Archive for March, 2009

Chinese GM Wang Yue has in the past week travelled from Linares to Beijing to Nice – not such a good idea when you are facing 2700+ opposition in your events. Russian GM Alexander Morozevich beat him with white in the blind chess game and completely outplayed him in the rapid. Morozevich joins Levon Aronian who today made Peter Leko an unexpected present. Photos by John Nunn.

Chess books can be notoriously carefree, and the gaffes of publishers
and/or authors may be visible even before the tome is opened. Only the stout-hearted
should look at the examples given by the Editor of Chess
Notes, such as a publisher unable to spell its own name and specimens
of faulty titles, wrong names and incorrect cover illustrations.
It all makes for irresistibly grisly reading.

G.N. Gopal, 19, is one of India’s bright young stars, with high ambitions for the next Asian and the World Junior Championship. Unfortunately he may not be able to participate. The Indian Chess Federation is considering a one-year ban, since Gopal failed to play in the national championship (he had a prior contractual obligation to play in an event in Mexico). Media news and Gopal’s views.

Last year Levon Aronian won the blindfold and rapid spectacle in Nice by 2½ points. This year he has started with a 2-0 score – against his first opponent, Vassily Ivanchuk. The Amber tournament is being staged in the Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice and carries a prize fund of € 216,000. As a special service we bring you, this year and with pleasure, special photo coverage by John Nunn.

After seven rounds of the European Individual Women’s Championship, an 11-round Swiss with 168 players which is taking place from March 7–21 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the sole leader is GM Hoang Thanh Trang with 6.0/7 points. Twelve players follow half a point behind. We bring you results and games, new videos by Europe Echecs and beautiful player portraits by WGM Irina Sudakova.

At the moment Sergei Tiviakov is gaining Elo points all over the place (Moscow
op, Pfalz op, Bundesliga). In a recent game the reigning European
champion seems to have demonstrated an advantage for White in the Tarrasch
French with 3.Nd2 Be7. Visit our ChessBase
Magazine Blog or check it out directly in this sneak
preview of CBM 129.

In the past month we brought you two sections of an unprecedented in-depth interview conducted by Indian colleagues with World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Today we continue the series with Anand’s take on game formats, computer moves (ugly or creative?), Karpov, Kasparov, and secretly watching people on the chess servers. Part three of four.

When he was crushed at the Aeroflot Open by a weaker player in just 21 moves top seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov withdrew in protest, claiming his opponent had been using computer assistance. The accused, Igor Kurnosov, replied with an open letter, and ten days later Mamedyarov restated (and emphasized) his claims. All this has produced vigorous feedback from our readers. Excerpts.

The Mediterranean coastal town in Montenegro is just a stone’s throw away from the venue of the Fischer-Spassky revenge match of 1992. The eleven-round Swiss event with 306 players has a prize fund of 120,000 Euros, with 22 places in the next World Cup at stake. After seven rounds Ukrainian GM Andrei Volokitin is in the sole lead. A 12-year-old is doing fine too. Big illustrated report.

This event, an 11-round Swiss, has 168 players and a prize fund of 87,500 Euros. There are also 14 places in the next World Championship knockout tournament up for grabs. After five rounds four players are in the lead with 4.5 points, followed by eleven with 4.0 points. One participant is just ten. The husband of one of the favourites (can you guess who?) is providing us with photos and videos.

The nine-round open went from Saturday, February 28th to Saturday, March 07. Once again the organisers experimented with a new time contol, the “Decreasingly Accelerated System”. A total of 611 players took part, amongst them 102 GMs and 78 IMs, from 60 different countries – a good opportunity to shoot interesting portraits. Giant pictorial report by Dominique Primel.

Two weeks ago we reported from the Aeroflot Open, where top seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov withdrew after a game where he felt his opponent, GM Igor Kurnosov, had been receiving computer assistance. A week later Kurnosov responded, and now Mamedyarov, who is not prepared to let the matter drop, has published a strongly-worded letter on an Azeri sports website. Translation.

