Daily Rome Shot 555, etc., high drama

High chess drama in St Louis yesterday where the Sinquefield Cup is underway with some of the best players in the world… except…

Yesterday the arguably-best-player-ever, Magnus Carlsen, stunned everyone by withdrawing from the tourney with a cryptic comment intimating that he thought one of the opponents, namely Hans Niemann, was cheating.  Niemann had beaten Carlsen the day before with black, but his after game interview comments were… weird.  Also, some time back Niemann did, in fact, cheat in online play, and admitted it.  He also had fairly recently a rather amazing leap in his rating, hundreds of points.  Thus the chess world exploded all day yesterday.  Carlsen’s games were blotted from the competition though not from ratings.  Carlsen has never withdrawn from a tournament, even when sick.  He didn’t quit because he had lost.  As the players entered for round 4 they were carefully wanded and checked with an RF detector used to find listening devices, trackers, hidden cameras, etc.

A variant of this.

These are handy for hotel rooms, etc.  I have one.  HERE

Also, for yesterday’s round another anti-cheating measure was employed: the transmission of the games was delayed by 15 minutes.  That means that any communication with the outside world would result in critical time loss on the cheaters clock, a serious deterrent.

The game between Caruana and MLV is worth a peak.  One commentator quoted Tartakower who had said that the winner is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake.  That is a pretty good reminder for how life works, too.

The daily puzzle at Chess.com was a little tricky.  It’s white’s move.  A couple pieces are hanging.  What to do?

Meanwhile, in the Roman Martyrology today we learn that it is the Feast of St. Zachary, Old Testament Prophet.