Archive for January 15th, 2010

The schedule is set for the three groups (see A, B, and C) participating in the 72nd Corus Chess 2010 tournament at Wijk aan Zee.  Players include Carlsen, Anand, and Kramnik in an all-star field, with U.S. players Hikaru Nakamura (A), Varuzhan Akobian (B), and young Ray Robson (C) taking part, fresh off their silver medal in the World Team Championship in Bursa, Turkey.  The tournament should receive daily coverage at ChessBase (see “Wijk aan Zee Super-GM Starts Saturday“), TWIC (see preview), The Chess Mind, Chessdom, ICC, ChessVibes, Chessgames, the official site, and numerous other places around the net.

Just one more day without top-level chess. On Saturday the action starts, in the Dutch seaside town, with three incredibly strong invitationals. Friday was the opening ceremony and pairings, on Saturday we will see the first round at 13:30h local time. Live coverage is available on Playchess, with audio commentary by GMs Yasser Seirawan and Daniel King. Pictures and video report.

Our endgame blog started the New Year on the subject of barriers. Just a week later, we can offer you two more examples on this important theme. In Getz-O’Toole, played in the Masters in Hastings, White won in exemplary fashion with the help of a horizontal barrier. A vertical barrier could be seen in Sasikiran-Aronian, where a draw would have been the correct result. But the world class Armenian GM went wrong, allowing Sasikiran to win with flawless technique. Would you have found the correct move in the diagram? Black to play and draw! The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

A new version of our pocket-sized grandmaster was released in mid December.
It contains the chess engine Hiarcs 13, about which you may have read
in our Copa
Mercosur report. The program, as it is suggested by the DVD cover, is
a complete multitask tool for training and enjoying chess. In a new series
we introduce you to this Swiss penknife amongst chess programs, starting with the basics.