Archive for March 17th, 2009

In Round 4 of the 18th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament Vladimir Kramnik defeated the luckless Wang Yue 2-0 to take the sole lead in the overall scores. He achieved this mainly with a fine 3.5/4 performance in the blindfold section. In second place are last year’s winner Levon Aronian and Alexander Morozevich, who won Amber in 2002, 2004 and 2006. Report after round four.

“With all the super-tournaments going on nowadays, it’s easy to forget that there are other great players producing work of art.” Our Playchess lecturer Dennis Monokroussos is referring to correspondence players and shows us an impressive example. Be there at 9 p.m. ET.

Eleven players finished the European Championship with 8.0/11
points, which produces a tiebreak spectacle tomorrow, starting at 10:00 a.m.
local time. A final decision on what will transpire will be taken late tonight
by the Technical Commission. It will probably be a knockout system with byes
in the first round. If you are on the Playchess
server at 10 a.m. you can watch the drama unfold.

It sounds ominous, when quoted by the broadsheets and repeated in chess blogs. “Vishy is a brilliant player,” Kasparov said in New Delhi, “but it is very difficult to compete at 40. I will be surprised if he can go on any longer.” Kasparov himself will soon be 46, Anand is pushing forty, and there are 13 and 14-year-olds out there baying at their heels. Article, transcripts and a video interview.

The meteoric path of 15-year-old Hou Yifan has been stopped – by her compatriot Zhao Xue, who defeated her after the younger girl blundered on her last move before the time control. Zhao now leads with 7.0/8 points and a 2790 performance. Behind the Chinese girls and always good for a big finish: India’s GM Koneru Humpy, the second strongest female player in history. Big pictorial report.

On her birthday Iweta Rajlich, wife of Rybka programmer Vasik Rajlich, made herself a special gift: she defeated Nino Khurtsidze and joined Hungarian GM Hoang Thanh Trang in the lead. Salome Melia also won her game and made it a threesome. Eleven players follow half a point behind. We bring you results and games, new videos by Europe Echecs and a pictorial report by Elena Mikheeva.

After ten rounds, with one to go, a total of nine players are in the lead,
poised to win the event, half a point behind are fourteen more
who have theoretical chances. So the final round on Tuesday is bound to bring
a lot of action, which you can follow on the Playchess
server. The official web site has many hundreds of (uncaptioned) pictures of
players. Photo report of soccer, sun and sea.