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It's official: Magnus Carlsen is number one!
31.12.2009
– 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!
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Compose a position where...
31.12.2009
– ...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.
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The pawn roller
31.12.2009
– 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.
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CBM 133: openings survey for the Tal Memorial
30.12.2009
– Many chess lovers are well aware of what is on offer in each issue of ChessBase
Magazine: reports on the latest top tournaments; games analysed by world class
players; compact opening surveys (like this
one by Mihail Marin); and much more. You are not aware? Well visit our CBM
blog to keep abreast with the times, and read all about the new
ChessBase
Magazine vol. 133 here.
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Russian Superfinal: Grischuk and Galliomova win
30.12.2009
– There were chances of a late-round upset, but in the end the two leading players stayed in front, winning the men's and women's sections by half a point. Alexander Grischuk had a 2851 performance that will put him on place nine in the world on the next rating list. Alisa Galliamova won the women's title with a 2715 performance. The two picked up $25,000 and $11,700 respectively.
Final report.
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Pal Benko improves on Troitzky
30.12.2009
– In 1856 the great Sam Loyd composed a chess problem, which 75 years later inspired Alexey Troitsky, one of the greatest composers of endgame studies, to create a puzzle with a similar theme. It proved to be flawed. 75 years after Troitzky another great composer, Pal Benko, took up his problem, improved on it and submitted it
for our Christmas Puzzle page.
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Morphy vs Staunton – the match that never was
29.12.2009
– When 21-year-old Paul Morphy travelled to Europe in the summer of 1858
he destroyed all opposition. Except for one of Europe's chess heroes, who avoided
a confrontation. Howard Staunton would only play consultation games, where you
can blame a loss on your partner. In his Playchess
lecture Dennis Monokroussos shows us an interesting example.
Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET.
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Hastings 2009-2010: Laudator temporis acti
29.12.2009
– That's a praiser of past times, conservative, old fashioned, classic. It describes our reporter at the International Chess Congress in Hastings – 28th December 2009 through to 5th January 2010 – but also the event itself. Steve Giddins, who received a Latin phrasebook for Christmas, is said reporter. We are using "oldstyle" ChessBase diagrams to keep him happy.
Round one report.
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A tale of seven knights
29.12.2009
– Our 2009
Christmas Puzzle series is all about baffling computers. But that is not
easy, given today's monster machines and super-smart programs. And sometimes
a bit daunting for human beings, who do not always grasp what their electronic
counterparts have missed. So today, as a relaxing prelude, we bring you an exhilarating
story of a hippophile
chess composer.
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Both kings threatened by discovered check...
28.12.2009
– ... was the situation in this recent game from the German Bundesliga, where White to play had to calculate the consequences of
27.Rf7-f4+. How would you assess the position after that (diagram)?
A) White is better;
B) the position is balanced;
C) Black has the advantage.
The solution is here,
but first ponder over it with a
larger version of the diagram.
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Positions to tempt and torture your computer
28.12.2009
– If you are following our Christmas puzzles you will know that a new one is
being posted every day and can be viewed by going to the index
page (we do not post daily alerts). Number three showed a thrilling win,
number four a clever positional draw, both theoretically very difficult for
computers to comprehend. Some positions require a little lateral thinking by
us humany. Give
it a try.
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Russian Superfinal: Grischuk leads, Galliomova 6.5/7
27.12.2009
– Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler both won in round six and drew in round seven to maintain their places at the top of the table. Grischuk has 5.0/7 with a 2833 performance, Svidler 4.5/7 at 2778. In the women's section Alisa Galliamova has conceded a single draw. She lead by a full point, with a 2868 performance, but can still be caught, e.g. by Nadezhda Kosintseva.
Report by Misha Savinov.
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