Four weeks after his first win, GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov won the January 19 Titled Tuesday tournament as well. The Azerbaijani grandmaster finished in clear first place with 10/11.

This week's Titled Tuesday tournament, our weekly blitz event for titled players, had a total of 741 participants. It was an 11-round Swiss with a 3+1 time control.

The live broadcast of the tournament.

An interesting game early in the tournament was @NewBornNow vs. @Hikaru. The white player is GM Victor Bologan, the Moldavian grandmaster who is FIDE's Executive Director. It's nice to see that this chess official still enjoys his evening blitz sometimes.

Bologan's strong opening knowledge (he has published numerous books and DVDs) helped him to leave GM Hikaru Nakamurawith little chance in a Modern Defense:

Speaking of openings, let's look at the clash between GM Oleksandr Bortnyk and GM Anton Korobov (@GOGIEFF) where the white player tried the Wing Gambit against the French, a popular variation at club level. It looks like one of the ways to get a satisfactory position as Black is to simply accept it:

That brought Korobov to 7/7, but he was not the only one. The Ukrainian grandmaster Alexander Zubov, also on a perfect score, was his next opponent. This game was a good example of why "weakening" the kingside with ...gxf6 is not always bad for Black. Zubov was already winning when Korobov suddenly allowed a mate in one:

Zubov even won another game to make 9/9 but found his Waterloo in Mamedyarov:

The tournament was decided in a hectic game between Mamedyarov and Korobov. An online blitz game like this perhaps doesn't deserve a serious analysis, but surely the readers are interested in the many twists and turns:

Jan. 19 Titled Tuesday | Final Standings (Top 20)

(Full final standings here.)

Mamedyarov won $750 for first place, Sadhwani $400 for second, Zubov $150 for third, and Xiong $100 for fourth.The $100 prize for the best female player went to GM AleksandraGoryachkina (@Goryachkina), who scored 7.5/11.

Titled Tuesday isChess.com's weekly tournament for titled players. It starts each Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific time (19:00 Central Europe).

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Mamedyarov Grabs Another Titled Tuesday - Chess.com

Please note that no changes have been made to the existing Scholastic National Invitational Event and Award Requirements posted at https://new.uschess.org/invitational-information. The regulations as posted will be used to calculate the lists of qualifiers and/or invited players for this years events. The US Chess rating supplement and rating systems used are specified for each event.

However, for sections 1-8, 13, and 15-18, per an Executive Board motion passed on December 22, 2020, all regular US Chess rated games played since March 1, 2019 until the date of the respective supplement specified for each event will be used as the period for establishing whether a player has met the activity requirement as in section 20.2. Games played under any of the online rating systems will not count towards this calculation.

Also, please note that the Executive Board recently reaffirmed the motion (https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-suspending-international-event-participation) to not authorize delegations for any international events until further notice due to U.S. State Department Level 4 travel warnings. It also reaffirmed that US Chess will not provide any financial support to any participants for international competition until further notice. This motion affects events such as the World Youth, World Cadet, Pan-American Youth and other international events listed in the aforementioned requirements.

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Updates: Scholastic National Invitational Event and Award Requirements - uschess.org

Granted, the rooms are quite nice, but players can only leave them to go to practice, shootarounds and games. Interacting with non-team guests at hotels is no longer allowed a change that was announced earlier this month.

Were just taking the lead from the league and certainly trying to follow every protocol that gets put in front of us because thats the only way that were gonna emerge from this and endure it, but it is pretty limiting, Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.

The Thunder has had two games postponed this season due to COVID-19 protocols: Dec. 23 against the Rockets and Jan. 17 against the 76ers. In both cases, it was the other team that didnt have the league-required eight available players to play.

Thunder forward Josh Hall was out Friday due to health and safety protocols, but hes the only Thunder player to have been ruled out this season with that designation.

For a Thunder team with a new coach and several new players, this season isnt an easy one to build chemistry. Hanging out off the court isnt an option.

FaceTime and video calls have become common between players and staff.

And then when we come together and get the chance to bump into each other we try to make sure that those interactions are of quality and make the most of the circumstances, Daigneault said. Weve got a group of guys that has had a great mindset toward this whole thing as Ive mentioned all along.

Muscala, who started a new game of chess with Adams on Thursday, is one of those whos staying upbeat.

