The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen won the Katara International Bullet Tournament on Wednesday 26th August 2020. Carlsen was joined by 15 qualifiers on Lichess for the final of this bullet chess (1 minute) tournament sponsored by the Qatari Chess Association. It was a 16 player knockout where there were matches of 12 games. Carlsen beat Rasmus Svane, Rauf Mamedov, then Bullet Legend Andrew "Penguin" Tang (where he lost the first three games, two to dropped pieces due to pre-moves in the opening) before asserting himself and then he beat Daniel Naroditsky in the final. In the final Naroditsky got off to a slow start losing three of the first four games, he was particularly unlucky in game three to find an amazing combination to win Carlsen's Queen only to discover that his Queen could be attacked and taken at the end, something neither player had time to see in advance. Naroditsky then won three in a row to level the match before losing the last three to lose 6.5-3.5. Naroditsky had earlier soundly beaten Alireza Firouzja in the semi-finals. The match was broadcast by Fiona Steil-Antoni on her twitch channel with Alex Astaneh Lopez. The final broadcast is below, the three Arena qualifiers are also available. I now have all the games from this final knockout phase and they all seem to be correct - there is one additional Firouzja-Paravyan than was necessary played and I also included that.