Archive for November 29th, 2009

Less than two weeks ago, Magnus Carlsen won the World Blitz Championship at the Tal Memorial in Moscow. Yesterday he lost to Hikaru Nakamura, widely considered the best blitz player in the world (but who did not play in Moscow), in the final of the BNBank knockout blitz tournament in Oslo. So who’s really the champ? Check out the Oslo Blitz page created by ChessBase to play over the games and watch them on video at the same time. And does blitz even matter? Read Bobby’s Blitz Chess by Larry Parr (from the Internet Archives, which may be slow to load) for some historical perspective.

Related Links

• Oslo Blitz — Nakamura Beats Carlsen in the Final from ChessBase
• Nakamura Blitzes Carlsen in Norway by Mig Greengard
• Nakamura Wins BNBank Blitz by Dennis Monokroussos
• Carlsen Wins Tal Memorial Blitz

We take the nomenclature from the organisers on the official site. Czech Coal is staging a match between “chess legends” (Korchnoi, Timman, Hübner, Hort) and young “grandmistresses” (Humpy, Muzychuk, Lahno and Jackova) in the famous chess town of Marianske Lazne (Marienbad). After two of eight rounds the “Snowdrops” are leading 4.5:3.5. Big pictorial report with videos.

After the first rapid chess tiebreak game Wang Yue and Lie Chao went to the smoking area. An arbiter warned them that their games were starting in three minutes, and then again a minute before the starting gong. But the two arrived two minutes late at the board and lost their games by forfeit. Both were subsequently eliminated. Results, pictures, games and interview.

This low-key blitz event took part on Saturday, November 28th in Oslo, Norway. Ten players were invited and divided into two groups, insuring that the two designated finalists, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, would meet in the final. We have with difficulty managed to get some of the games in PGN. We also have a special visual treat for you: front-seat videos of the final.

That was the shocker on day two of round three: 16-year-old Wesley So held
Super-GM Gata Kamsky to a draw and eliminated him from the World Cup in Khanty
Mansiysk. Other players knocked out: Sakaev, Motylev, Tomashevsky, Wang Hao, Yu Yangyi.
Ten tiebreaks on Sunday – you can watch them from
11:00 a.m. CET on Playchess. Illustrated
report plus an interview with Gata Kamsky.