makes sense. so is it just the A/H pawns where this can happen and its not graded a draw?
Any pawn on the board will see it graded a loss for the person running out of time. Basically chess.com donât want to get into the minefield of trying to enumerate which situations can and canât reach checkmate under some arcane set of circumstances. So they just draw the line at material balance under which all circumstances are impossible. So even though itâs true you canât checkmate with an opponent pawn that isnât a flank pawn, itâs going to get graded a win anyway.
I think that technically you could still corner yourself with a B or G pawn if you get it to the back rank, promoted to a bishop, and cornered your king in the corner. Like if you have your king on h1, the opposing king is on h3, and you move your g pawn to the back rank and promote to a bishop, then the other person can checkmate you with a knight moving to g3. Because of the underpromotion, you canât capture the knight like would with a queen or rook.
None of these things will occur to a person in the normal course because the situations are so contrived. Even with time pressure, no one in a real game would accidentally underpromote to bishop in that situation.
There is still no consensus on what happens in arguably insufficient-material situations. FIDE rules state that as long as there exists any sequence of moves that leads to mate, including help-mates, it is a loss. The USCF rules explicitly state what material will lead to a draw. The disparity between the rules do sometimes trip up the pros. See The United States Chess Federation - Diary of a Samford Scholar: European Fall Part II
Nepo represents a clash of styles with Carlsen that has the potential to be a lot more interesting than the recent borefests.
Firouzja will hopefully qualify to contest the WC next.
this game was enjoyable. Magnus sacs his queen, keeps his king in the middle of the board the entire game and just defends it with two knights and a bishop. without allowing any tactics for whites queen to attack the king. while playing blitz.
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I agree chess is very relaxing if youâre not fussed about your rating. Just enjoy the pattern recognition puzzles and the wins when they come.
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Isnât this true of generally all high level matches? Maybe in bullet chess there are actual over the board check mates but in normal time controls everyone is resigning long before the checkmate happens.
This is all really interesting. I think that it will ultimately contribute to the increasing popularity of faster chess, so the players actually make mistakes. I found the World Cup this year to be vastly more entertaining than the first 5 rounds of the championship. Itâs actually more fun to watch players that are not as good make mistakes under time pressure.
I pay more attention to the juniors and the womenâs games in tournaments for this reason. They also display a little more emotion. This was funny as a response to all the draw talk:
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I didnât but just read it in a piece about Hikaru not appreciating the joke in a serious setting. I didnât know he had a stick up his butt.
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Hikaru is an awkward dude.
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Kind of surprised Maurice didnât crack a smile there.
Hikaru sucks
anyone watching this live? i feel like itâs just always going to be draws from here on out
I am watching. Moves 30-40 were exciting but now at their skill level itâs probably going to be another draw.
Yeah right before time control it was pretty amazing, they each made âmistakesâ I think and there were some chances. Too bad no one capitalized. But still it was fun to watch.
Why do competitors at the world championship still have to write down the moves?
Probably for the same âreasonsâ that pro golfers have to manually keep score.