He is 28, a lawyer by training but a strong chess grandmaster by profession. Recently Alexander Moiseenko won the very strong Aeroflot Open, together with Etienne Bacrot. This is just the culmination of a row of successful tournaments. Moiseenko spoke at length with our correspondent WGM Anastasiya Karlovich about training, tournament strategy and chess in Ukraine. Interview.

Four years ago Garry Kasparov retired
from competition chess. The greatest female player of all time has also
not been very active in the last few years. In his Playchess
lecture Dennis Monokroussos looks back at one of the many memorable encounters
between the two.
Be there at 9 p.m. ET.

Kenilworth Quads
March 12th – March 26th

USCF-rated
3-RR
Time Control : G/60
Entry Fee : $10
Prizes : $32 to 1st in each quad

Registration : 3/12 from 8:00-8:30 p.m., at site

Kenilworth Community Center
575 Kenilworth Boulevard
Kenilworth, NJ 07033

1st round – Thursday 3/12, 8:35 or 8:40 p.m.
2nd round – Thursday 3/19, 8:30 p.m.
3rd round – Thursday 3/26, 8:30 p.m.

Directions

Contact

The opening ceremony of the Is Bank Atatürk FIDE Women Masters in Turkey featured reigning Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk and Turkish media mogul Ahmet Çalik as special guests. After three rounds there are four players in the lead, with 2.5/3 points each. Top seeds Humpy and Hou Yifan, followed by Zhao Xue and IM Martha Fierro from Ecuador. Big pictorial report.

A FIDE Presidential Board meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, had decided to postpone the World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov until latest April 20th, 2010, and opened the bidding process. Originally the match was scheduled for September this year. The PB also accepted the bid by UEP to stage the world chess championship cycle 2010-2011. Press release.

To conclude my coverage of the Checkmate Championship, which ended Feb. 22nd, here are :

• the 3 final-round games in java-replay & PGN (lightly annotated)
• the detailed final standings
• a ChessBase archive with all 20 games from the event

To conclude my coverage of the Checkmate Championship, which ended Feb. 22nd, here are :

• the 3 final-round games in java-replay & PGN (lightly annotated)
• the detailed final standings
• a ChessBase archive with all 20 games from the event

In our last column we began with a look at the “Annotation” tab of the Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz. Our series on annotation searches continues in the new ChessBase Workshop. We’ll discover how to find games with multimedia content as well as various other annotation forms. Find out more in the new Workshop.

All four games of the last round were drawn, leaving two players at the top of the final table: Vassily Ivanchuk, who first won Linares 18 years ago, and Russian GM Alexander Grischuk. Both have plus two (8.0/14), but Grischuk has three wins to Ivanchuk’s two. Third is Magnus Carlsen, fourth World Champion Vishy Anand. Pictorial report.

Between the rounds of the Super-GM in Linares there are free days. The evening before a break is a great time to take dinner with even the most intense players; and on the free day itself there are usually outings and social gatherings for the journalists. Here’s what we did on the last free day, together with pictures of pretty girls and some more-or-less harrowing tales around the tournament.

The Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz is a handy and versatile tool for locating games in a database. In the new ChessBase Workshop we examine using the Search mask to find deleted games, games which start from non-standard positions, and those containing critical position annotations. Learn more in the new Workshop.

Vassily Ivanchuk, who won Linares in 1991, is poised to do so again, eighteen years later, when he defeated Levon Aronian to join Alexander Grischuk in the lead. The latter was unable to convert a very promising position against Vishy Anand. The tragedy was Magnus Carlsen, who had a well-deserved win on the bat, but spoilt it to a draw. Big pictorial report with annotations by Anish Giri.

Three weeks ago the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP) and ChessBase sent out a poll to top chess players. Their answers kept coming in, with more expected soon. Full results will be presented soon. However, we have decided to send the following preliminary results to the FIDE Presidential Board, which is meeting in Istanbul from the 6-8th of March 2009. Figures and opinions.