Chess history made

Busy Troppovians have no-one other than Troppo to let them know when something serious has happened in the chess world. If Troppo had been going at the time, Troppovians would have been the first non-chess aficionados in the world to hear of Bobby Fischer’s extraordinary exploits, of his game of the century when thirteen, his winning the American open for the first and only time winning all games with black and white and his march through the candidates matches in the early 1970s on the way to Reykjavik destroying the 8th best in the world, and then the fifth best in the world (Taimanov and Larsen respectively) 6-0. Three wins with white and three with black on each occasion. Neither player was ever quite the same again.

Well, I am here to tell you that an achievement of similar magnitude occurred overnight in the United States of America in the Sinquefield Cup 2014. Was it by chess phenomenon Magnus Carlsen the player stupidly called the Mozart of Chess (Mozart was no good at chess – I guess Ludwig van Beethoven was the Alfie Langer of the piano). Well no it wasn’t. Was it by the second rated player in the world, the hapless Levon Aronian? Well no it wasn’t. It was by the only other player currently above the rating strength of 2800 – American born Italian  Fabiano Caruana. Caruana has just participated in a ten round tourney against five other players that is the strongest of all time – with three players over 2,800 and the other three in the high 2,700 (This is well above my rating and even Ken Parish’s – though he was quicker into the blogosphere than these gen-Y layabouts – but I digress).

Caruana has just finished the first round of the tourney – having played five of the best in the world and has scored a cool 5-0. Cleaned up Carlsen here. Carlsen was amazed at 20. . . . Nd3 which the commentator said was quite the best move – even if the computer didn’t agree. Here at Troppo we don’t get into ‘he said, she said’ analysis of chess moves so I’ll say no more.

Anyway, you heard it first on Troppo. We will wait a long time for another performance of either its ilk, kind, genre or oeuvre.