Archive for April 28th, 2009

This Wednesday night lecture by Dennis Monokroussos on Playchess
presents a 1973 encounter in Talinn between two immortals: Lev Polughaevsky
and Paul Keres. It shows the three-time Soviet champion Polugaevsky at his best,
executing devious little plans to wrong-foot his opponent. Come watch the lecture
and add the stutter step approach to your repertoire of tricks. 9 p.m. ET.

One round before the end Peter Leko scored an important victory over Rustam Kasimdzhanov to join Levon Aronian on the top of the table (Kasimdzhanov joined Ivanchuk at the other end). Sergey Karjakin defeated Peter Svidler and Alexander Grischuk beat Etienne Bacrot. Tomorrow Aronian plays Leko. Full illustrated report with commentary by GM Sergey Shipov.

A year and a half ago the President of the Turkish Chess Federation, Ali Nihat Yazici, invited Boris Kutin, the President of the European Chess Union to resign. The reason: the ECU was preventing Turkey from staging three major European Chess events. The matter went to arbitration, and now the court in Lausanne has decided in favour of the Turks – with dramatic consequences.

The games to watch today are Gata Kamsky vs Levon Aronian (who will
be eager to retain his pole position), and Peter Leko
vs Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Leko will try to win and catch Aronian). We are curious
how Vassily Ivanchuk will fare against Evgeny Alekseev. You can watch all
games from Nalchik live – and discuss them with other visitors –
on Playchess, or follow the moves on
our Flash client.

Yesterday we reported that FIDE had decided not simply to change the K-Factor in its rating calculation, but to publish two parallel lists for a year and then review the results. Today we received a passionate appeal by GM Bartlomiej Macieja not to delay the decision but increase the K-factor immediately. In fact he advocated recalculating the lists of the last two or even five years. Let the debate begin.