Thursday, December 20, 2007
Kamsky wins World Cup 2007 to challenge Topalov
Friday, November 23, 2007
Anand Runner Up in World Blitz Championship
Final Standings (38 rounds)
Place SNo. Name Fed. FIDE Total S.B. Wins
1 16 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 2787 25.5 480 19
2 4 Anand, Viswanathan IND 2801 24.5 437 18
3 3 Grischuk, Alexander RUS 2715 23.5 430.5 14
4 7 Kamsky, Gata USA 2714 23.5 429 16
5 8 Kramnik, Vladimir RUS 2785 21.5 393.75 13
6 1 Leko, Peter HUN 2755 21.5 392.5 13
7 9 Rublevsky, Sergei RUS 2676 21.5 385.75 16
8 18 Morozevich, Alexander RUS 2755 21 378.5 16
9 17 Carlsen, Magnus NOR 2714 20.5 352 15
10 13 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar AZE 2752 18.5 344.75 13
11 20 Adams, Michael ENG 2729 18.5 337.25 13
12 11 Ponomariov, Ruslan UKR 2705 18 339.5 15
13 5 Kasimdzhanov, Rustam UZB 2690 17.5 319.75 11
14 2 Dreev, Alexey RUS 2607 17 313.5 12
15 14 Gelfand, Boris ISR 2736 17 310.75 10
16 6 Savchenko, Boris RUS 2583 17 291.5 13
17 19 Shirov, Alexei ESP 2739 16 298.75 11
18 12 Karpov, Anatoly RUS 2670 14 252 8
19 10 Bacrot, Etienne FRA 2695 12 235 9
20 15 Korotylev, Alexey RUS 2600 11.5 205.25 7
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Vishy Anand is the new World Chess Champion
Gelfand played a very nice tournament trailing Anand by a point at the finish but a last round victory by Kramnik ensured the equal 8 points for both of him and Kramnik and hence Kramnik became runner up in baclose score calculation.
Its fun time now to enjoy for Indians. They have recently won the Tewnty20 World Cricket Championship and now the world chess championship.
Congratulations to Anand! Enjoy the success.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
World Chess Championship 2007 Starts Tomorrow
Well, I have been waiting to see Anand to be the champion of the chess world. However in recent years the championship has been captured by Kramnik and Topalov instead. This show is the best and probably one of the last few chances of Anand, considering his age, to prove his supremecy once again. The various online polls show Anand as top favorite closely followed by Kramnik. In fact, in a recent interview kasparov nominated Anand as the clear favorite. However, Kramnik is in great shape and Aronian is the other contender for the crown with a good result against both Anand and Kramnik. The other five participants are also capable of making good results in any event. It will be a memorable battle amongst all of them.
Player Nat. Rtn Birth Vishwanathan Anand IND 2792 1969 Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2769 1975 Alexander Morozevich RUS 2758 1977 Peter Leko HUN 2751 1979 Levon Aronian ARM 2750 1982 Peter Svidler RUS 2735 1976 Boris Gelfand ISR 2733 1968 Alexander Grischuk RUS 2726 1983
Courtesy to Susan Polgar's Blog, here is the official link to watch the games live in action.
http://partidas.chessmexico.com
Here are a few more articles on this.
http://story.mexicostar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/4b980140662cfc90/id/281684/cs/1/
http://affairsofchess-wydarzenia.blogspot.com/2007/09/anand-top-seed-in-chess-world.html
http://midaschess.blogspot.com/2007/09/mexico-are-you-ready-for-show.html
Monday, August 20, 2007
Anand won Mainz Rapid World Chess Championship for 10th Time
Here is what Anand remembers about his Rapid World Championship Titles during last one and half decade.
http://www.hindu.com/2007/08/26/stories/2007082656011800.htm
Monday, June 4, 2007
Fide Candidates Match 2007 Round 1
The Candidates Matches for the 2007 World Chess Championship Tournament was held in Elista, Russia, from May 26 to June 14, 2007. A total of 16 candidates played two rounds of six-game matches to fill four places in the 2007 World Championship in Mexico City. The prize fund was US $40,000 per match, most of the money ($320,000) coming from a personal fund of FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, FIDE ($160,000) and the general sponsor, Rosenergomash.
