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Amber 2011: Aronian and Carlsen together in the lead
15.03.2011
– Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen have taken the joint lead after the third round of the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament. Their direct encounter ended in a 1-1 tie after a roller-coaster rapid game. Yesterday's co-leader Alexander Grischuk lost ½-1½ to compatriot Sergey Karjakin. The Game of the Day prize went to Vugar Gashimov for his fine blindfold win against Anish Giri.
Round three report.
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Fressinet takes French Rapid crown
14.03.2011
– The 9th International Meurthe and Moselle Chess Festival took place this weekend in Nancy, France, with 202 players including former FIDE world champion Kasimdzhanov, French stars Bacrot, Fressinet, Indian Harikrishna, and Germany's top three: Naiditsch, Meier and Fridman. Reigning French classical champion, Laurent Fressinet, also became the French rapid champion.
Report + videos.
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Magnus in the New Yorker
14.03.2011
– Normally we would not make such a big thing out of it, but this is one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, and the story is nine pages long, and exceptionally well-written – great for a lay audience. The author, D.T.Max, met up with Magnus Carlsen a number of times, and also queried other players (Anand, Kasparov). The article is not free online, so
go buy the magazine this week.
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Amber 2011: Carlsen score 2-0 to join the leaders
14.03.2011
– Magnus Carlsen joined Levon Aronian and Alexander Grischuk in the shared lead in the overall standings by defeating Vugar Gashimov 2-0.His victory with the black pieces won the € 1,000 "Game of the Day" prize. Aronian beat Hikaru Nakamura 1½-½, while Grischuk had the same result in his mini-match against former co-leader Boris Gelfand. Round two report with
video GM analysis.
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The chess twins of the chess twin
13.03.2011
– She is an IM, WGM, and a professor at the Faculty of Culture and Media at a Belgrade University. He is an FM, TV sports editor, chess columnist and since recently editor of the prestigious Chess Informant. On February 21st Dr Alisa Maric and Josip Asik became parents of twins – not a complete surprise, since Alisa was a twin herself.
We congratulate the proud chess couple.
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Amber 2011: Anand and the domination game
13.03.2011
– In our first report of round one we dealt with all kinds of accidents and blunders that befell the players in this blindfold and rapid chess tournament. Today we turn to a remarkable 67-move game in which the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand used the domination motif to take a point off his last-year's challenger Veselin Topalov. GM Karsten Müller
explains how it was done.
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Amber 2011: Four players start with 2-0 scores
12.03.2011
– The four winners were Gashimov, Gelfand, Grischuk and Aronian, and the corresponding 0-2 losers were Ivanchuk, Karjakin, Kramnik and Giri. There was a lot of luck – both good and very bad – in play, which is hardly surprising in a blindfold and rapid tournament like the 20th Melody Amber. This is incidentally the last edition.
Round one report.
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Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (60)
12.03.2011
– The death has been announced of the chess historian and archivist Jeremy Gaige
of Philadelphia. In 1988 the Editor of Chess
Notes received from Gaige, his close associate, a unique document which
was not to be disclosed during the American’s lifetime: a ‘self-obituary’.
The text is made public here for the first time, to mark the passing of a
magnificent figure in the history of chess.
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You win some, you lose some – MP Reykjavik Open
11.03.2011
– Last year's Reykjavik Open winner, Icelandic GM Hannes Stefansson (2557), finished his first game in this year's event with a summary execution of his much weaker opponent in just ten moves. Then Hannes faced the dauntingly lovely Belarusian WGM Anna Sharevich, well over 200 points his inferior, and got crushed in 35 moves. That's the way the cookie crumbles.
Report from Iceland.
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Discovered attacks ...
11.03.2011
– ... on various diagonals White had to consider when in this position he went for
20.Bg5 harrassing the black queen. What is your verdict - the counterstrike
20...Nxd4 leads to...
A)... advantage for Black
B)... advantage for White
C)... dynamic equilibrium
The solution is here,
but first ponder over it with a
larger version of the diagram.
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FFE Cheating: Judge rules incriminating SMS inadmissible
11.03.2011
– After unearthing a series of SMS messages between players accused of cheating at the Olympiad using a phone lent by the French Chess Federation vice president, the FFE sought to have those messages transcribed and included as evidence in the upcoming Disciplinary Committee. A judge ruled that secrecy could only be waived if the FFE sued in court, as the FFE explains in a
public statement.
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HIARCS 13 – the Professional Openings Book
10.03.2011
– The British chess program Hiarcs is famous for its sharp attacking chess. This is ideally enhanced by one of the best openings books around, derived from top correspondence and OTB human games together with the best computer games, producing the latest cutting edge chess theory and a wealth of novelties to provide a huge repertoire of finely tuned variations.
Examples.
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