Archive for April 23rd, 2009

The Ellner Memorial pairings for tonight are :

1. Kernighan – Mangion
2. Tomkovich – Minkov
3. Moldovan – Wojcio
4. Shiffman – Mann
5. Mazzillo – Renna
6. Balint – Sturniolo

The round starts at 8:30 p.m.

The Checkmate Chess Club in Springfield will run a Knock-Out Tournament starting May 10th. Details here.

The Sicilian Najdorf Variation is hard to tackle, so hard, in fact, that many
players simply want to evade it. The anti-Najdorf-system presented by Alexey
Kuzmin in CBM 129 starts with 2.Ne2, and only after 2…d6 – i.e. the
attempt to enter the Najdorf – dispenses with the direct advance of the
d-pawn. Take a look at the article in our ChessBase
Magazine blog.

For Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov it was the second win in succession – in two rounds he has disposed of Gelfand and Kamsky with the black pieces. On the other hand US grandmaster Gata Kamsky lost for the second time in a row, to take up residence at the bottom of the table (half a point ahead of Ivanchuk). Lev Aronian continues to lead, with 5.0/8 and a 2814 performance.
Full illustrated report.

The games start at 15:00h local time – 13:00h CEST, 7 a.m. (with hot
coffee) in New York. Levon Aronian vs Peter Svidler could produce a very high-level
game, while Sergey Karjakin vs Alexander Grischuk may be fraught with drama.
Once again you can watch all seven games live – and discuss them with
other visitors – on Playchess,
or follow the moves on our further improved Flash client.

Sergey Karjakin played an explosive game against Gata Kamsky, and at one stage (move 27) was basically lost. He fought back to win after his opponent had let the opportunity slip. Boris Gelfand got hammered by a heavy pieces attack on his exposed king, with Pavel Eljanov doing the attacking with the black pieces. Levon Aronian continues to lead. Full report with GM commentary.