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Europe Echecs – Anand goes Bollywood
09.12.2008
– The latest issue of the French chess magazine Europe Echecs is devoted
to the triumph of Anand in Bonn and the new development of chess in India. The
cover itself is quite spectacular – it is designed in the special style
of Bollywood movie posters and shows the World Champion Vishy Anand, the “Tiger
of Madras”, and his wife Aruna.
Here are some extracts.
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Ivanchuk wins Benidorm, Shirov second
09.12.2008
– In the first eight rounds of the "Torneo de las Estrellas" (tournament of the stars), a six player double round robin, Vassily Ivanchuk had 7½/8 and was leading by two points. Then he drew and lost a game to finish just half a point ahead of Alexei Shirov. More than five hundred points separated the strongest from the weakest player.
Illustrated report with video.
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Hou Yifan – the youngest female grandmaster in history
08.12.2008
– In 1991 Judit Polgar became a grandmaster, at the age of 15 years, four months and 28 days – breaking Bobby Fischer's 1958 record of 15 years six months and one day. Now Judit has been surpassed, by a 14-year-old Chinese prodigy: Hou Yifan, born three years after Judit's GM award, has obtained her title at the age of 14 years, six months and two days.
Congratulations, Yifan!
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Super-GM tournament in Nanjing, China
07.12.2008
– Just when you thought we were in for a Christmas break, the next Super tournament in the category of Wijk, Linares and Dortmund starts. It includes Topalov, Ivanchuk, Aronian, Movsesian, Svidler, and Bu Xiangzhi and will be staged in the beautiful Mingfa Pearl Spring Hotel in Nanjing, a subtropical city that used to be the capital of China. The tournament web site has
pictures and videos.
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Should kings really decide the result of a game?
06.12.2008
– Which recent report generated the fastest and most vigorous reader responses? Not the new cycle of FIDE, not Ivanchuk's run-in with the doping commission. It was Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh's proposal to force players to play out every game until mate. In 24 hours we received a slew of letters ranging from "silly idea" to "most brilliant proposal since the inception of the game".
Feedback.
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Levon Aronian: FIDE must reverse its decision!
06.12.2008
– "I must request you to critically view and question the GA's latest decisions," writes Levon Aronian, the world's number seven ranked player, to the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. "Why should we go through several tournaments over several years and fight for a place in a tournament that another player gets by losing a match?" The winner of the second Grand Prix sent us this
open letter.
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12-year-old in contention in Ukraine Championship
06.12.2008
– The 2008 Ukraine Championship is missing Ivanchuk, Ponomariov and Karjakin, but is still very strong, with 26 participants, including 17 GMs. The player to watch is IM Illya Nyzhnyk. At twelve he sports a 2444 rating, and after four rounds he has three points (two wins, two draws). His performance: 2783. From Poltava we bring you a
big pictorial report by Anastasiya Karlovich.
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Let kings decide the result of a game on the board
05.12.2008
– Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh is imaginative, innovative, eccentric. In other words: our kind of person. Once a year he approaches us with a radical idea – last year it was video cameras and intelligent object recognition software tracking games and replacing sensor boards. This year at the Olympiad in Dresden he had a proposal to change how a chess game ends.
Judge for yourself.
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The future of all databases
05.12.2008
– If you want to compete successfully, you must know
the current state of affairs: which variations are played and why some old ideas are just no good any more. In short, you need a database which is up-to-date,
complete, reliable, and ready to get going at once. All this is guaranteed by
the new ChessBase Mega Database 2009, which is now ready for shipping.
Buy it now or read
more.
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Magnus Carlsen withdraws from Grand Prix
05.12.2008
– After a week of correspondence with the FIDE office in Athens, and after receiving replies he deemed unsatisfactory, Magnus Carlsen, the world's number four ranked player, has decided to withdraw from the 2008-2009 FIDE Grand Prix cycle. Instead, the Norwegian GM, who turned 18 last Sunday, will "concentrate on playing well organised and interesting top level events elsewhere".
From Magnus' blog.
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FIDE announces bidding procedure for World Championship
04.12.2008
– Are you the mayor of an affluent town or community? The head of PR for a major corporation? If you are seeking world-wide publicity you can obtain it by staging the Candidates Tournament for the World Chess Championship – or the World Championship itself. The price of the former has been slashed from a million to €400,000; the latter needs a million Euros in prize money.
Announcement.
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Wijk aan Zee 2009 – players, places, dates and times
04.12.2008
– The annual Wijk aan Zee tournament takes place from January 16th to February 1st 2009. Anand, Topalov and Kramnik are missing, but Morozevich, Ivanchuk, Carlsen, Aronian and Radjabov make for a star-studded field. Groups B and C are also well equipped with interesting players, including a former world champion and the current junior world champions.
Full information.
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