In the most excitng competition of round 1, Aronian and Carlsen faught head to head until Aronian won the last 2 tie blitz games to score a 7-5 win when the classical games drew at 4 draws and 1 win each. leko outplayed Gurevich the same was as Kamsky demolished Bacrot (3.5 - 0.5). Rublevsky defeated Ponomariov and Bereev defeated Polgar by 3.5 - 2.5 margin while Grishchuk comfortably overcame Malakov (3.5 - 1.5). In the other tie-breaks of Shirov vs Adams and Gelfand vs Kasimdzhanov the outcome was identical 5.5 - 3.5 in favor of Shirov and Gelfand respectively. Now we will be looking forward to Round 2 fights that will decide the rest 4 World Chess Mexico 2007 participants.
Round 2 Pairings:
Aronian vs Shirov - I am expecting a very interesting battle.
Grishchuk vs Rublevsky - I think Grishchuk will win.
Gelfand vs Kamsky - My bet is on Kamsky.
Leko vs Bareev - I am quite sure about Leko.
FIDE press director Peter Rajcsanyi summarized the event so far as follows:
The first round of the candidate matches resulted in many colorful and fire-packed games, a few real blunders (from among which many were made in the longer-time-control games), several good combinations, interesting rook sacrifices, not too many draws and a friendly atmosphere among the players, audience and officials.
The outside temperature was high and on many boards there were heated-up struggles in the main playing hall, too. The overall quality of the games is good and the excitement created by the arrangement of bringing all candidate matches into one place pleased most of the local and Internet spectators. On the Internet, the average number of daily visitors reached the sixty thousand level.
Magnus Carlsen is the hero of the first round – no doubt. He became the chess idol of the young Kalmykian girls who may or may not know chess (as he enjoys the same status in Norway, too) while his stamina as well as consistency has been admired all over the world by chess players. His friendly style, delightful and disarming smile and the candid answers pleased media people in the press center all the time. He successfully used the whole chess armory available for him although finally it was not enough against Aronian now. Next time, who knows…
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Voted Anand for Chess Oscar 2006
1st: Anand
2nd: Kramnik
3rd: Topalov
4th: Radjabov
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Anand is the highest rated chess player now
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3784
http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-official-anand-is-king-of-hill.html
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3771
http://specials.rediff.com/sports/2007/apr/02sld1.htm
http://www.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=22787
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Painting of Great Chess Players by Fernando Arrabal
Chessbase - http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3456
Susan's Blog - http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2007/03/chess-painting.html
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Anand Leading Linares
I am particularly happy to see Anand coming back with great spirit showing his class after last 2 consecutive wins against Morozevich and Carlsen. I wish Radjabov would play the tournament although Ivanchuk is no less attractive replacement to him. As of my writing now, round 5 is going in full swing where Topalov seems to have tied down Carlsen strongly.
Standings After Round 4:
Update: Until 9th round Anand was leading with Carlsen and then today at 10th round Anand again defeated Carlsen with a brilliant knight sacrifice, which folks there were not sure whether really winning. However Carlsen understood better and refused to take the knight and played a series of good defensive but couldn't avoid defeat.
Update After Round 12: Anand drew with Aronian to lead the table with 7.5 points. Carlsen is closely following him (7.0) after today's draw with Topalov. Svidler defeated Leko to trail Carlsen with 6.5 points putting Leko in the bottom of the table alone. Morozevich defeated Invanchuk to make the playing ground even for both of them coupled with Topalov at 5.5 points. Chessbase got a new look today.
