Archive for December 31st, 2009

FIDE has just released its January 1st 2010 rating list, and it has the 19-year-old Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen with 2810 in the number one slot, five points ahead of number two Veselin Topalov, and twenty points above World Champion Viswanathan Anand. Magnus is the youngest player to cross the 2800 mark and to top the world rankings.
Congratulations!

…White has only a bare king and Black has king and three pawns (no double or
triple pawns). It is Black to play and the result is a draw. That is a problem
submitted for our 2009
Christmas Puzzle series by Indian grandmaster Sandipan Chanda, who also
has a tough White-to-play-and-win position to tease the computer. There
are two more challenging positions in this December
31st installment.

After the final rounds of the Russian Championship, our endgames expert Karsten
Müller casts an eye back at the remarkable and extremely original endgame Timofeev-Khismatullin
from round five. The position in the diagram arose after 50.bxa5, after which
the two black rooks had to take up the fight against four linked passed pawns
and a knight – and it turned out to be hopeless for them.

Karsten Müller shows you for CBM
Online how this unusual position came about and how the
game ended.