The rest is here:

Thunder players passing time with chess, video games on long road trip: 'Still a lot to be grateful for' - Oklahoman.com

The Botez sisters, who live in Austin, are on the forefront of chess' entry into streaming. The highly regarded players recently signed with Dallas-based esports org Envy Gaming.

A chess match is often quiet. Whether played in an outdoor park or inside a stuffy room, the only racket during a professional match could be the sound of the clock or the occasional cough coming from the background audience.

But for Alexandra and Andrea Botez, chess has become colorful and loud. See, the Botez sisters play chess without a board in front of them. The two sit side-by-side in their Austin home, playing chess online.

The Botez sisters both in the top 97.5 percentile on Chess.com star in a growing chess industry and are turning to the wonders of the internet and streaming age to grow their sport in a previously unexpected manner, recently becoming the latest chess gurus to sign with an esports organization.

I never expected to have a career in chess, said Andrea, whose family and chess roots trace back to Romania. It was always a side hobby that I was really passionate about.

Thanks to streaming platforms like Twitch, they can share that passion more easily than ever.

BotezLive reached 4,585 spectators in the first half hour of a recent Monday-afternoon stream. They spent some of that time getting situated, with Alexandra sitting directly in front of the microphone since Andreas voice carries more. The sisters reached nearly 10,000 concurrent viewers during the four-hour stream.

There were computers quite literally built to take down chess champions in the 1980s, but the Botez sisters use theirs to teach and entertain. Lengthy streams are common, as is frequent interaction with viewers and other content creators.

The stream was hardly an aberration, and thats what made signing them so attractive to North Texas esports powerhouse Envy Gaming in December 2020.

Their signing, as well as the recent release of the wildly popular Netflix miniseries The Queens Gambit, has once again positioned chess to the forefront of mainstream entertainment.

The growth of chess has been so healthy on Twitch, and its one of those games that is never going to die out, Alexandra said. Chess has really survived the age of time. So I think its gonna survive on Twitch as well.

Alexandra, 25, and Andrea, 18 have been in the business of live-streaming since early 2017, but 2020 was their big break.

They eclipsed 500,000 followers on Twitch, as well as 222,000 YouTube subscribers and a combined 350,000 Twitter followers.

The Botez sisters didnt need to travel the globe and win championships to earn money playing chess. Instead they pivoted to esports, joining Envy as the organizations first official content creators.

Esports is still in its infancy but is already a billion-dollar global industry. Chess is a game over a thousand years old. Both benefited in online presence from the global pandemic. Now the two have combined to usher in one of the most popular, and accessible, stages of the game since Bobby Fischer was winning championships in the Cold War.

Twitch has become a dominant medium for entertainment in the past half decade. The platform started in 2011 and has developed into a service that makes watching other people play video games easy, but thats not all the site is used for anymore.

Music, politics, gaming, sports, art and even just talking theres a streamer for everyone on Twitch.

It made sense for the Botez sisters to take chess online and make Twitch their platform. And Alexandra, a Woman FIDE Master, was certainly early to the game, along with Grandmaster and streamer Hikaru Nakamura. She would only hold a couple hundred viewers in her first year. As time passed, she grew her audience incrementally playing on Chess.com.

She and Andrea grew their channel by nearly 10 times what it was at the start of 2020.

I mean, its really hard to explain how different it was before the explosion on Twitch, said Alexandra, a Stanford graduate. I mean, this was a life-changing year, if theres been any.

2020 wasnt just massive for the Botez sisters. Chess also had a boon because of The Queens Gambit, based on the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis. The proof is in Chess.coms own growth.

The website the Botez sisters and 51 million others use from the comfort of their own homes experienced a monumental jump in participants after the Netflix series brought more casual players to the scene.

Before The Queens Gambit, now Netflixs most-watched limited series after reaching 62 million households in the first 28 days, Chess.com gained around 25,000 new members a day.

In January that number was at 130,000 a day, Chess.com Vice President of Business Development Nick Barton said. Members of Chess.com knew the show was coming, but its impact was staggering.

Now the Botez sisters have casual Mondays playing chess with 10,000 spectators.

Its not just content creators who have noticed the bump in chess popularity. Julio Catalino Sadorra, the chess coach at the University of Texas at Dallas said his program one of the top chess schools in the country has seen its rise too.

His team had to pivot to online play using Lichess.org, a site similar to Chess.com in its purpose of organizing online competition.

When they streamed their annual Gligoric Transatlantic Cup in the fall with the help of Grandmaster and analyst Robert Hess the viewership was striking to the 34-year-old coach.

