Double bongcloud: why grandmasters are playing the worst relocation in chess – The Guardian

An otherwise worthless video game throughout Monday’s initial phase of the $200,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational left a set of grandmasters in stitches while thrusting among chess’s most unusual and least reliable openings into the mainstream.

Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura of the United States had actually currently received the knockout phase of the competitors with one video game delegated play in between them. Carlsen, the world’s top-ranked gamer and reigning world champion, began the dead rubber usually enough by moving his king’s pawn with the typical 1 e4. Nakamura, the five-time United States champ and existing world No 18, mirrored it with 1 … e5. And after that all hell broke out.

Carlsen inched his king one area forward to the area where his pawn had actually begun. The self-destructive opening (2 Ke2) is called the bongcloud for a basic factor: you ‘d need to be stoned to the gills to believe it was a great concept.

The wink-wink relocation instantly sent out Nakamura, who’s been a noticeable champ of the bongcloud recently, into an unmanageable fit of laughter. Naturally, the American played together with 2 … Ke7, which marked the first double bongcloud ever played in a significant competition and its main entry to chess theory (particularly, the Bongcloud Counter-Gambit: Hotbox Variation).

” Do not do this!” sobbed the Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko from the commentary cubicle, searching in shock as the friendly competitors rapidly chose a draw by repeating after 6 relocations. “Is this, uh, called bongcloud? Yeah? It was something like of a bongcloud organization. This Ke2-Ke7 things. Please absolutely do not attempt it in the house. People, simply forget it.”

Why is the bongcloud so bad? For one, it handles to break virtually all of the concepts you’re taught about chess openings from the first day: it does not defend the center, it leaves the king exposed and it loses time, all while getting rid of the possibility of castling and handling to hinder the advancement of the bishop and queen. Even the worst openings tend to have some redeeming quality. The bongcloud, not a lot.

What makes it amusing (well, not to everyone) is the concept that 2 of the very best gamers on earth would utilize an opening so pure in its defiance of traditional knowledge.

This bongcloud has actually been a cult favorite in chess circles given that the dawn of the web, an appeal just sustained by Bobby Fischer’s rumored deployment of the opening in his alleged series of games with Nigel Short on the Web Chess Club back in 2000. However its origins as a meme can be traced to Andrew Fabbro’s underground book Winning with the Bongcloud, a pitch-perfect parody of chess opening handbooks and the purple, ponderous language that fills their pages.

That’s not to state, like, state, Michael Chang’s underhand serve versus Ivan Lendl in the 1989 French Open, there’s no location for it at the elite level. Carlsen used it last October in the very first video game of a speed chess last win over the American grandmaster Wesley So, who admitted to its mental impacts in the after-effects: “It’s tough to forget the video game when somebody plays f3 and Kf2 and simply squashes you. That’s so embarrassing.”

Then later on: “If you lose a video game versus 1 f3 and 2 Kf2 it’s simply really mentally draining pipes.”

Naturally it’s Nakamura who has actually ended up being the gamer most related to the bongcloud. The 33-year-old most just recently won a rapid game using it versus the American grandmaster Jeffery Xiong in 2015 throughout the $250,000 St Louis 27-round Quick and Blitz. He’s even streamed a speedrun series where he tried to reach a 3000 ranking with a brand-new account utilizing just the bongcloud.

The combined presence, culminating with Monday’s viral minute, have actually raised an odd meme opening out of the shadows. Since Wednesday, it’s been contributed to the opening databases at lichess and chess.com. Naturally, not everybody will be a fan: no less than Brief himself appeared to explain the bongcloud as an “insult to chess” today.

Chess will go back to Serious Service as soon as again in the next couple of months. The eight-man prospects competition to identify Carlsen’s opposition in this year’s world chess champion will resume in April in Yekaterinburg following in 2015’sabrupt suspension Then in November, Carlsen will start the 4th defense of the title he’s held given that 2013. The dizzying stakes of those occasions all however prevent scenes like Monday’s, which as analyst Tania Sachdev put it in the middle of the delirium, is regrettable. After all, it’s just a video game.

” It’s sort of good,” Sachdev stated, “to see these 2 gamers having a laugh like this.”