The Ronen Horror Blunder Show!

Just in time for Halloween, Israeli GM Ronen Har-Zvi gives us Part I of The Ronen Horror Blunder Show!, a terrifying collection of blunders in 2012 by super-GMs like Carlsen, Aronian, Topalov, and Gelfand. If you thought your blunders were bad, wait till you see the whoppers produced by the 2700+ crowd. Good stuff.

An aside: Har-Zvi became famous, 10 years later, for having introduced a stunning novelty in the 3.Bb5+ Sicilian, 16...d5!!, in Rublevsky-Har-Zvi, 1993, a game that does not appear in the databases, nor in Chess Informant. Somehow that game, and 16...d5!!, remained unknown to almost everyone until 2003, when the move was "reintroduced" in Delchev-Ivanchuk and other games. Another fun fact: after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+ Bd7 4.Bxd7+, 4...Nxd7 is played much less often than the stock 3...Qxd7, but scores better. GM John Fedorowicz, at his lecture at the North Shore Chess Center earlier this month, revealed that 3...Bd7 4.Bxd7+ Nxd7 is his favorite line against 3.Bb5+. Then there's 3...Kxd7??!, played in the eight-move draw Kochyev-Levin, 1992, but somehow that one hasn't caught on.