It went from very few students watching in the venue to almost 9,000 views, said Sadorra, himself a Grandmaster and UT-Dallas graduate. Now we want to keep doing that to make our chess club more well-known.

Chess and streaming just seem to mesh, he added. And hes recognized its entry into esports as a positive sign.

For Envy, the partnership with the Botez sisters is a way to expand its brand. A championship-driven team like Envy, which won a Call of Duty League world title in 2020, gets to spread its horizons.

North Texas already had some notable personalities in the esports scene. The winningest Call of Duty player in the esports history, Ian Crimsix Porter, has 432,000 Twitch followers of his own. Dallas-native gaming streamer Preston PrestonPlayz Arsement has over 8.8 million YouTube Subscribers.

But chess? Only a handful of other chess streamers were signed with esports organizations before the Botez sisters.

Its really great to expand our brand to something like chess, something that is gaining traction and getting watched more and more in age-old competition, Envy chief gaming officer Mike Rufail said. We really just wanted to diversify the types of personalities we are supporting and the community we are supporting.

Neither Alexandra nor Andrea are the best chess players in the world, though their ranks on Chess.com put them in elite company. But they can make their money with Twitch and YouTube subscriptions and donations, along with any future partnerships.

They are also continuing a tradition of chess helping their family survive and thrive.

Their grandmother taught their father, Andrei, how to play when the Botez family was still in Romania. Grandma had a family of seven living in a small, two-room apartment. They all shared a bathroom, and heat was a problem.

On the first floor of the apartment building was a much warmer room, but it was also home to the strongest chess club in the country at the time. To stay warm, they learned to play chess.

Andrei and his wife brought chess with them to the United States in 1994 when they fled Romania to seek political asylum.

Raising his daughters to eventually become chess stars wasnt on his radar.

I consider something like that to only happen once in a million years, Andrei said. If you look at the overall picture, the stars aligned.

Andrei started teaching Alexandra, who was born in Dallas but grew up in Canada, when she was 6. It didnt take long for her to win tournaments, as she was the Canadian National Girls Champion five times.

Andrea started at 7. She was coached by dad for a while too, and Andrei still coaches children today. It became a passion of his. Chess runs in the family like blood.

Skip forward to their young adult lives and now its Andrei watching BotezLive every day for his own amusement.

Its unbelievable for me, Andrei said. Even now, the fact that I can watch and listen to their stream, some of them are extremely funny. Sometimes I cant stop laughing and thats saying something that this entertainment is even for an old man.

Now that the Botez sisters have the backing of esports power Envy, they want to ensure their content is better than ever, Alexandra said. She was inspired by Envys success as a competitive esports organization, and that sparked her interest in matchmaking with the esports industry.

Imagine what [Envy] can do now that theyre entering content, and this is why I have a ton of confidence in them, Alexandra said. I know they can execute. I know theyre professionals. I know theyre passionate. So their success in one area is certainly going to translate over.

Andrea was ready to go to school, but she put herself on a one-year hiatus from higher education to pursue this project with her older sibling.

Finding new ways to entertain fresh faces that found an interest in chess is a priority, along with the laughs and concentrated videos that make their way to YouTube.

Alexandra and Andrea can also inspire more women looking at chess after The Queens Gambit made its rise.

Approximately 25% of new Chess.com members were women before the show, Barton said. Now that number has climbed to 33%.

Twenty million of the sites 51 million total members joined in 2020, many of them young.

Its exposing new audiences to chess, especially my generation, which is all over social media and Tik Tok and Netflix, which is really the population that I think is most important [for growth], Andrea said.

Both esports and chess have benefited in popularity during the worldwide pandemic, providing entertainment but also cutting costs. Live events are still missed by both, though, including at UTD

The UTD program, which has 17 appearances and four championships at the Final Four of collegiate chess (Presidents Cup), would usually travel across the country and abroad to compete, Sadorra said.

Its more hands-on, but it takes more time, Sadorra said. Now that everythings online, its more convenient and inexpensive.

When live chess returns, the industry will also return with the knowledge of the games entertainment value.

Our expectation is that at some point, the popularity of chess will die down again, to some extent, Barton said. But that the baseline popularity for the game itself will be elevated from before COVID happened and before The Queens Gambit came out.

In-person chess will return someday. But the future may be on the computer, and the Botez sisters can cash in on their early entry.

They will likely be live sometime in the next 24 hours, and they may still be growing.

