Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Chess Blindness

The Altibox Norway Chess Tournament is a closed super tournament held in Norway every year in the time period of May to June. The best world chess players take place.

The format consists of a Round-Robin with a pool of 10 players playing classical chess.

But in order to create more excitement for spectators and put more pressure on the players, organizers introduced a new format in the 2019 edition which mixed classical and blitz.

In that edition, if players drew in regular games, then they played an Armageddon game, having the same colour as in the original game. If Black, with less time on the clock, holds a draw, he wins this Armageddon.

The time control for the Armaggedon game was 10 minutes for White and seven minutes for Black. Only after move 60, the players got three seconds increment per move.

But mixing classical and blitz games created confusion in some players and, especially in blitz games, the quality of play dropped dramatically.

That is what happened to GM Alexander Grischuk in round 6 in his Armageddon game against GM Fabiano Caruana. With 8 minutes in his clock, Grischuk made a blunder leaving his bishop en prise in a rare case of chess blindness.

What happened to Grischuk in his game is something you’d only see in an online game, and then only in a bullet game.

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