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| Barden on chess -- 17-Aug-08 Disaster struck David Howell yesterday. The Sussex 17-year-old was in the gold medal position with one round to go in the world junior (U20) chess championship in Turkey, a legendary chess event where Tony Miles in 1974 has been the UK's only winner. But in the final game Howell played a nervous and insipid opening followed by a king's side pawn push with his queen's side undeveloped. His Indian opponent, Abhijeet Gupta, took full advantage, poured pieces into the weakened defences and gained decisive material and the title. Parimarjan Negi, 15, also of India, won silver and Howell finished out of the medals. Despite the limp conclusion Howell's play showed that ... |
| Howell in the case -- 16-Aug-08 David Howell’s rollercoaster chess tournament continued at the world Junior Chess Championship in Turkey as he won for a seventh time in eleven games and climbed back to joint second as the leader Maxim Rodshtein of Israel lost to Ngoc Nguyen of Vietnam. In the previous round Rodshtein totally Arik Braun in the game below but the German bounced back to defeat the world’s youngest GM Wesley So, 14, of the Philippines and reach 8.5/11, half a point ahead of Howell and five other GMs. M Rodshtein – A Braun; World Junior Gaziantep (10.1); Slav Defence; 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 c6 ... |
| A rare encounter -- 15-Aug-08 The most pleasing aspect of this year’s Staunton Memorial is that it brings together England’s two leading chess players Michael Adams and Nigel Short in an all play all chess event for the first time ever in the UK. This sad statistic is of course a reflection of England’s decline as a chess nation and it is only thanks to a Dutchman, Jan Mol whose generous support ensures the continuance of the chess event, that the pair are both playing. They met in round six and Adam’s unbeaten run with white was nearly ended when he overlooked a neat tactic after being surprised by Short’s choice of the Alekhine Defence. It was the kind of oversight that can easily lead to a loss when one is Black but ... |
| Howell the Hercules -- 14-Aug-08 David Howell’s herculean effort continued at the World Junior Chess Championship taking place at Gaziantep in Turkey. Following his 132 move defeat in round eight Howell nearly surpassed this effort as he defeated Ivan Popov of Russia in another epic chess game that lasted 127 moves. Howell is in joint second, half a point behind the leader Arik Braun of Germany who has 7.5/9 after defeating the 14 year old Chinese girl Hou Yifan. Hopefully Howell will have enough energy left to confront his next opponent, the world’s youngest GM, Wesley So from the Philippines. Howell’s game came down to queen v rook which is far from trivial. I imagine both chess players were down to ... |
| Howell and Braun lead -- 12-Aug-08 David Howell shares the lead at the World Junior Chess Championships taking place at Gaziantep Turkey. Howell warmed up with one of the best results of his career when he won the Andorra Open ahead of a strong field and his fine form has continued. After seven rounds the chess Grandmaster from Seaford in Sussex has 6/7 level with the German GM Arik Braun who was so impressive at Wijk aan Zee earlier this year. The World Junior is very strong with four chess players rated over 2600 and Howell is 14th seed but on current form his rating will quickly surpass the 2600 mark. D Howell – R Pruijssers; World Junior Gaziantep (2) ; Giuoco Piano. ... |
| Conquest conquers all -- 11-Aug-08 Stuart Conquest emerged victorious as the 95th British chess championship went to a play off at St Georges Hall in Liverpool. Conquest defeated Keith Arkell 1.5-0.5 in a Rapid Chess tie break, drawing the first and winning the second game in style. Conquest received £5000 for his efforts and rarely can a victory at the British have been so popular or well deserved. Conquest has been a professional chess player for over 20 years, this was his first championship victory and he always produced original and fighting chess. At Liverpool his aggressive style proved too good for many and he won several fine chess games. Conquest drew his last round game against Simon Williams and ... |
