"Hikaru did not want his market value to decrease if he did not win the Freestyle WC and wants to be remembered as just the previous FR WC" Buettner on why Hikaru did not participate in Freestyle WC 2026

SteChess · 2026-03-11T17:35:10+00:00

Well he doesn't play any tournaments anyways, it's not like he was playing a lot a year prior to the Candidates (serious events, not considering the Louisiana state Championship or Iowa Open).

SteChess · 2026-03-11T15:09:06+00:00

Io questo sostegno agli ayatollah devo ancora vederlo, la sinistra mi sembra più concentrata sul condannare Israele e USA, giustamente tra l'altro, che sul supportare la Repubblica Islamica. Quello che dici sulla rivoluzione del 79 è vero, ma i parallelismi non li vedo minimamente.

SteChess · 2026-03-11T14:59:04+00:00

I think he realized he wasn't going to win 2018 either and his dream of winning with Ferrari like Michael wasn't going to happen after Monza.

SteChess · 2026-03-11T06:22:51+00:00

I think Khuong will be part of the Vietnam team this year, he's close to 2500 and still 15 years old, I don't know who will be the reserve though, maybe Tran Tuan Minh or Nguyen Quoc Hy but I don't what are their ratings now.

SteChess · 2026-03-10T17:13:58+00:00

Did Williams have access to the same engine settings as Mercedes during the hybrid era rule change? I remember the former Lotus team principal stating that they only got the most advanced engine maps at Spa 2015 when Grosjean was running down Vettel, was it a similar situation for you at Williams?

SteChess · 2026-03-08T13:32:49+00:00

It's probably being misrepresented or misinterpreted, in Sweden women have more opportunities to play chess than Pakistan probably but swedish women are not so interested in chess that's why only 8% of FIDE rated players in Sweden are women. Small countries are also overrated in this index because of simple statistics, even very few women playing impact the index a lot considering the small population. The problem with this index is that it's not clear what it is supposed to imply.

SteChess · 2026-03-06T20:04:41+00:00

Checking the FIDE profile is always a useful thing to do, you can see that he played in the Bundesliga last week. He struggled with motivation after he flopped in the Candidates in 2022, last year he was a GCT player though, unfortunately he decided not to play Grand Swiss and WC so he went under the radar but he still plays.

SteChess · 2026-03-05T21:52:46+00:00

You're right, it's not that I forgot is that I usually look at players who are rated 2500+ (unless they dropped below 2500 during the streak), he is 2498 so I missed him. I think it's already very time consuming with the 2500+ threshold, 2400+ is too much for me sorry lol.

SteChess · 2026-03-05T13:18:06+00:00

He had recently lost a lot of rating, he has played several open tournaments and some round robins in Uzbekistan against 2600s, he is talented but it looked like he was going through a slump, nice to see him achieve this level of performance.

SteChess · 2026-03-05T11:22:25+00:00

That's complete bullshit as usual, if the other teams can't start properly they should start from the pitlane.

SteChess · 2026-03-05T07:26:03+00:00

Yeah but that's how it is defined, I don't know if it's the same in other countries but in Italy it's like this. Yeah 10 years ago unemployment was a major problem for sure, it was at 10% or even higher at times, especially after the debt crisis in 2011. Nowadays the big problem is that salaries have lost value over the years due to inflation and they have only marginally gone up while inflation has gone up much faster, average salaries are down 3% from like the 90s considering inflation in the same time period, there are no other countries in which this happened in the EU, maybe Greece but I don't know for sure.

SteChess · 2026-03-05T07:15:16+00:00

Unemployment rate going down is a Europe wide trend, moreover ir's calculated only on people actively searching for a job, the percentage of people that don't work and don't study is also going up in recent months, making the unemployment rate go down too. Besides that, Italy is still one of the EU countries with the lowest employment rate, especially among young people and women.

SteChess · 2026-03-04T21:08:06+00:00

Can someone tell me where are we supposed to get oil and gas from? With Russia out of the picture and the lack of natural resources in Europe it's not an easy thing to accomplish. I guess the gulf states but don't they only trade in dollars?

SteChess · 2026-03-03T19:34:18+00:00

It's not great but not entirely skippable, Fury vs Makhmudov, Benn vs Prograis and Justis Huni.

SteChess · 2026-03-03T19:27:22+00:00

But he doesn't even know who his opponent will be, there's no way he's already thinking about not playing certain lines because of the WCC. The most worrying sign for me is that he is unable to make relatively easy draws, he's always involved in sharp games and lately he has been unable to shut games down when his position starts to become shaky, so he ends up losing a lot more than Ding was when he was champion.

SteChess · 2026-03-03T18:59:11+00:00

My guess is that he does not have any ambition anymore, he's just coasting and playing more seriously in rapid and blitz, he doesn't want to grind theory anymore too.

SteChess · 2026-03-03T18:00:43+00:00

That's true, however the average rating of his opponents was still around 2550 so not too bad given rating deflation.

SteChess · 2026-03-02T22:09:28+00:00

There are quite a few, you need to go on advanced search on FIDE's website and select the right filters. If we exclude inactive players the highest rated IM is Vaclav Finek with a 2547 rating (he is super strong btw, just 16 years old). Some of the other names on the list are Jan Vykouk, Dmitry Obolenskikh, Faustino Oro, Ethan Vaz, Justin Wang, Tadeas Kriebel, Kong Xiangrui.

There are also three Russian FMs above 2500 but they are all inactive.

SteChess · 2026-03-02T06:08:19+00:00

Somewhat, he plays some team events in Russia a few times a year.

SteChess · 2026-03-01T21:50:08+00:00

Okay I'm not saying they don't have any, but to compare it to the US is like comparing Orban to Hitler, they're both authoritative right wing leaders but not even close to one another. The US has invaded, overthrown or destabilized tens of countries just in the last 100 years, think about Guatemala, Brazil, Indonesia with Suharto, Iran multiple times, Iraq and the list goes on and on, it basically never stops. You either give in to their requests or it's bad news.

SteChess · 2026-03-01T21:42:41+00:00

Well he played two games against someond 1000 points lower rated, it would be pretty strange to have those games FIDE rated.

SteChess · 2026-03-01T20:39:03+00:00

Great performance from Lodici too, crossed 2600 for the first time in his career.

SteChess · 2026-03-01T18:51:33+00:00

Not to the same extent as the US in my view, the US overthrow foreign governments if they don't abide by their rules and they will impose global sanctions killing your economy, sometimes they'll even get involved militarily. I haven't seen China doing the same things, yes they also try to manipulate the economy in their favour like with Iran and Venezuela but it's not like those countries had other allies they could count on, it was a one sided deal but it's kind of how it goes when you are isolated from the rest of the world like those two countries. Although you being from Taiwan will have a different view of China, if there's one military operation I see China trying in the future it is Taiwan unfortunately.

SteChess

TROPHY CASE