Final Update: Anand won Linares/Moreila 2007 with 8.5 points, a full point ahead of Carlsen and Morozevich. One good thing is that Anand is going to be the highest rated chess player in April's FIDE rating list. He has been consistently the #2 or #3 player in the world last 10 years following mainly Kasparov and sometimes Kramnik and Topalov. I wish Anand becomes the world champion this year in Mexico. Here is the final standings.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
MSA for USCF Members
You may download it from here.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Review of Rapid Chess Improvement by Michael de la Maza
Rapid Chess Improvement (Everyman Chess) Michael de la Maza Date: 2002-06-01 — Book product page read other reviews Rating: |
- Develop Chess Vision. Its a less discussed topic in chess and Michael did a good job bringing it front. However, he over-emphasized it. I can never imagine finding time to go through the chess vision drills that the author was talking about, because that time can be better utilized in other areas of chess improvement. Well, may be I think so because I am already a strong Class B player. But for someone who has time and is a Class C or D level player (or lower), it may be of use. My opinion for class C or D level players would be to try a few hours with queen and knight and ignore the rest, certainly not 2 or 3 weeks. You better use that time studying end games.
- Study and practice chess Tactics as much as possible. Tactics is the heart of chess. I can think of studying chess as learning tactics and learning strategy. Michael emphazied tactics over strategy until someone is an Expert level player. This emphasize is correct to some extent, however, not making someone completely ignorant about Strategy. I thank the author for emphasizing tactics and crticize the author for consdering learning strategy as waste of time. I can't imagine how I would be able to get a complete appreciation of chess without reading a book like Nimzowitch's My System.
- Use CT-Art 3.0 to sharpen up your tactics and follow Seven Circles program. Any program that teaches you tactics, gives lot of tactical puzzles will do. In fact, I decided to buy Fritz 10 instead of it. However, as CT-Art is specially focused on this area, its really worth. Now whether you will follow author's unique invention of seven circles or you want to go your own way depending on your schedule, profession, life style is upto you. Seven circles is, no doubt, a good way to go if you dont want to create a schedule yourself. I used to solve chess puzzle books earlier that contained lot of combinations and that also worked well in my early chess endevours. Still, I give credit to Michael to make it straight forward by putting a calculated discipline in this process of learning tactics.
Even though I disagree with Michael's vision to chess as a move by move mathematical puzzle only, I am happy that this book is around. I would give this book 3 stars unless the author would fill soem of the pages with unnecessary contents and some misleading messages other than the emphasize on chess. Its certainly not among the very good chess books, however, for weaker and busy palyers, the re-wording of practice tactics again and again will be really helpful. I can definitely say I didn't learn anything new reading this book accept knowing the name of CT-Art 3.0 as a good tactics trainer which inspired me to decidde that I will buy Fritz 10 soon. After playing around with Fritz for a while if I find Fritz can't be configured to give me tactical puzzles, I will purchase CT-Art 3.0 as well.
A few references for your own exploration.
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles148.pdf
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles150.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_De_La_Maza
http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews_js/js_rapid_chess_improv.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/chess
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137036/getting_ahead_in_chess.html
http://rapidchessimprovement.blogspot.com/2006/08/critique-of-rapid-chess-improvement.html
Monday, January 29, 2007
Topalov, Radjabov and Aronian Won Corus 2007
Radjabov was leading in the beginning but in the middle the tournament edge shifted back to Topalov. Aronian played consistently and with a last round win he joined to share the title with 8.5/13 each. Kramnik was the only undefeated player in the tournament with balanced play scoring 8. I am upset that Anand lost to both Topalov and Kramnik and couldn't win any game against his last 3 comparatively weaker opponents and resulted in 7.5 that will loose him a few ELO points. I hope he will consolidate himself and will be back in great spirit at mexico world chess championship later this year. I see Shirov and Carlsen in the bottom of the chart at 4.5 each.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Dreev Wins 5th Parsvanth Chess Tournament In New Delhi
