Kid's Night Next Monday - 040918 - Fabiano Caruana to Play for the World Title!

Meet the next American to challenge for the World Title - Fabiano Caruana

We look forward to a big crowd at the next Kid's Night this Monday.

The Club is open to all every Monday night, but on the 2nd Monday of the month - its all about the kids!

Bring the young chess players - of any strength, including beginners - and they will find another young player to play against.

Or they can get lessons from any of the club regulars, especially our own "Coach Terry".

See you this coming Monday, starting at 6pm to 8pm.

Now for the story of our country's own World Championship challenger, Fabiano Caruana!

From The Guardian:

American Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana will challenge for Magnus Carlsen’s world chess championship in London this fall after winning the candidates tournament in Tuesday’s final round of competition in Berlin.

No player born in the United States has won or even competed for a world championship since Bobby Fischer in 1972.

The Miami-born, Brooklyn-raised Caruana draped himself in an American flag amid applause from the gallery at the Kühlhaus after winning as black over Russia’s Alexander Grischuk to complete the 14-game double round-robin with nine points, one better than Azerbaijan’s Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, who finished on eight apiece. Ding Laren, China’s first ever candidate, was the lone competitor to finish the fortnight undefeated with one win and 13 draws, good for fourth overall with 7.5 points.

“I am absolutely thrilled,” Caruana, the world No3, said afterward. “Coming into today, I wasn’t sure what would happen and things couldn’t have gone better. A few days ago, I thought the tournament was already out of my hands, but somehow things just came together perfectly at the end. I really couldn’t be happier.”

Caruana, 25, led the eight-man field from start to finish, weathering a shaky two-game period over the last week and holding off a dogged fightback by the resilient Karjakin, whose dramatic win over the American in 48 moves on Saturday briefly thrust him atop the leaderboard beside the leader with two rounds to play.

But Caruana, benefiting from an extra rest day, bounced back on Monday to defeat pre-tournament favorite Levon Aronian of Armenia, while Karjakin was held to a draw by Wesley So of the United States.

That set the stage for Tuesday’s final round in which four competitors entered with a mathematical shot at the title. But after Karjakin drew with Ding, Caruana outlasted Grischuk over 69 moves and more than six hours to book his place across the board from Carlsen, who will be making his third defense of the world championship in the best-of-12-games match from 9-28 November in London at a venue to be determined.

“It’s still so far away, but I’ll prepare very seriously for it,” said Caruana, who earned the winner’s share of €95,000 ($117,827) with Tuesday’s candidates win. “I’ll come well-prepared. It will be a tough fight, but right now I’m not even thinking about it.”

Caruana, who is a dual US-Italian citizen but spent his childhood in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, competed internationally for Italy from 2005 until 2015, when he changed federations to compete as an American. He represented the United States on the first board at the most recent Chess Olympiad in 2016, leading his nation to their 1^st gold medal at the tournament since 1976.

The lone other American to compete for a version of the world title since Fischer’s 1975 abdication was Russian-born grandmaster Gata Kamsky, who played under the US flag when he lost a 20-game match to Russian star Anatoly Karpov in 1996, when the championship was fractured between rival governing bodies and Garry Kasparov was generally recognized as the world’s strongest player.