| Larry Evans on chess: Marcel Duchamp's vexing problem -- 10-Aug-08 "There is no solution, because there is no problem," quipped Marcel Duchamp. In a recent issue of The Sienese Shredder, Francis Neumann discussed this chess diagram composed by Duchamp for a New York exhibition in 1943. Many years ago Neumann also submitted it to my column in Chess Life, offering a reward of $15 to anyone who either could solve it or prove there was no possible solution. "I have since subjected this problem to the most powerful chess computers and I am now convinced that Duchamp has given us, in effect, a problem with no solution." The position was accompanied by an image of a Cupid with a bow and arrow. "Closer examination revealed ... |
| Novelty pays off -- 09-Aug-08 Stuart Conquest emerged as the sole leader of the 95th British chess championship with one game to play at St Georges Hall in Liverpool. Novel and imaginative play in the opening enabled Conquest to build a fine attacking position and he outplayed Stewart Haslinger in just 29 moves to become the only chess player on 7.5/10. The other four joint leaders all drew. Bogdan Lalic’s Petroff Defence held against Gawain Jones and there was another short draw but Stephen Gordon and Simon Williams entertained the crowd although there too the game ended in a draw. Keith Arkell and Dietmar Kolbus advanced to 7/10 at the expense of Andrew Ledger and David Eggleston ... |
| Fischer Random Chess -- 08-Aug-08 In July 2007, researchers announced that they had, for all intents and purposes, solved checkers. There seems to be no danger of that happening in chess, which is many orders of magnitude more complex, in the foreseeable future. (There are roughly 10 to the 120th power possible games in chess vs. 5 x 10 to the 20th power possible positions in checkers.) Computers, nevertheless, have had a profound impact on chess. In some openings, it is possible to make 20 or even 25 moves before leaving well-known theory, a development that some chess players say has sapped creativity from the game. What to do? One answer is to play Chess960. Also known as Fischer Random Chess after ... |
| Assertive Surtees -- 07-Aug-08 Grandmaster Danny Gormally has not lost for a year and Bogdan Lalic is very solid with black so a draw on top board was no surprise in round eight of the British chess championship at St Georges Hall in Liverpool. However elsewhere chess battle was joined and with three to play, three share the lead on 6/8. Stephen Gordon took advantage of a blunder by Nigel Davies while Stuart Conquest engineered the kind of unbalanced position in which revels and overpowered Andrew Ledger and these two joined Lalic on 6/8. Yang Fan Zhou scored a wonderful win over England international GM Nick Pert, one ... |
| Dancing with queens -- 06-Aug-08 The Croatian chess Grandmaster Bogdan Lalic emerged as sole leader in the seventh round of the British Chess Championship taking place in the splendour of Liverpool’s St Georges Hall, one of Europe’s finest neo-classical buildings recently restored to its former glory. Lalic is notoriously hard to beat and is often content to split the point but when he achieves an advantage in the opening he is very dangerous and he proved this against Lawrence Trent. Lalic has 5.5/7 with most of his main chess rivals half a point behind. Mark Hebden fell further back to 4.5/7 after losing Andrew Ledger. Hebden lost a piece but then put up stern resistance before succumbing on ... |
| Anand on fire -- 05-Aug-08 The world chess champion Vishy Anand slayed the Dragon and defeated the seventeen year old chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen in the final of the 13th Grenkeleasing Rapid World Chess Championship, the headline event of the Mainz Chess Classic. Carlsen has recently enjoyed success with the Dragon, one of Black’s sharpest replies to 1.e4 but in the first game of the four game chess match Anand stormed the kingside and won the black queen. Carlsen continued to resist and it took some deft endgame play from Anand to force the win a queen for rook ahead. Anand won the second game with black and completed a 3-1 win. The pair had first competed in a double round all play ... |
| It's tight at the top -- 04-Aug-08 The British Chess Championship is wide open as the second week’s play commences this afternoon at St Georges Hall in Liverpool. With six games played and five remaining, six chess players share the lead on 4.5/6 but realistically up to twenty remain in the hunt as the field is so tightly packed at the top. Nigel Davies was unlucky not to end the week in the lead as only desperate, and it must be said ingenuous defence from Stuart Conquest saved a lost endgame in the seventh hour of play. Davies appeared to be smoothly converting an extra pawn, the fruit of his superior chess play in the middlegame but found his king unable to cross to the queenside to support his pawn’s ... |