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
My Game Against GM Susan Polgar
Date: 06/24/2005 Atlanta, Georgia
Event: Simultaneous Display By GM Susan Polgar
Monday, January 15, 2007
Amazon Short - An Evolutionary Theory of Chess
An Evolutionary Theory of Chess Garry Kasparov Date: 2006-11-10 — $0.49 — DVD / VHS product page read other reviews Rating: |
I finished my first Amazon Short today: An Evolutionary Theory of Chess by Garry Kasparov. I was amazed to see the idea of short electronic-article-like book while surfing Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series in amazon.com in early December 2006. I bought and read all the 5 volumes of Kasparov's My Great Predecssors and was looking for the new arrivals in this series. I came accross this $0.49 book (or should I call it e-article) and purcahsed it in advance as it was not published that time. Last weekend, I thaught to look for whether its already published and found yes - it was. I downloaded a PDF copy to my laptop at that time but today during lunch break I printed it and read. Kasparov talked about the past chess figures and evolution of chess through them as a beginner's game to a master's game in last 150 years and emerging into the computer age of chess as the last evolution in playing chess or chess styles. I liked this short book. | |
Entering 1800 club in chesslive
Lets see how it goes.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Google Search Engine Customized For Chess
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Life's too short for chess
The Arab traveler Al-Biruni rediscovered chess in Indus valley now in present day Pakistan. He is considered responsible for reintroducing ito the Islamic world, and thence to medieval Europe in tenth century. Archealogists have found artifacts resembling to chess pieces in the ruins of Moenjodaro in Indus valley. It Is believed that the ancient name of the game of chess was Chatrunga and It was played in Indus valley since 1000 BC or more. The centuries old story of "Sessa" the inventor of the game of chess goes some thing like this. Sessa traveled to Persia and presented his invented game to the King. He went to Persia because nobody appreciated his work in India. And Persia was famous those days for art, culture and education. The game was liked by the king so much that he asked Sessa to ask for recompense whatever he wished.
Sessa modestly requested to be given one grain of wheat for the first square of the chess board, two for the second, four for the third and so on doubling each time up to 64th square. Eventually the wise men of the king added the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 etc and found the sum of series to 64 terms or levels and concludeded that was not enough wheat in the kingdom to meet the demand of Sessa. Can you work out that sum?
"Life's too short for chess" is a quote attributed to Henry J. Byron.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Queen Ending
Queen Ending Against McGolden
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
New Rating List January 2007 & Review of Chess Year 2006
Last year was another eventful for chess. Other than Topalov-Kramnik match that Kramnik won there was Kramnik Fritz 10 match where Kramnik lost. The other events are -
Corus Wijk aan Zee A Group: =1-2 Anand, Topalov =3-4 Adams, Ivanchuk
Corus Wijk aan Zee B Group: =1-2 Motylev, Carlsen 3 Almasi
Keres Rapid: =1-3 Ivanchuk, Karpov, Kasimdzhanov
Linares/Morelia: 1 Aronian =2-3 Topalov, Radjabov
Cuernavaca Young Masters: =1-2 Ponomariov, Vallejo Pons 3 Nakamura
Amber Rapid (not blindfold): 1 Anand =2-3 Topalov, Aronian
Karpov Poikovsky: 1 Shirov =2-5 Ponomariov, Zvjaginsev, Dreev, Bareev
Bosnia: =1-3 Nisipeanu, Carlsen, Malakhov
MTel Masters: 1 Topalov 2 Kamsky 3 Anand
Aerosvit Foros: 1 Rublevsky 2 Ivanchuk 3 Bologan
Tomsk Izmailov Rapid: 1 Karjakin 2 Rublevsky 3 Kasimdzhanov
Biel: 1 Morozevich =2-3 Carlsen, Radjabov
Leon Rapid: 1 Anand
Sparkassen Dortmund: =1-2 Kramnik, Svidler =3-5 Adams, Leko, Gelfand
Villarobledo Rapid: =1-4 Anand, I Sokolov, Korneev, Ponomariov
Staunton Memorial: 1 I Sokolov, 2-3 Timman, Adams
Rishon FIDE Blitz WCh: 1 Grischuk 2 Svidler =3-4 Radjabov, Anand
Essent Hoogeveen: =1-2 Mamedyarov, J Polgar
Cap d'Agde Rapid: 1 Radjabov 2 Karjakin
Capablanca Elite: 1 Ivanchuk 2 Bareev 3 Miton
Tal Memorial: =1-3 Leko, Ponomariov, Aronian
Russian Ch Superfinal: 1 Alekseev 2 Jakovenko 3 Inarkiev
Torre Memorial: 1 Ivanchuk 2 Bruzon
Pamplona: 1 Morozevich 2 Jakovenko 3 Shirov
I am looking forward to personally visit World Chess Championship 2007 that will be hosted in Mexico city.