...Garry Kasparov will be returning to the game.

https://www.chess.com/news/view/breaking......itz-7097

You can follow it here, among other places -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM-ONC2bCHytG2mYtKDmIeA

Kasparov is BY FAR my favorite player of all time, so I'll be watching with great interest. I have a kind of love/hate relationship with blitz, but hey, it's Garry!

Awesome news! Kasparov is one of my favorite players as well. If you have heard of Sam Harris, he has a podcast on YouTube that I love. Gary was a guest on one of the episodes and it was a great listen. He's a very enlightened man.

Garry is making an appearance in a rapid and blitz tournament; he's very clear that he's not returning to full-time serious play. That said, he will add a bit of interest to the event.

In an interview on chess24.com the other day, Garry talked a little bit about the changes in the game in the past 14 years (since his retirement). At the top level, he thinks that current players conceptualize everything differently than he did--and his thinking was revolutionary.

It will be very interesting to see how Garry's "old school" chess does against the new computer-training era. Not to mention age. While Garry is not ancient, stamina will be an issue, I would think.

Regardless, Rex Sinquefield has created a chess Renaissance in St. Louis.

(BTW, if you've got some spare time, drop into chess24.com to watch live coverage of the final rounds of the Sinquefield Cup. The commentary from Yasser Seirawan, Jennifer Shahade and Maurice Ashley and the occasional guest, makes for pleasant viewing. And you can drop in and drop out at your leisure.)

I agree that he probably won't return in a big way, but you never know. You can see in his eyes that his fire, and love of the game, is as strong as ever.

In any event I'll take what I can get.

Apparently he's now serving out some politically motivated 2 year ban from FIDE which ends this October. I just found out about this, so I'll have to look into it further.

Your point about "old school chess" is well taken. While I have great respect for today's players, coming up in the age of strong engines has changed the dynamics of the games. They have to work less, in a way, since they can just plug ideas into the engines and count on the results. The engines probably suggest lines and ideas in the variations they propose that the players wouldn't have thought of.

Kasparov's generation had to work out the variations in their heads, and judge the resulting positions themselves. The use of seconds has also changed. They're more like personal assistants now, even if they're strong players in their own right.
Peter Svidler spoke of using Skype to contact his assistants, who use engines and their own ability to suggest possible ways to play. In the old days the seconds had to travel with you. In Achieving the Aim, Botvinik spoke of countless nights spent analyzing adjourned positions, and having to force himself to go to bed so as not to be exhausted the next day.

Still, they are producing some amazing games; the best of which are coming from Anand, who's kind of old himself.

I'm following the cup on the St Louis Chess club YouTube channel, and it's interesting to listen to what they reveal when discussing the positions - particularly how freely they seem to admit that some positions are so complicated that they rely on intuition as much as calculation to make decisions.

After round 8 they all look exhausted. Caruana letting the win slip against Nakamura (who always seems to be a bit of a tool to me) is an example of it. During the post game interview they both seemed to admit that it just got too complicated for the amount of gas they have left in the tank. "I don't know....maybe...maybe...it's very complicated..."

I have no idea what's happened to Wesley So. He was crushing everything in 2016, but now it seems that something has extracted his self confidence.

I love Yasser Seirawan, but his voice is like listening to a constant lullaby. Jen's deferring to Yasser, and Yasser's deference to Maurice is a little annoying but they work well together. If Maurice brings up the Aikido metaphor one more time I'll probably jump through my monitor, but he's clearly the strongest commentator.

Last round is today, and it's close. Very exciting.

This year's cup has had fantastic sporting interest. Some great play has been marred by fatigue (As Garry noted, "Magnus is vulnerable right now".) Wesley is struggling. Levon Aronian is the best player in the world--for short periods of time; he seems incapable of maintaining his game. And no matter how Peter Svidler plays, I love it when he comes up for an interview. For my money, he's the wittiest voice in chess today.

I disagree slightly on the commentators. Yasser is by far the most accomplished (player) of the three commentators but he's too polite to everyone else; I really want Yasser's opinion most of the time. Maurice is using an engine behind the scenes, but I find his comments are often less insightful than Yasser's.

You may be right about Maurice and the use of the engine. They've become so ubiquitous you hardly notice them, but he does seem to be responding to Yasser and Jen's ideas himself.

Yasser may have the same engine in front of him, but he doesn't seem to be using it.

Don't get me wrong, his analysis and thought process is top notch; it's just that voice.....
He could have had a great career in psychology - or hypnotism.

So is having a bad tournament but a nice 2017. He's won the US championship, Wijk Aan Zee, Leon, the rapids portion of Leuve ...

Regression to the mean. He couldn't keep up his earlier pace.

We seem to be the closest to having a champion primus inter pares since Botvinnik.

Http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2017/......421.html

Caution...fireworks.

They do seem to take turns shining.

Today's the big day!!

Garry! Garry! Garry!

Although it's unlikely I'll pick him for 1st.

Any other predictions?

Garry will lose a game that he is clearly winning. And he will crush somebody. Apart from that, it's hard to say.

I think he'll do great. Fischer took 20 years off, and his result in the Spassky (1992) match put him around top-20 in the world. Kasparo OTOH has had recent fast chess results that are super-competitive with the top tier - crushing Short and coming right behind Nakamura and So.

Round 1 is complete. Garry fought Karjakin to a draw, showing he's still the monster that sees all. Nakamura out-calculates Anand. Aronian unleashes a brilliancy against Navara. Round 2 starts in a couple of minutes.

You might wish to tune into chess24.com and kiss productivity good-bye for the afternoon :0

Not looking bad with black against Naka.

As someone who got into tournament Chess in 1984, it's really weird to see Kasparov as "The Old Guy."

Well, he didn't come in 1st, but I think he acquitted himself very well.

His game against Navarro was tough to watch.

All things considered though he's still Garry.

Garry played well, showing that he is not out of place with the current generation's best players. He also showed that he is not able to compete with full-time professionals when he is not one himself.

Interesting article: Kasparov: What went wrong? by Grandmaster Gregory Serper. It's part 1 of a 2-part article. Here he looks at Fischer's 1992 "comeback" where he avoided top players, and suggests that Kasparov's result was a consequence of his not taking the safe route to image management.

I think Serper's overdoing it. He expected +1, which would have been 18.5, and over 27 rounds, Gary ended up 2.5 points behind that. I don't think too much should be drawn in the way of conclusions from a single event, but Tim the extent we rely on this, as far as competing against full-time professionals, he finished ahead of Anand, 1/2 point behind Caruana, 1/2 point out of a tie for 5th, and just a point out of clear 5th.

Fischer-Spassky was a different deal, but Spassky at the time was a well above average GM (#100 in he world out of about 500-600 GMs), and Fischer's score against him was a performance (per Elo) that put him at about #20-25 in the world...prett impressive after 20 years.. Kasparov's performance maybe even a little more impressive with the level of competition, the faster time control, and the fact that he's older than Fischer was in '92.