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Looks like 4 is my total for 2024. No further plans to buy owt- there's nothing I want.



Who's going to buy the most though this year? How are our leaders doing?

Yes, the unmatching gold is very peculiar and unnecessary. Hasbro always manages to find a way to not deliver fully. Cretins.

And, boy oh boy, have we got off to a thrilling start!!!


World Championship matches are notorious for lots of draws - these top guys just cancelling each other out.

Carlsen-Caruana 2016 was like that: 14 draws! (But fighting draws though with their own thrilling momentum).



Well, in 2024, Game One was NOT a draw...






Buckle up, chaps- this match is gonna be doozey!

Bit of background for you chaps.


So you have the World Champion. Historically, every three, but currently every two, years a Candidates Tournament is held and the qualifying top players in the world slug it out to determine who is the 'Challenger'. The Challenger then takes on the World Champion in a match. Only in a long match can the truly strongest player be determined. Historically these have been long matches, e.g., 24 games. These days they're shorter, 12 or 14 games, due to our limited attention spans these days...

This is 'Classical' chess, long time controls. As opposed to 'Rapid' chess, short time controls, or 'Blitz' chess, ridiculously short time controls (both of which have their own World Champions - currently both titles held by Magnus Carlsen).

The former "Classical' champion and (still) the world's strongest player (most likely the strongest in history), Magnus Carlsen, gave up his Classical title in 2022. So, the chess world's governing body, FIDE, held the planned match between the winner of the Candidates, Ian Nepomniatchi (who Carlsen crushed in 2020/21), and the second placed player in the Candidates, Ding Liren. It was a very exciting match, in which Ding was noted as being extremely candid about how much he was struggling with his anxiety and mental health. Ding won in thrilling fashion to become the 17th World Chess Champion. "Self-pinning for immortality."

After winning though, Ding struggled to maintain form. Recently he's been getting it back but has been struggling to convert good positions into wins, having to settle for draws.

Gukesh Dommaraju has rocketed into the world elite. At only 18 he's one of the youngest of an army of incredibly talented Indian players; The Legacy of Vishwanathan Anand, the first Indian chess Grand Master and 15th World Chess Champion, the man who Carlsen defeated to become champion.

Gukesh shocked the chess world by spectacularly winning the Candidates earlier in 2024, fending off stronger, far more experienced players such as Nepomniatchi, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura (Caruana just missing out in the last game to draw level with Gukesh on points forcing tiebreak games). It was a stunning performance by Gukesh.

Carlsen won the crown in 2013 aged 22. If Gukesh wins he will become the youngest Champion in history.

But Gukesh has never beaten Ding.

They've only played eachother three times in classical chess. Ding has won two with one draw.

Ding is also older and far more experienced.

And, thankfully, although struggling for form, Ding seems to have put at least some of his demons to bed (the most important thing of all).

They're not the strongest or second strongest players in the world currently, that's Carlsen and Caruana (although Gukesh isn't far behind). But they've qualified through the gruelling Candidates mailestrum to get to where they are now.

Two years ago, people felt Ding was lucky. He only qualified for the Candidates after Sergey Karjakin was disqualified after publicly supporting Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

But I don't think Ding was lucky. Ding, now 32, has maintained his place at the very top of world chess for nearly a decade. When you work that hard to stay at the top you make your own luck.

Gukesh is the lightning rod of a new era in chess: the Dominance of India. Will this new era start with him achieving a historic win? Or will Ding be able to tap back into his extraordinary genius that has kept him in the world elite for so long?



This is the 2024 World Chess Championship.

I haven't seen (or read) it, but if you want to learn about the exciting story of the World Chess Championship I can recommend Andre Sholtz's 'The Big Book of World Chess Championships' (although he only goes up to Carlsen-Anand 2014).

I am Bonnie Tyler.



I have been all along.

Big Phil, you'll find, as you approach maturity, that a lot of things in life depend on one's individual point of view.

The rhyme of Rhyming Week!

Don't try to get inside his existential definitions, Man. Just don't do it.

Don't try to get inside his head, Man. Just don't do it.

WE SEEK PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE!

I was talking to FortMax.



Í know you, noble Doctor, are not... like that.

Rhyming week's over, I shared a tear.
Perhaps 2025 should be Rhyming Year?

Me holding a large guitar playing Transformer may soon be in my Pinterest!

No, don't worry, It's not '84, so I have not interest.