| Barden on chess -- 02-Aug-08 In the 1960s and 1970s, it was Fischer fear. The American's intense eyes, long arms, talon-like fingers and air of effortless superiority overawed many chess opponents. Come the 1980s, and Kasparov fear took over. The Russian's hostile glare, ready sneer, huge opening knowledge and instant tactics terrorised normal chess grandmasters. Jon Speelman called it "bombardment by thought waves". The new disease is Carlsen fear. The Norwegian 17-year-old's histrionics are limited to a teenage slouch while at the board and copious refuelling with raisins and orange juice, but he is still today's charismatic chess superstar and that is sufficient to make experienced GMs freeze into ... |
| Dylan Loeb McClain: Chess -- 01-Aug-08 People who go to Cuba often say it is a country caught in a time warp, a result of the long trade embargo imposed on it by the United States. Cuba has a proud tradition when it comes to chess, but, in some ways it, too, was stagnant for many years. The country, which was host to two world chess championship matches in the 19th century and which produced José Raul Capablanca, the supremely gifted third world chess champion (1921-27), had not been home to any top-flight chess players for decades. That is until recently. Cuba now has more than a dozen chess grandmasters, most in their 20s. The two most talented are unquestionably Lázaro Bruzón Batista and Leinier Dominguez Perez. ... |
| Yang makes his mark -- 30-Jul-08 The Croydon schoolboy Yang Fan Zhou confirmed his recent promise by producing the upset result of the first round of the British Chess Championship being staged at St Georges Hall in Liverpool. The youngster defeated IM Richard Pert with the black pieces and his reward is white against one of the two GMs from the north west, Nigel Davies of Southport, who got proceedings under way on Sunday as he took on forty chess players simultaneously. GM Stewart Haslinger also of Southport, the winner of the South Wales International earlier this month lost to IM Thomas Rendle. Top seed GM Gawain Jones started in style as he outfoxed Graeme Buckley in the opening and ... |
| Howell turns up the heat -- 29-Jul-08 England’s youngest GM David Howell had a fabulous result at the Andorra Open winning with a score of 8/9. Howell finished ahead of many other chess Grandmasters including Maxim Rodshtein of Israel a former world under 16 chess champion and Peruvian Julio Granda Zuniga the reigning Pan American chess champion. Also in the field was Mihail Marin of Romania the leading chess trainer and theoretician. It is a shame that Howell was unable to hot foot it to Liverpool for the British Chess Championship but he has other commitments and won’t be playing the Staunton Memorial either. Three of England’s leading senior chess players competed. Ray Edwards and Professor Julian Farand ... |
| British title up for grabs -- 28-Jul-08 The British Chess Championships start today at St Georges Hall in Liverpool with a new name destined to appear on the trophy in the absence of Nigel Short and Michael Adams as well as defending chess champion Jacob Aagaard. Adams, Short, Peter Wells and Jon Speelman will be playing at the Staunton Memorial in London and in their absence Gawain Jones is top seed. The ladies chess championship will be a straight fight between Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant now officially playing for Scotland, Jovanka Houska and Susan Lalic. Magnus Carlsen duly took the sole lead at Biel with three to play after shrugging aside the challenge of Yannick Pelletier whose planless chess play gave him ... |
| Playing a Lot (or Very Little) to Keep a Competitive Edge -- 27-Jul-08 How much chess is too much? Top chess competitors must play an official game at least once a year to maintain their rankings, but chess players have long held varying opinions about how often they should compete to maintain an edge. Viswanathan Anand of India, the world chess champion, has played only two games in the last few months as he has prepared for a world championship semifinal match in October against Vladimir Kramnik of Russia. And Kramnik has entered only two chess tournaments this year. Last week, it was announced that Gata Kamsky, who will play in the other semifinal, will be part of the United States team at the Chess Olympiad in Dresden, Germany, in ... |
