Archive for August 7th, 2009

The Netherlands Championship, which took place from July 21st-30th, was finally won by GM Erwin L’Ami. 15-year-old Anish Giri, who had led with 5.0/5 points and a 3164 performance, ended in second place, together with Jan Timman and FM Roi Miedema. “There are now one billion photographers on the planet,” sighs Dutch professional Fred Lucas. Here are his extraordinary visual impressions.

Sunday, 9 August 2009, heralds the start of the events around the 200-year anniversary of the Schachgesellschaft Zürich, the oldest chess club in the world. Attendees on the final weekend (August 22-23) include Kasparov, Anand, Karpov, Korchnoi, Kramnik, Spassky, Ponomariov and Topalov. Richard Forster and Christian Rohrer retrace the historical development of the Schachgesellschaft.

In Canadian youth and junior chess, a number of names are becoming difficult to forget, but note these two: FMs Raja Panjwani and Eric Hansen. They will not be going away anytime soon, as indicated by recent performances at the Victoria Summer Chess Festival. With the Bluvshtein-Nakamura encounter serving as a warm up to the main events, things just got better from there.