So I watched a chess TV show. Well, you can't say chess isn't a game. Anyway, the first big tournament of the year kicked off today in Wijk Aan Zee, Holland. They've been playing this tournament for 75 years now, and its current title is the Tata Steel tournament after the sponsor, a metal-refining conglomerate based in India. But everybody still calls it Wijk Aan Zee (rhymes with "like on say").
The official webcast doesn't have audio commentary, but the Internet Chess Club provided that on another site. The ICC commentators were hyping the games a little. For instance, they insisted world champ Vishy Anand was bashing U.S. champ Hikaru Nakamura all over the board. Computer evaluations (and my own patzer brain) saw the game as much more even. Sure enough, after a critical rook exchange on c8, the game ended in a draw after only 28 moves.
An odd note: yesterday the players selected the tournament pairings by hitting a red buzzer that looked like it fell out of Family Feud. Steve Harvey did not put in an appearance, though.
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