| Barden on chess -- 26-Jul-08 The annual British Chess Championship starts at St George's Hall, Liverpool, on Monday. As the British Chess Magazine website points out, there are no previous chess champions in the field for the first time since 1952. Both Michael Adams and Nigel Short will be absentees. Instead England's top pair will be in action in the Staunton Memorial at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, London, in August and also at the European Union Chess Championship in Liverpool in September. Liverpool's two fine chess events are part of the city's European City of Culture programme. The director, Stewart Reuben, has still secured a good grandmaster entry for the British Chess Championship in ... |
| Cordova scores again -- 25-Jul-08 Readers may recall the travails of the teenage Peruvian International Master Emilio Cordova who failed to return home from a chess tournament in Argentina last year and ended up in the arms of a dancer is one of Sao Paulo’s more high profile night clubs. Well, it seems to have done him no harm at all as he recently took the honours at the IV Alajuela Open in Costa Rica scoring 8/9 to finish ahead of a strong field that included the European Individual Chess Champion Sergei Tiviakov. E Moncayo – E Cordova; IV Open Alajuela (3); French Defence. ... |
| Carlsen is in luck -- 24-Jul-08 A little good fortune for Magnus Carlsen gave him victory over French chess number 1 Etienne Bacrot in the 3rd round at Biel and the lead on 2.5/3. Bacrot’s solid defence to the Queen’s Gambit was working out very well but when Carlsen complicated matters with a dubious pawn sacrifice his opponent collapsed and was lost just a few moves later. M Carlsen – E Bacrot; 41st Biel Festival (3); Queen’s Gambit. 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 Nbd7 6.cxd5 exd5 7.e3 Be7 8.Qc2 Nh5 (This simplifying and solid line was favoured by Ulf Andersson, it is notoriously hard to beat) ... |
| Teenager causes angst -- 23-Jul-08 The top seeds Evgeny Alexseev and Magnus Carlsen met in the second round at Biel with Carlsen black. The teenage chess prodigy managed to stir up huge complications from a quiet position when he broke out of his cramped formation but his opponent, a former Russian chess champion managed to defend himself and reach a drawn endgame despite the invasion of a black knight into the heart of his position. E Alekseev – M Carlsen; 41st Biel Festival (2); Queen’s Indian. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Ba6 5.Qa4 Bb7 6.Bg2 c5 7.dxc5 bxc5 8.0–0 Be7 9.Nc3 0–0 10.Rd1 Qb6 11.Bf4 Rd8 (11...Qxb2 12.Rab1 Qxc3 13.Rxb7 Nc6 14.Bd2 traps the queen) ... |
| Four share the spoils -- 21-Jul-08 There was a four way tie for first at the 9th Karpov Poikovsky chess tournament in Siberia. Alexey Shirov could not hold onto his lead after an eighth round defeat at the hands of the 21 year old Azerbaijani GM Vugar Gashimov who was a surprise winner of the inaugural FIDE Grand Prix chess tournament at Baku earlier this year. Gashimov joined Shirov on the winning score of 5.5/9 and the leading quartet was completed by 2005 Russian chess champion Sergei Rublevsky and 2006 co winner Dmitry Jakovenko. A Volokitin – A Shirov; 9th Karpov Poikovsky chess ... |
| Nine moves to glory -- 20-Jul-08 The Norwegian teenager Magnus Carlsen ranked world number six is back in action today and starts as the clear favourite to win the 2008 Biel chess tournament. Although Biel is a strong tournament Carlsen has advanced so much since his invitation has announced that he is expected to win and win well. The full line up is: Magnus Carlsen (Norway 2775) (6) ; Leinier Dominguez (Cuba 2708) (25); Evgeny Alekseev (Russia 2708) (26) ; Etienne Bacrot (France 2691) (33) ; Alexander Onischuk (USA 2670) (50) ; Yannick Pelletier (Switzerland 2569) - outside the world’s top 100. Carlsen is too strong to play in the Norwegian chess championship. A smooth victory from one of chess ... |