Age: 25

Job/org: Content creator/Envy Gaming

Chess ranking: Woman FIDE Master

Twitter handle/Twitch channel: @alexandravbotez, BotezLive

Notable: Neither Botez sister planned on a career in chess, but Alexandra actually lived in China for a bit as an entrepreneur after graduating from Stanford. It was only after this plan fell through that she pursued a streaming career. Shes known on stream for accidentally giving up her queen, which her father calls a Botez Gambit.

Age: 18

Job/org: Content creator/Envy Gaming

Twitter handle/Twitch channel: @itsandreabotez, BotezLive

Notable: Andrea was ready to study political science in college before the Twitch stream started to boom. She opted to take a gap year from starting school to keep the momentum going on the stream with Alexandra. On stream, she likes to come up with jokes to get under Alexandras skin.

Find more esports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

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Texas' Botez sisters are at the forefront of an unlikely, and booming, partnership: Chess and esports - The Dallas Morning News

It's one of the most famous board games of all time, but until recently chess wasn't getting a whole lot of attention on Twitch. That began to change last year, however, when chess streamers started to raise the profile of the game on the streaming platform - and thanks to the release of a certain Netflix series, those numbers have now reached new heights.

In January last year, chess was averaging 3298 concurrent viewers over 24 channels on Twitch, peaking at 29,820 viewers. This month, that average is 24,048, with around 132 channels streaming chess at any one time - reaching a peak viewership of 161,968 on 16th January (via TwitchTracker). That was thanks to the efforts of siblings Alexandra and Andrea Botez, whose BlockChamps event - a crossover tournament with popular Minecraft streamers like Pokimane, LilyPichu and Fundy - pulled in over 91,000 concurrent viewers and over 1m unique views, breaking the chess viewership record for a single stream (via Chess.com).

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So, why the sudden enthusiasm? The Covid-19 pandemic has forced real-world chess tournaments to move online, with Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen holding an online invitational in April 2020, and a FIDE Online Nations Cup taking place in May. Some professional players like Grandmaster Hikaru "GMHikaru" Nakamura found an audience in online streaming - and collaborations with big-name variety streamers gave chess a Twitch boom in the summertime. But the real game-changer, of course, has been critically-acclaimed Netflix series The Queen's Gambit. Since the series was released on 23rd October, chess viewership on Twitch has increased dramatically - as has the number of channels and streamers choosing to play chess.

The Queen's Gambit has significantly boosted interest in chess across the board: the leading platform for online play, Chess.com, told Dexerto that 50,000-60,000 new members were joining the site each day in March 2020, a number that jumped to 125,000 after the release of the series in October. Physical chess sets, meanwhile, started to fly off the shelves, with one US toy and games company reporting its chess sales increased 1048 per cent from the same period in the previous year (via NPR). I witnessed the impact of this first-hand, having scrolled through dozens of sites trying to find a nice board that wasn't sold out. (Don't worry, I eventually got my hands on a rather lovely '80s Soviet set.)

Of course, the viewing figures for chess still pale in comparison to Twitch behemoths like Fortnite and League of Legends (which pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers), but chess now consistently ranks in the top 30 categories on Twitch. It's lovely to see the game getting a digital revival, and it's particularly encouraging to see women headlining this movement on Twitch. As someone who only recently started playing thanks to The Queen's Gambit, let me tell you: visibility makes a difference.

If you're looking for more reading material on The Queen's Gambit, meanwhile, you should take a look at this piece by Jefferson Toal on the series as a love letter to play - and how chess allows you to lose yourself in a "temporary sphere of activity".

Link:

Chess is having a moment on Twitch - Eurogamer.net

Warcraft 3 modders created a new genre with Defense of the Ancients, a custom game mode that eventually spun off into mega-popular MOBA games like League of Legends and Dota 2. Dota 2 modders created a new genre with Auto Chess, a custom game mode that spun-off into moderately-popular titles autobattler games like Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics, and, er, Auto Chess. Now, the Auto Chess devs are bringing it all back around by creating their own MOBA.

The, erm, creatively-titled Auto Chess MOBA was announced earlier this month, as Kotaku notes, and as the title suggests, its a MOBA game from Drodo Studio, the devs who created both the original Auto Chess mod and the standalone game, Auto Chess.

It looks like Auto Chess MOBA is going to be a mobile game, which is not normally the sort of thing we cover at PCGamesN, but hey, this is too weird not to talk about. The devs say that all heroes will be free, so that all players can start on level ground, without needing to pay to unlock additional characters.

