Double bongcloud - Chess

[RickB]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/ ... n-nakamura

Double bongcloud: why grandmasters are playing the worst move in chess

A move so bad you’d have to be stoned to think it was a good idea. But chess’ grandmasters are taking it to the mainstream

An otherwise meaningless game during Monday’s preliminary stage of the $200,000 Magnus Carlsen Invitational left a pair of grandmasters in stitches while thrusting one of chess’s most bizarre and least effective openings into the mainstream.

Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura of the United States had already qualified for the knockout stage of the competition with one game left to play between them. Carlsen, the world’s top-ranked player and reigning world champion, started the dead rubber typically enough by moving his king’s pawn with the common 1 e4. Nakamura, the five-time US champion and current world No 18, mirrored it with 1 … e5. And then all hell broke loose.

Carlsen inched his king one space forward to the rank where his pawn had started. The self-destructive opening (2 Ke2) is known as the bongcloud for a simple reason: you’d have to be stoned to the gills to think it was a good idea.

The wink-wink move immediately sent Nakamura, who’s been a visible champion of the bongcloud in recent years, into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Naturally, the American played along with 2 … Ke7, which marked the first double bongcloud ever played in a major tournament and its official entry to chess theory (namely, the Bongcloud Counter-Gambit: Hotbox Variation).

“Don’t do this!” cried the Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko from the commentary booth, looking on in disbelief as the friendly rivals quickly settled for a draw by repetition after six moves. “Is this, uh, called bongcloud? Yeah? It was something like of a bongcloud business. This Ke2-Ke7 stuff. Please definitely don’t try it at home. Guys, just forget about it.”

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[mike miller]

I'm a chess nerd myself, and I've NEVER seen that! It flies in the face of 1.e4 - e5 and all proceeding strategies. Yes, 1.e4 - e5 is known as an "open game" but puhlease.........


The weirdest I've ever seen was the "massacre by knights" where both sides run their knights through the other side's back rank. That is intentional and dead serious. If you don't know how to proceed or when to stop, you lose bigly.

[Rob]

I sub to Nakamura on Youtube, he's hilarious!