| Nab him, jab him, tab him -- 19-Jul-08 When faced with his favourite weapon, the Sicilian Najdorf, Bobby Fischer countered with Bc4. Garry Kasparov also used the move and it has had a renaissance recently. On c4 the bishop is immensely powerful as it attacks f7 and if Black castles kingside the bishop’s influence extends all the way to the king on g8. Black typically plays the move e7-e6 to limit the bishop but often has to reckon with a White sacrifice on e6 that gains two pawns and access to the black king. This year we have seen many chess games where Black has failed to exchange the bishop after its customary retreat to b3 and suffered the consequences. The games Naiditsch – Van Wely from Dortmund and Nisipiean-Grischuk ... |
| Dylan Loeb McClain: Chess -- 18-Jul-08 World chess champions have tremendous influence on the development of chess with the openings they choose and their style of play. But some great chess players have shaped the game through their contributions to theory. Aron Nimzowitsch, for example, never played for the title, but he is remembered for his writing, in particular his book "My System," which is considered required reading by many serious chess players. Another player, Reuben Fine, who missed a shot at playing for the world chess championship because of World War II, wrote books on opening, middle game and endgame theory that are still influential. Pal Benko, a Hungarian chess grandmaster who ... |
| New sport combines boxing and chess -- 17-Jul-08 Nikolay Sazhin almost knocked out his opponent with a blow to the chin in the second round. But he had to take the queen to win the match. In front of 1,000 cheering fans one recent Saturday night, Sazhin moved his bishop to go in for the kill and won the world championship of chess boxing, a weird hybrid sport that combines as many as five rounds of pugilism with a game of chess. The combatants switch back and forth between boxing and chess — repeatedly putting their gloves on and taking them off, so that they can move the pieces around the board without clumsily knocking them over — in a sort of brains-and-brawn biathlon. "It's the No. 1 thinking game and ... |
| Space invaders attack -- 16-Jul-08 There is plenty of entertaining chess at the 9th Karpov Poikovsky chess tournament. Alexei Shirov played another sparkling chess game, Ernesto Inarkiev really shouldn’t have provoked him. E Inarkiev – A Shirov; 9th Karpov Poikovsky; Slav Defence. 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 c6 3.c4 Nf6 4.e3 Bf5 5.Nc3 e6 6.Nh4 Bg6 7.Be2 Nbd7 8.0–0 (8.Nxg6 hxg6 9.g3 keeps all options open, Whites' king can stay on e1 or go either side) 8...Ne4!? (Another new and ingenious idea from the Shirov laboratory) 9.g3 (9.Nxe4 Qxh4 10.Nc3 dxc4 11.Bxc4 Bd6 12.g3 Qe7 is fine for Black) 9...Nd6! (Black continues to tempt White to take on g6) 10.b3 (10.c5 Nf5 11.Nxf5 Bxf5 with a good game) ... |
| Great Scot! A Dragon... -- 15-Jul-08 Alan Tate of Wandering Dragons Chess Club is the Scottish Champion after winning on tie break from defending champion IM Andrew Muir in a keenly contested competition held at Glasgow Academy. This was the 115th edition of the championship, first held in 1884. The chess tournament is usually invitation only but the SCA changed the format to an international Open with a pounds 2000 first prize as part of the centenary celebrations of the Glasgow Chess League. GM Jan Markos of Slovakia and Tautvydas Vedrickas of Lithuania shared first place in the Open on 7.5/9. For Markos, a visiting student at Glasgow University this was the latest in a string of first prizes in Scottish chess tournaments. ... |
| Chess: Larry Evans -- 13-Jul-08 "Chess is vanity," declared Alexander Alekhine, who wrested the crown from Jose Capablanca in 1927. Indeed, chess players are seldom afflicted with humility. Capablanca once refused to pose with a film star, saying: "Why should I give HER publicity?" He couldn't raise the purse for a rematch with Alekhine in an era when the world chess champion imposed conditions and could pick his own challengers. Efim Bogoljubow was a born optimist whom Alekhine used as a punching bag in two title matches. In his heyday, he boasted: "When I am White, I win because I have the first move. When I am Black, I win because I am Bogoljubow." In 1929, Bogoljubow lost by a wide margin of ... |
| Barden on chess -- 12-Jul-08 Nigel Short made a brave move last weekend when he visited Kiev for a 10-game rapid chess match against Sergey Karjakin. Ukraine are Olympiad champions and 18-year-old Karjakin is the young chess star. He is behind his Norwegian contemporary Magnus Carlsen but still ranks No15 in the world while Short, the 1993 world title challenger, is now aged 43 and has dropped to No 68 in the rankings. Moreover, the match was rapid chess, at the now established international time rate for such chess events of 25 minutes on the clock for each player, plus a 10-second increment for each move made. Karjakin is one of the best fast chess players, both over the board and ... |