The studio also promises no pay to win and no stats growth outside games in an effort to ensure fairness. In terms of play mechanics, its going to have a big emphasis on vision, with a day/night cycle thatll affect your visible range, and destructible objects that can block line of sight.

Now, we can only hope that Auto Chess MOBA will come to PC, develop its own mod scene, and then develop some sort of ultra-popular RTS spin-off so that we can truly complete the circle.

Read more:

Auto Chess, the Dota 2 spin-off, is getting its own MOBA - PCGamesN

In this weeks position, black is slightly better. Blacks two rooks against whites extra pawn is enough for black to either win or draw, but white will have to defend well to draw. It would not be hard for black to eventually employ the power of its rooks and queen to break open whites king-side. White, however, has an option that will likely secure a draw with little risk of losing. With this hint in mind, please try to find whites best move.

Blacks king-side is weak, as the black king sits in the corner. This allows white to strike by having its rook captures blacks pawn on f6. If black does not capture the rook, white picks up a pawn and the now the game is even.

Black avoids any risk of losing with the loss of a pawn by capturing the rook with its g7 pawn. Whites queen next captures blacks pawn on f6 with check (see next diagram).

From here, the game is drawn by perpetual check. If the black king moves to g8, whites queen checks along the 6th rank. If the black king flees to h7, whites queen checks by sliding back and forth between f7 and f6.

The lesson this week is that certain themes are repeated over and over, and one of those themes is that year in and year out it is perpetually proven that positions are often saved by a creative draw.

Reach Eric Morrow at ericmorrowlaw@gmail.com or (505) 327-7121.

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Chess Corner: Over and over - Muskogee Daily Phoenix

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For Tom Brady, this is old hat (or old helmet?). The quarterback is playing in his 14th championship game.

Eighteen seasons, his teams have made the postseason, and only three of those times did Brady not win at least one playoff game.

But this is a new experience for these Buccaneers.

The franchise is in the conference championship game for the first time since 2002. In fact, they had played only 15 postseason games in franchise history before Bradys arrival.

The Bucs are along for Bradys ride.

Hes the greatest player to ever play the game, Evans said. You add him on any roster, and Im sure the outcome would be somewhat like this. He always gets his team to the playoffs. Hes a winner. Hes a natural-born winner, leader, all that. At this point in his career, hes just playing chess, and were definitely very happy hes on our side.

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Mike Evans: At this point in his career, Tom Brady is playing chess - NBC Sports

The first ever Barak Valley Open Chess Tournament Winter edition has commenced in the spirit of International FIDE Rating competition. Organized by the Cachar District Chess Association (CDCA) in collaboration with Rotary Club, Silchar, a total of 63 players have participated in this edition, among which 26 are International FIDE rated chess players.

After successfully organising Silchar Open International FIDE Rating Chess tournament in 2018, this is the first state level chess tournament taking place in the entire North-East region. Owing to the All India Chess Federation (AICF) not starting the International FIDE Rating tournament calendar yet amidst the pandemic, the CDCA has taken the initiative to organise this tournament under the banner of All Assam Chess Association (AACA).

The inaugural session of the event took place in the Rotary Club of Silchar, Tarapur in the auspicious presence of Dilip Kumar Ram, Superintendent Postmaster of the Cachar Post Office, Shiv Prasad Dutta, Service Director of Rotary Club of Silchar, Former District Governor Arijit Endaw, President of CDCA Dr. Charvak, General Secretary of AACA Rajiv Dhar, General Secretary of CDCA, Nirmalya Chakraborty, and Vice-President of AACA, Bibendu Das.

Usually in Cachar district, every local tournament is being moderated by normal arbiters with normal clocks and everything. But this particular tournament everything weve tried to keep upto the FIDE standards, starting with national level chess boards having its own clock, FIDE rated International arbiters, everything including the atmosphere according to FIDE style, said the General Secretary of CDCA, Nirmalya Chakraborty.

He also said that the tournament will be moderated by International arbiter Pradip Kumar Roy from Tripura, who is a FIDE rated arbiter.

During the session, The President of CDCA, Dr. Charvak thanked Rotary Club of Silchar, Agartala Matrix Chess Academy, Late chess player Santanu Singha, Late Karuna Sindhu Dey, Late Rakesh Ranjan Dhar, and the family of Ranbir Dhar for their unflinching support and in help that theyve provided in organizing the tournament.

