Bortnyk on 960 Titled Arena streak
No opening theory, only pure instinct and chaos
It's variant time! After the last 960 TA, GM Oleksandr Bortnyk manages to win again. Unlike the previous titled arena, where the 1st player won with a staggering 36 point difference. The finish here was super close. Maybe this also comes from the nature of the variant, where everyone knows equally much about the opening. Thanks to a 6-game streak ending with a long draw Bortnyk manages to take the lead and went from 10th to 1st in the last 23 minutes. Only to finally win by 2 points from IM Mahammad Muradli and IM onamissionfromGod. This makes it his 5th arena win out of the 11 arenas this year. Bortnyk's long draw didn't work in everybody's favour. His opponent and TA regular IM Mlchael dropped from 3th to 5th place thanks to this long draw. He still managed to get top 5 just like the last 960 Arena and had after msb2 the highest performance this event.
Chess960 allows for beautiful attacking games, quick wins and blunders thanks to the confusion. 10.8% of the 1537 games got a decisive result within only 15 moves. Also our official commentator GM Felix Blohberger was impressed by the 18-year old Svane's fireworks in this game:
https://lichess.org/study/cRYwKz76
The next Titled Arena is on 25 June and the next 960 Titled Arena on 13 August. But before that, share in the madness with our 960 puzzlepack!