Garry Kasparov, who many consider the all-time No 1 in competition with Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen, has been back in action this week in the $150,000 Chess 9LX tournament at St Louis. In Chess 9LX, also known as Fischer Random, Freestyle Chess or Chess 960, the placing of the back rank pieces is decided randomly by lot.
At 61, Kasparov still has it. Competing against the cream of US grandmasters, he made a 50% 4.5/9 total and missed chances to do still better due to his problems with handling the fast time limit of 20 minutes per player per game, with a 10 seconds per move increment. He missed winning chances against both the world No 2 and reigning US champion, Fabiano Caruana, who won the Chess 9LX event, and against the world No 3 Hikaru Nakamura, where instead of repeating moves by 38…Bc5? Black should play 38…Qb4! 39 Rxc6 Qd2+ 40 Kh3 Bg1! and White is lost.