Keeping in accordance with the FIDE standard time limit, every player at the start of each round will get 45 minutes and with each move will get 10 seconds more. The two-day tournament has been divided into 3 rounds per day. At the start of the tournament, top seeded player Rajib Dhar had 2052 FIDE Rating points in his bag, followed by Soram Rahul Singh having 2051 rating points. At the conclusion of the day, sitting at the top bagging three points in three rounds are Soram Rahul Singh, Rajib Dhar, Rajdip Das, Iftikhar Alom Mazumdar, Bibendu Das, Abhinav Paul, Abhrajyoti Nath and Ballyr Sinha.

Read this article:

First ever Barak Valley Open Chess Tournament kickstarts in Silchar - Barak Bulletin

On Wednesday night, Joel Embiid was the best player on the court.

Forty-two points on 19 shots is an amazingly efficient night, a career-high for him against the Boston Celtics. Its far from the first time hes showed out from a statistical standpoint against the green and white. In Augusts playoff series, he averaged 30 a game. In the 2018 Eastern Conference Semifinals, he averaged 23 and 14.

The impetus behind big nights from Embiid has been typical throughout his career: Boston routinely chooses to go slightly smaller at the 5, with guys like Al Horford and Daniel Theis drawing the assignment. Embiid feels that his advantage is deep in the post, so he tries to run the offense through himself down low.

On Wednesday, we saw the best of how that looks: 21 free throw attempts and 11-14 from inside the three-point arc. But what we also saw is why the Celtics swept Philadelphia in the first round last year. Brad Stevens knows how to mitigate his impact and put the advantage back in Bostons hands.

Stevens has always sprinkled in trapping Embiid to get the ball out of his hands, let different guys take him for long stretches and encouraged him to shoot off the pick-and-pop to keep him away from the basket. However, the real work is on the block and thats where the smaller Theis deserves some credit.

Few are more physical pre-catch and fight for the block the way Theis does. Guys like Tristan Thompson bring solid physicality and hold their ground okay, but cede ground to begin with is a big no-no against a hoss like Embiid.

Thompson got buried beneath the rim too early into a possession, which resulted in a foul. These cant happen against Embiid:

What Theis does so well is know when to be physical (pre-catch) and when to pull the chair. Guys like Embiid, with wide shoulders and long strides, operate on feel down low. When they feel their defender shading a certain direction, it triggers their mind to start their go-to moves in their arsenal based on weight and balance.

It may seem counterintuitive, but theres value in not touching Embiid once he establishes position down low. He cant feel for Theis, so he has to start his move with a dribble to initiate contact that takes away the quick spins or changes of direction. It also looks like Embiid is initiating contact because, well, he is. Referees will let Theis bump a little more after contact is made because he, technically, didnt start the physical play.

From there, Theis can toggle between pulling the chair and holding his ground. Embiid isnt as crafty with counters and will either bury himself too low beneath the rim or pivot himself to nowhere:

Heres where the math comes in. Every time Embiid is posting up the Celtics, Philly is also not taking a 3-pointer. Surrounding Embiid with shooters was a big part of Daryl Moreys offseason makeover of the roster. And every time Embiid bangs away with physicality, takes contact and exhausts himself to out-muscle his man, he uses ounces of energy that arent there late. His legs get tired earlier, and his jumper becomes a bit less consistent.

The Celtics make sure they dont rotate around Embiid when he goes into his pick-and-pops. They want him to shoot it use those tired legs and keep others from getting involved. Both Theis and Javonte Green stunted short at Joel late in the game, and it produced one of the hardest clanks hes had in a while:

In a two-point game in the closing minutes, this is the net result of a full game of wrestling down low. The legs are off, and its exactly the type of shot the Celts want to force.

It wasnt a victory on Wednesday, but it felt like the typical Celtics-Sixers showdown. Embiid got his, overpowered Theis in the paint and drew a million fouls. And yet, the Sixers couldnt ever create separation or punish the Cs on the scoreboard. Will Philly win a few of these games? Yes. But in the long run, the numbers game bears out well for the Cs. If these teams meet again in the postseason as they have two of the last three years, expect to see something similar: heavy numbers from Embiid and a close score down the stretch.

In a game where Jayson Tatum was absent and Walker on a minutes restriction, there are far more positives than negatives to take away from hanging in against a 42-point outing from their arch nemesis. Round 2 is on Friday.

Link:

The Embiid-Theis chess match - Celtics Blog