport (each would have a total of 23 GP points to Rapport's total of 20). I'm pretty torn on who I want to qualify. On the one hand, Nakamura hadn't played a rated game for two years before being handpicked by FIDE to take part, so him qualifying ahead of somebody like Giri or MVL would seem pretty unfair. But on the other hand, it would be very funny.

I really enjoyed this series. I think it was my favourite in quite a long time, maybe even since series 7. And definitely the best of the Channel 4 era. A few of the tasks didn't quite work, I thought (the studio tasks especially: the very final one was brilliant, but a couple of the others were kind of a mess), but the contestants were all great, which really is the key for me. Has it been announced whether the second Champion of Champions special is airing this year?

Quite enjoying the current series two episodes in, at least in part because nobody seems to be either taking things too seriously or obviously regretting their agent talk them into taking part (and I think most series have usually got one or two people in either group). Would be pretty happy to see any of the contestants win (and, perhaps apart from VCM, I don't think I'd be surprised by any of them winning at this stage).

I'm starting to come around to the idea that the current (second) season of Taskmaster NZ is, in fact, the best season of Taskmaster in any iteration. Jeremy Wells is no Greg Davies, but in almost every other respect I think this season has been as good as (or better than) any season of the original show. (I think it actually helps quite a bit that I have no idea who any of the contestants are other than 'people on Taskmaster NZ'). And belatedly joining the Alan Davies discussion: I think it's worth noting that on QI Davies is very much playing a role (of "bumbling idiot who says the obvious wrong answers a lot"), which isn't necessarily how he's going to approach Taskmaster. (I'm old enough that my subconcious insists that Alan Davies is really Jonathan Creek, eccentric genius and occasional detective, which makes watching him on QI slightly confusing for me.)

I'd rate both Moving Pictures and Reaper Man a bit higher myself (though maybe just because they were some of the first Discworld books I read). It's definitely true that the Bill Door half of Reaper Man is stronger than the Windle Poons half, but I think that the Bill Door sections are really good. The Auditors really are much better villians than the Things of the early Discworld books, aren't they? Not sure I'd realised they were only in three books, either, though I guess after Thief of Time there really wasn't much more to do with them.

The Cosgrove-Hall animations are certainly a long way from perfect, but weirdly enough I think they're my favourite Discworld adaptions. (Which is just a long-winded way of saying I don't like any of the live action attempts, I suppose.) I like Chistopher Lee as the voice of Death, too Yeah, this is definitely an issue. The adaption tries to rework a lot of the narrative asides into dialogue but I'm not sure this approach works very well. If anything, I think it results in the characters sometimes saying things they wouldn't really have said or just slightly misses the point. In the first coven scene, for example, Nanny Ogg's "I don't like abroad..." lines were originally a sentiment the narrator attributes to witches in general (and one that doesn't really feel true of Nanny Ogg herself). And in the book Granny Weatherwax simply says that Magrat has managed "a good squint" (with the narrative pointing out that, adverse as she is to giving out praise, that means Magrat was probably managing to stare up her own nostrils). But the adaption has Granny actually explicitly say "a squint's only good if you can stare up your own nostrils" (while shifting the actual praise to Nanny Ogg), which seems a little bit off to me. The unfinished adaption of Reaper Man (which was a sort of pilot for the Cosgrove-Hall adapations, as I understand it), actually does have a narrator, as it happens. I imagine that at least some of the early drafts of the full series tried to include one as well, but decided against it for whatever reason. Yeah, the Hitchhiker's Guide has the advantage of originally being a radio production, which I think lends itself more easily to adapations into other media than pure text would have done. And I think it also helps that a lot of the narrative digressions have an already-established framing device (in the form of the Guide itself).