Archive for January 5th, 2010

An active king often plays a decisive part in rook endings. If
it can support a passed pawn in its advance, then the king and pawn form
an extremely deadly duo. So the ability of the rook to cut off the king
horizontally or vertically from one of the theatres of war and thus to
restrict its activity is an important weapon in the arsenal of endgame technique.
Karsten Müller has selected a recent endgame in which the theme of the
barrier and the struggle against it are in the foreground.

Analysis of Brynell-Popov
for ChessBase Magazine
Online.

According to the current FIDE rankings Magnus Carlsen is the strongest player in the world. But his rating of 2810 is not the highest ever. That was achieved by Garry Kasparov, who in the July 1999 FIDE list reached 2851 points. Two other players have at some stage had higher ratings than Magnus. Here’s a list of all Super-GMs (over 2700) and their top ratings.

Just a week ago the 19-year-old world chess ranking leader was featured in
an interview
in TIME Magazine. Seldom enough that chess makes it to the pages of this
kind of news publication. Unprecedented that it happens a second time, in this
week’s issue, with a report entitled “A Bold Opening for Chess Player Magnus
Carlsen” by Eben Harrell. Funny, perceptive – must
read.

According to the current FIDE rankings Magnus Carlsen is the strongest player in the world. But his rating of 2810 is not the highest ever. That was achieved by Garry Kasparov, who in the July 1999 FIDE list reached 2851 points. Two other players have at some stage had higher ratings than Magnus. Here’s a list of all Super-GMs (over 2700) and their top ratings.