I Wrote About Chess for Bloomberg and Chess.com

Hey everyone! In previous posts, I mentioned that I was working on some non-newsletter pieces about chess… and a couple have finally arrived, so I wanted to share them.

The first piece, for Bloomberg, is about how the rise in engine-aided prep was leading to more draws and exhaustively explored positions — so players started opting for surprising moves rather than optimal ones, ushering in a new era of combative chess.

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to write a piece like this on the eve of a Candidates tournament. What if everyone plays the Petroff and there are four draws, and then I look like a doofus 1600 who has no business writing about grandmasters?

But I’m proud to say that the first day of action turned out to be right in line with the argument of the piece. Fabi played a 1. Nf3 2. c4 opening against Hikaru that featured a temporary piece sacrifice, a novelty on move seven, and by move 11 led to this weird position, in which White has a wacky pawn structure and is offering a non-temporary pawn sac:

The game went back and forth, and both players made mistakes en route to Fabi pulling out a win in an opposite-colored bishop ending — a good reminder that these are humans who have to find the moves that are so easy for us to spot when we’re reading the engine lines at home. (At one point in the endgame, the computer revealed a line where Fabi could’ve sacrificed four pawns en route to the win. Fun! No real living person’s ever going to see that!)

Meanwhile, in Pragg-Giri, Giri opened with the Sicilian, a more combative choice than …e5, and Pragg responded with the Grand Prix, which is not something you see that often at the top level. (Usually, you see it beating me in blitz on Chess.com.) Pragg soon sacrificed a pawn and followed it up with some beautiful play that led to a winning rook endgame.

One of Pragg’s games from the 2024 Candidates was a main part of my argument in the piece, so it was good to see him continuing to carry the torch for dynamic and innovative play. He’s been a trendy pick to win the tournament even though his form hasn’t been that great lately, but you’ve got to be feeling positive about his chances after this game, which was pretty much flawless.

The other trendy pick for a winner, Sindarov, did not necessarily look like a World Champion… even though he did win! His game opened in a relatively familiar Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange that soon took a wild turn when his opponent, Esipenko, put his knight on h5 and pushed his f-pawn twice. As Levy Rozman put it in his recap, “The legends of the 20th century of chess are rolling over in their grave being like, ‘What are they doing nowadays?’” Esipenko had Sindarov on the ropes before making a tragic mistake, which Sindarov, to his credit, jumped all over, proceeding to take Esipenko’s position apart.

And then Blübaum and Wei Yi… played a 90-minute draw. Can’t win ‘em all.

Anyway, check out the piece and let me know what you think. It was very fun to write, and I really enjoyed being able to draw some conclusions about both chess strategy and the future of AI.

And in case you don’t know who any of the people I just mentioned are — you can read the Candidates preview I did for Chess.com! I tried to focus on the main storylines for each player rather than deep-in-the-weeds chess stuff, giving fans a sense of the narratives that will play out over the next few weeks. Big honor to write for the website I spend more time on than any other.

So that’s that. I will definitely be writing further about the Candidates, either here or elsewhere, so stay tuned for more. It’s an incredible sporting event and the best way, in my opinion, to become a fan of top-level chess.