| Negi shows potential -- 11-Jul-08 The Indian chess prodigy Parimargan Negi,15, was one of the winning quartet of GMs at the big money World Open just concluded at the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia. Negi warmed up by winning a smaller chess event in Philadelphia and continued his good run to score 7/9 and share first with Evgeny Najer of Russia, Ljubomir Ftacnik of Slovakia and Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine. In the absence of Gata Kamsky and Hikaru Nakamura the American chess challenge was eclipsed. Najer won a blitz tie break against Negi to win the title but the $55,000 for first to fourth place was shared. Overall, chess event organiser Bill Goichberg handed out $320,000 in prize money among ... |
| Victory for Karjakin -- 10-Jul-08 Nigel Short was 5.5-2.5 behind at the end of the fourth day’s play in his ten game Rapid Chess match against the Ukrainian chess prodigy Sergei Karjakin. Karjakin secured victory with a day to spare outplaying Short in the seventh game before Short unleashed the King’s Gambit and won the eighth. The exhibition chess match was staged at the Kiev Puppet Theatre and sponsored by the Ukrainian mobile operator life :) Short lost the first three and he might have been a bit punch drunk but he hit back in style. Game 4 was a bit Punch and Judy, Nigel was Punch. N Short – S Karjakin; Rapid Match (4) Kiev; Closed Sicilian; 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.Nge2 Nf6 4.f4!? (Short naturally wanted to avoid ... |
| Back to the drawing board -- 09-Jul-08 Peter Leko rather predictably took no risks with the white pieces and secured chess tournament victory at Dortmund by steering play into a known drawing variation in the Marshall Attack to the Ruy Lopez. Of course Leko needed the cooperation of his opponent, Dortmunder Arkady Naiditsch but Naiditsch probably felt he had already given his home crowd enough entertainment by defeating former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik in round three. Leko finished clear first, undefeated on 4.5/7, half a point ahead of the field. Kramnik had a terrible chess event and finished on a negative score after losing a middlegame battle against Vasily Ivanchuk. The position was roughly ... |
| Chess boxers slug it out -- 08-Jul-08 A Russian man has been crowned world champion in the novelty sport of chess boxing, a game that requires equal skill at moving pawns and throwing punches. Mathematics student Nikolai Sazhin, 19, competing under the name "The President'' knocked out a 37-year-old German policeman Frank Stoldt, who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until recently. The loser said he was simply too punch-drunk to fend off checkmate. "I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That's why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king,'' he said. Berlin is home to the world's biggest chess boxing club with some 40 members and ... |
| Leko holds the lead -- 07-Jul-08 Peter Leko, emerged as the likely winner of the Sparkassen chess tournament at Dortmund as Vasily Ivanchuk and Vladimir Kramnik failed again to impove on a 50% score. Leko outplayed Jan Gustafsson, the lowest rated player in the tournament and replaced him as leader. Gustafsson played a quiet line with white and sought simplifications but was outplayed from a level endgame position. Kramnik tried to put one of his positional squeezes on Ian Nepomniachtchi but was unable to make any progress while Ivanchuk had to play very accurately to maintain the balance against Shak Mamedyarov. Loek Van Wely’s disastrous chess tournament got a lot worse in the sixth round as ... |
| A fiendish trap -- 06-Jul-08 Nigel Short lost the first two games of his Rapid Chess match against the Ukrainian chess prodigy Sergei Karjakin. The eight game contest is sponsored by the Ukrainian mobile operator life and played at the Kiev Puppet Theatre. Short could easily have emerged ahead at the end of the day but somehow Karjakin seemed to be pulling the strings at the critical moments. The second game saw a terrible finger fehler from Short that transformed a totally won position into a lost one. Short’s F4 Sicilian gave him no advantage but Karjakin kept sacrificing pawns in search of a non-existent mate and in the diagram below he is four down with just a few random tactical ideas to keep ... |
