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Have any of you seen the latest from Kramnik, he posted this...

“Some small new piece of statistics, recently noticed, a player had scored 45.5 out of 46 CONSECUTIVE 3 minutes blitz games against approximately 2950 in average rating opposition (few different players) which is equivalent to 3600+ performance in those 46 Consecutive games. I believe everyone would find this interesting (SIC).”

He is talking about Hikaru who, as you can imagine, was quick to respond, calling the accusation "garbage".

Epic Chess does a great job in this video of explaining why he also thinks it's ridiculous...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEXZGnG2wbw

Kramnik and Gata Kamsky have recently taken their accusations of online cheating to extreme, almost absurd levels. I've been tuning it out. Pity, because I like both GMs as chessplayers and enjoy watching Kamsky's streams. Watching a recent Kamsky stream of Titled Tuesday, he reported practically every opponent for cheating. It's become almost self-parodic.

OTOH, I do believe there is a significant amount of cheating in Titled Tuesdays. So as a spectator I prefer events with fewer players.

Carlsen plays 1. f3? in a Titled Tuesday blitz game against GM. The "Barnes Opening".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWmH1XZ5oto

Thanks Geeker, that was fun. I love the way MC is using all these weird openings... F3, H3, A3!! - and he still wins 😎

Can't help but wonder if he isn't trolling his opponents - at least a little bit 🤔

This is a funny story from when MC just started playing Titled Tuesdays and his weird openings were less expected:

https://new.chess24.com/wall/news/mamedov-resigned-carlsen-1-g5-mockery

🤣 Rauf Mamedov is a very strong GM, btw.

With stone foundations, Greek castles compete to be most up-to-date (9)

G??O??E??

This was in Friday's Times. I was quite surprised that solvers were expected to know O-O as chess notation for the 'castles' move. They probably also had to be of a certain age to remember the stem word of the solution meaning 'with it' and 'cool'.

Nice one Paul, of course if you're a fan of Austin Powers you'll also know it 🤪

Good one, Paul. I'd have gotten it. Strangely, I recently heard a song (Smithers-Jones) by the Jam that includes (twice) the dated slang term.

That Jam song is off Setting Sons which is a truly terrific album IMHO 👍

Brendan, the Jam were terrific IMO...although I mostly know them via the Snap! "greatest hits" compilation.

Here's a beatdown of the Najdorf that the Youtube algorithm summoned up, Indjic-Sarana, SRB team ch 2023 round 7 (1-0, 21)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brhUD_DzIHM

A bit surprising to see the extremely strong GM Sarana play 9...Bb7, giving up protection of e6, and immediately get hit with 10. Bxe6!