Archive for September 2nd, 2009

This International Open chess tournament is like no other – held not in a small, touristy town but in the heart of the “City of Light” and is billed as the Paris Championship. The venue is the sports gymnasium Coubertin, where this year 643 players, divided in three groups, were able to take part. The winner was a Kazakh grandmaster who is in love with the city. Report by Diana Mihajlova.

The lineup of the traditional Moscow Blitz Championship was, as usual, extremely strong. The usual suspects Alexander Grischuk and Alexander Morozevich were joined by the newcoming Muscovite Sergey Karjakin. The sky-high rated Dmitry Jakovenko and always tough Vladimir Malakhov were dark horses of the event. Big pictorial report by Misha Savinov.

Or at least to identify and retrieve positions that human beings consider beautiful? While computers may be able to play at top GM level, they are not able to tell a beautiful combination from a bland one. This has left a research gap which Dr Mohammed Azlan Mohamed Iqbal, working at Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia, has tried to close. Here’s his delightfully interesting PhD thesis.