| Barden on chess -- 05-Jul-08 The annual elite chess event at Dortmund is Vladimir Kramnik's patch. The former world chess champion has won or shared first there eight times, including the last two editions. Dortmund 2008, which finishes tomorrow, is his penultimate outing before the title series against India's Vishy Anand in October. Kramnik's tournament strategy was to win with White, not lose with Black; so this week, in the bottom half of the draw with four blacks, he was set on scoring a full point with the first of his three whites. The Dutch No1, Loek van Wely, made it interesting by opting for the Slav Defence 2...c6, which is expected to be Anand's mainstay in the chess match. Kramnik naturally wanted to ... |
| Pawns get racing -- 04-Jul-08 Ian Nepomniachtchi who qualified for the Sparkassen chess tournament at Dortmund by winning the Aeroflot Open in Moscow joined the leaders after a comfortable win over Loek Van Wely of Holland in round four. The Dutchman played sharply and sacrificed rook for bishop and pawn but then immediately blundered – see below - and was in a lost endgame before he could think of making a fight of the game. There was a pawn race as the time control approached but there was only ever going to be one winner. Vladimir Kramnik’s chances of scoring a morale-boosting chess tournament victory in his last outing before the WCC match in the autumn receded further when ... |
| A Naiditsch in time... -- 03-Jul-08 Vladimir Kramnik will have mixed feelings about his crushing defeat at the hands of Arkady Naiditsch in the third round of the Sparkassen chess tournament at Dortmund. Although he hardly ever loses in this, his favourite chess event, if he is going to have one of his main lines of defence to 1.e4 refuted then at least it has happened before his world title match against Vishy Anand and not during it. This was a fine piece of home analysis by Naiditsch who found a clever new wrinkle on move 19 in what was a known rook sacrifice. Kramnik will be disappointed not to have found the best defence but the practical problems the defender faces when confronted with a new idea in ... |
| Carlsen misses out -- 02-Jul-08 The latest Fide rating list has stirred controversy in the chess world. After conflicting statements from the governing body, the recent Aerosvit chess tournament held at Foros in Ukraine was excluded from the calculations thus depriving Magnus Carlsen of the number two spot. The event was dominated by the 17 year old Norwegian chess prodigy and although the tournament ended a few days after the deadline for the submission of results, exceptions have been made before. Instead Carlsen is number six. The chess top twenty, published yesterday is: 1 Vishy Anand, India 2798; 2 Alexander Morozevich, Russia 2788; 3 Vladimir Kramnik, Russia 2788; 4 Vasily Ivanchuk, Ukraine 2781; 5 Veselin Topalov ... |
| Van Wely looks wobbly -- 01-Jul-08 At any level of chess most games are decided by mistakes and there were plenty in the second round of the Sparkassen Chess Meeting at Dortmund as three players of the black pieces overlooked rather important details. Vladimir Kramnik was a major beneficiary as his training partner Loek Van Wely left his kingside completely open while defending a quiet variation of the Slav Defence which turned out to have concealed venom. Vassily Ivanchuk put his knight on a terrible square against Peter Leko and was never able to recover it. An injudicious check rendered Arkady Naiditsch's position immediately lost against fellow German Jan Gustafsson. V Kramnik – L Van Wely; Sparkassen ... |
| That's entertainment -- 30-Jun-08 The first round of the Sparkassen Chess Meeting at Dortmund was rather low key. Two of the games reached drawn endings very quickly and your correspondent was having chess deja vu as they unfolded. Sure enough, when I consulted the database it confirmed that Kramnik, who was black, had played virtually his whole game with white against Peter Svidler in last year’s Amber chess tournament. Kramnik does not want to reveal his openings before his match against Anand and so he played the Gruenfeld Defence and Jan Gustafsson, as the lowest rated chess player obviously did not want to take too many risks, yet I can’t help feeling that the spectators were short-changed. Dortmund only ... |
