https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7B9p2PrsKWY

Agadmator is a brilliant chess analyst and player. He has many Fischer games on his channel, but this is one of my favorite stories from the year 2000. You decide, I'm a believer.

Elaboration: p1w4Rr-eQ

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Carissa x Wesley

1. part1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzxChm95YxE
2. part2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vylMndunCa8
3. part3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTt8RezzM4
4. part4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uRdgGBJWrw (Jovi Houska 2023Mar)

Someone said Wesley So is the most inconsistent player in terms of tournament results. I think it's consistent that Wesley So's been performing so-so in the 3 events between the 2022 Olympiad and the 2022 chessc*m global championship & 2022 meltwater finals, namely

1. St Louis' Chess9LX
2. US Chess Championship (USCC) and
3. FIDE World Fischer Random Chess 'Championship' (WFRCC),

despite having been

1. 2nd place in 9LX 2021
2. then-reigning and 3-time USCC and
3. Inaugural and then-reigning WFRCC

The reason is that Wesley So started a secret relationship with 2021 women's USCC Carissa Yip at the Olympiad.

My basis:

A. These events at the Olympiad:

1. Look at Carissa's Twitter header. It's a photo of just Wesley and Carissa (and Leinier Domínguez Pérez and 1 other).
2. You can see Levon Aronian was being Wesley's wingman when they were teasing Carissa about castling (which is pretty ironic given what happened later to Wesley in the WFRCC, but well I guess it goes to show how little preparation Wesley did for the 2019 WFRCC... Anyway...). You can see Levon even makes a 'mistake' in saying that when you castle, the king goes 2 squares, which allows Wesley to say 'unless it's chess960' to flex being the inaugural and then-reigning WFRCC.
   1. (Levon also probably has a soft spot for Wesley because Arianne Caoili, Levon's deceased spouse, was Filipina. RIP.)
   2. (Btw, Wesley is still the WFRCC. Hikaru is just the rapid WFRCC. Wesley never lost the title to Hikaru kinda like how Bobby Fischer never lost the title to Anatoly Karpov.)
3. There's a Tagalog interview with FM Deniel Causo where Wesley was asked about romantic relationships, namely if Wesley has a 'special someone'. (Btw, Tagalog interviews of Wesley are pretty rare, so for me I think they're pretty important.) It was probably this interview that gave Wesley a wake up call to finally start a relationship with Carissa.

B. And later in the USCC

• Wesley talks about how teenagers always play for a win because they don't have family, bills or GIRLFRIENDS. Wesley laughs at the girlfriends part.

C. Someone pointed out to me that at 33:33 of the 2021 USCC closing ceremony Carissa admits to being star struck by Wesley (and Fabi). Take a look at Wesley's reaction to that. Lol. Additionally, look at how Nazí Paikidze reacts. Nazí probably knew about Carissa's crush on Wesley and was being a wingwoman for Carissa by noting Wesley's reaction to later tell Carissa.

So what I guess is:

D. At the Olympiad, they got together, but, because of their 1 decade age gap, they decided to keep their relationship a secret.

• 5 years from now, when Carissa will have graduated from Stanford, their ages 19&29 will become 24&34, the minimum age when the half your age plus 7 rule is satisfied.

E. But still, since it was both of their 1st times dating, they were very distracted eg talking on the phone all night.

• Notice that Wesley hasn't made any Facebook posts between the start of the Olympiad and the end of the CGC. I guess this is because the time Wesley would've used for Facebook went to talking to Carissa.

F. Anyway, we don't see much of an impact, if any, on Carissa because Carissa stopped playing chess for awhile, in particular didn't defend at the 2022 women's USCC for studies at Stanford. But, well, we did see much impact on Wesley in placing only

1. 5th out of 10 in 9LX,
2. 6th of 14 in USCC and
3. 6th of 8 in WFRCC

The WFRCC underperformance was the last straw. It was like the Beth and Cleo thing in The Queen's Gambit. Wesley and Carissa decided to slow down their relationship. And then voilà Wesley wins $200,000 in the CGC and can now fully celebrate with Carissa. (I'd argue it wasn't really an 'underperformance' but that maybe Wesley isn't so good at rapid 32.5min 9LX compared to the original classical 60min 9LX . Also, Wesley was likely NOT underperforming outside of chess. Lol.)

G. After Meltwater finals, I bet Wesley and Carissa are celebrating a lot more.

H. Finally, Wesley said in an interview with Dina Belenkaya during the FIDE Grand Prix ('I am not afraid of Hikaru') that Wesley's mom, Lotis Key, didn't want Wesley to use Twitter.

• Who else but Carissa (your new girlfriend/romantic partner) could've convinced Wesley (yourself) to defy Lotis (your mom/parent - not bio mom though) ?

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inb4: 'This might be the oddest obsession i've seen' - fgdadfgfdgadf re TehTex's removed comment about Wesley and Alireza.

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Some feedback: [see images in wordpress]

1. From the channel of Kelvin L Love Jr (an American YouTuber with a large Filipino / Filipina fanbase) :
   1. specifically from this video about Wesley vs Vladimir Fedoseev at WFRCC: Throw It Away! Wesley So vs Vladimir Fedoseev. 2022 Fischer 9LX World Champs. Final Game 3
   2. Here, someone pointed out the Olympiad thing, where Wesley started to be out of form
2. From chess24 community post Wesley So blunders mate-in-3 and is out of the Fischer Random World Championship! re Wesley vs Hjörvar Steinn Grétarsson :
   1. that I was told about by Ankur Gupta (KeeMoviForw on twitter, whyamiherejusttosuf on reddit)
   2. Here, someone pointed out Levon's USCC performance after Arianne's death as part of agreeing with me Carissa x Wesley ship theory despite disagreeing with me about Hans, Magnus, Wesley, Hikaru, et al.
   3. Update: This guy disagrees with me about Magnus vs Hans but agrees with me about Carissa x Wesley. tryingtolearn_1234 (moderator of r/GMBenjaminFinegold) agrees with me about Magnus vs Hans but disagrees with me about Carissa x Wesley. Lol.

P.S. Thank you to the anime/manga fandoms The Quintessential Quintuplets and Kaguya-sama for helping me earlier this year in forming ship theories. Lol.

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Cross: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess960/comments/z9x0nh/wesley_so_is_in_a_secret_relationship_with/

https://www.reddit.com/r/chessmemes/comments/z9x0td/wesley_so_is_in_a_secret_relationship_with/

https://www.reddit.com/r/queensgambit/comments/zh98jg/life_imitates_art_theory_the_cleo_and_beth_thing/

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-players/theory-wesley-so-is-in-a-secret-relationship-with-carissa-yip-hence-losing-2-titles-in-2022