Archive for April 21st, 2009

The 2009 PWC Toronto Open Chess Championship took place from April 17th to 19th, 2009 – five rounds Swiss, prize fund $17,000+, entry fee $90 + bring your own clocks. Two players, Russian GM Bator Sambuev, 2498, and US GM Joshua Friedel took first place, with 5.0/5 points, leaving the likes of Nakamura, Perelshteyn and Shabalov in their wake. Illustrated report and games.

After receiving a large number of (mainly laudatory) emails from our readers we used the free day to implement improvements to our Flash broadcast client. The automatic replay has been speeded up, you can replay games using the keyboard, load the previous/next game that way too, and (Hallelujah!) flip the board. Hope you enjoy watching the games of round six on the improved Flash client.

In 1963 the artist Marcel Duchamp posed for a picture at the Pasadena Art Museum in which he played a game of chess against a naked model. Inspired by this picture and the circumstances surrounding it two-time US Women’s Champion WGM Jennifer Shahade, who has worked on a book on Duchamp, engaged in a one-sided nude chess game at the Philidelphia Soundstages. Here’s the video.