| In the mood for Lvov -- 27-Jun-08 Following months of wrangling and uncertainty the world title eliminator between Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Gata Kamsky of the USA looks certain to take place at Lvov in Ukraine and have a prize fund of $750,000. The Bulgarians had originally offered to stage the chess match in Sofia for a fraction of the money but Kamsky was unwilling to play in his opponent’s home city. One of Kamsky’s advisors was able to raise funds to stage the chess match in Ukraine which was the least worst option for Topalov and his team who were desperate not to play in Russia after the Toiletgate scandals at Elista during Topalov’s failed attempt to wrest the title from Vladimir Kramnik in ... |
| Chess: A Knight's Tour by Bill Cornwall -- 25-Jun-08 Move, Slap, Move!: That sequence, repetitively duplicated at breakneck speed, describes the final moments of the deciding tie-break chess game played last month in Tulsa, Okla., for the title of U.S. Woman's Chess Champion. Moving chess pieces at split-second pace and instantly slapping their clocks to preserve time, then-current chess champion Irina Krush, 24, of New York, and former chess champion Anna Zatonskih, 29, of Ohio, were engaged in a type of chess appropriately called Armageddon. The scene was prepared when each had scored 7 ½ points in the 9-round main chess event in which games could take many hours to complete. Two 15-minute "rapid" encounters were ... |
| An elegant finish -- 24-Jun-08 The traditional Sparkassen Chess Meeting, sponsored by the German bank in Dortmund begins on Saturday. Once again the chess event is an 8 player all play all with the fourteenth world champion Vladimir Kramnik as top seed although it is possible he will be out-rated by Vasily Ivanchuk in the next list which will be published during the chess tournament. This is Kramnik’s first Classical Chess event since his failure at Corus Wijk aan Zee and his last before he attempts to wrest the title from Vishy Anand in the autumn. The talented Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi who plays fine attacking chess qualified for Dortmund as the winner of the 2008 Aeroflot Open at Moscow and ... |
| Grand Slam list finalised -- 23-Jun-08 Last year the organisers of the Corus Wijk aan Zee, the MTel Masters and Linares chess tournaments developed the idea of a Grand Slam, as distinct from the Fide Grand Prix. The plan was to add two more chess events and culminate with a final to be staged in Bilbao in September. The finalists would be chosen from the leading performers in the preceding chess tournaments. Last month the Mexico City Grand Slam chess event was cancelled and so the organisers had to add a sixth chess player for the final and the line up will be as follows. Vishy Anand (India), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Teimour Radjabov ... |
| Barden on chess -- 22-Jun-08 Bobby Fischer was 23 when he became world No2 behind Boris Spassky. Garry Kasparov was 19 when Fide ranked him second to Anatoly Karpov. Last weekend Norway's chess wunderkind Magnus Carlsen eclipsed the immortal pair when daily Fide ratings showed that, after elegantly solving the chess puzzle below, he had jumped over Russia's Vladimir Kramnik and was now No2, only five points behind the world chess champion, Vishy Anand of India. Carlsen is aged 17 years and six months. The Anand v Kramnik title match in Germany this October was billed as the ultimate showdown between the two current active chess greats after Kasparov's retirement. Now, however, it ... |
| Shirov's costly blunders -- 19-Jun-08 While Magnus Carlsen coasts to chess tournament victory at Foros, Alexey Shirov is suffering. Shirov’s play has been highly creative but in several games, at critical moments he has blundered. Shirov started with 2/2 but has since garnered just three draws from seven games and is languishing near the bottom of the table. We saw his remarkable attack against Sergey Karjakin on Monday but even there he might have won rather than drawn. Carlsen’s stellar performance aside, he leads by 1.5 points with two to play, the Ukrainians are doing well on home soil and outperforming the Russians. Aerosvit scores: 1 Carlsen (Norway) 7 / 9; 2 Eljanov (Ukraine) ... |
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