Topalov Took Early Lead by Defeating Kamsky in 2nd Match

Topalov came out with good opening surprises for Kamsy both in yesterday's first game with White and today's second game with black. While Kamsky skillfully held himself in first game, he took too much time to respond to Topalov's plan today and eventually lost the game. Topalov is now leading 1-0 in the 8 game challenger deciding match in Bulgeria.

I found an interesting URL today here -

http://activereader.org/mini-games/amazon-chess/

Update: Topalov defeated Kamsky and became the challenger for world championship crown against Anand that will be help next year in 2010!!! I would love to see Anand defeating Topalov.

Happy New Year 2009 Fide Chess Rating

Fide 2009 January Rating list is topped by Topalov with 2796 closely followed by World Champion Vishy Anand.

FIDE January 2009 Top Players Rating List

Rank	Name	Title	Country	Rating	Games	B-Year
1	Topalov, Veselin	g	BUL	2796	8	1975
2	Anand, Viswanathan	g	IND	2791	11	1969
3	Ivanchuk, Vassily	g	UKR	2779	19	1969
4	Carlsen, Magnus	g	NOR	2776	17	1990
5	Morozevich, Alexander	g	RUS	2771	20	1977
6	Radjabov, Teimour	g	AZE	2761	27	1987
7	Jakovenko, Dmitry	g	RUS	2760	40	1983
8	Kramnik, Vladimir	g	RUS	2759	20	1975
9	Leko, Peter	g	HUN	2751	23	1979
10	Movsesian, Sergei	g	SVK	2751	16	1978
11	Aronian, Levon	g	ARM	2750	16	1982
12	Shirov, Alexei	g	ESP	2745	19	1972
13	Wang, Yue	g	CHN	2739	28	1987
14	Grischuk, Alexander	g	RUS	2733	28	1983
15	Gelfand, Boris	g	ISR	2733	17	1968
16	Ponomariov, Ruslan	g	UKR	2726	9	1983
17	Kamsky, Gata	g	USA	2725	16	1974
18	Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	g	AZE	2724	29	1985
19	Gashimov, Vugar	g	AZE	2723	28	1986
20	Svidler, Peter	g	RUS	2723	27	1976

For Bangladesh Chess, 3 of our 5 GMs are over the 2500+ marks after a good Chess Olympiad performance.

Bangladesh (Active players)

#	Name	Title	Fed	Rating	G	B-Year
1	Abdulla, Al-Rakib	g	BAN	2535	9	1980
2	Hossain, Enamul	g	BAN	2513	28	1981
3	Rahman, Ziaur	g	BAN	2509	21	1974
4	Reefat, Bin-Sattar	g	BAN	2480	9	1974
5	Murshed, Niaz	g	BAN	2429	11	1966
6	Abu Sufian, Shakil	f	BAN	2386	24	1980
7	Minhazuddin, Ahmed	f	BAN	2349	36
8	Islam, Kh. Aminul	f	BAN	2324	0	1977
9	Rahman, Md. Taibur	f	BAN	2320	11	1976
10	Ahmed, Sk. Nasir	f	BAN	2281	9	1975
11	Mohammed Abdul, Malek	f	BAN	2280	19	1983
12	Rahman, Syed Mahfuzur	f	BAN	2278	29
13	Hasan, Kayes		BAN	2249	0
14	Hasan, Mehdi	f	BAN	2243	33
15	Mohammad, Ali		BAN	2232	26	1985
16	Gosh, Chanchal Kumar		BAN	2231	0
17	Chatterjee, Debaraj		BAN	2218	38	1980
18	Ahmed, Mahtabuddin		BAN	2199	26
19	Chowdhury, Sohel		BAN	2194	37	1972
19	Ahmed, Shafiq		BAN	2194	11	1976
21	Mohammad, Javed	f	BAN	2188	34
22	Haque, Rezaul	f	BAN	2186	24	1959
23	Ahmed, Mainuddin		BAN	2182	0
24	Uddin, Saif		BAN	2181	0
25	Hossain, Monir		BAN	2180	35	1974
26	Ali, Mohammad Imran		BAN	2156	17	1989
27	Anisuzzaman, Jewel		BAN	2153	9
28	Monir, Arman		BAN	2150	33
29	Hossain, Enayet Mohammed		BAN	2147	0
30	Hossain, Delwar		BAN	2146	20

Ziaur Rahman Drew Magnus Carlsen in 7th Round of Chess Olympiad

This is my pleasure to state that Bangladesh Men Chess Olympiad team has drew the very strong Norway team in the 7th round in Dresden, Germany yesterday. It's an amazing feat for Bangladesh chess team considering the strength of the opposition in the world chess map. I congratulate the team wholeheartedly. Go to http://www.dresden2008.org/site/de/medien/ausblick08/main.htm and search for Bangladesh to see the results so far for Bangladesh Chess Team. Bangladesh is ranked 55th at the start of the tournament is standing at 37th place after 7 rounds.

From Chess For You

While the whole team is playing very well, it's worth mentioning separately that today GM Ziaur Rahman at top board drew with White against world's 4th top rated (2786) GM Magnus Carlsen who is widely considered as the future World Chess Champion who is looking forward to break Kasparov's record of being the youngest world chess champion of all time unless Anand can refrain him from being so for next four years. Also GM Rakib's current rating performance is an impressive 2646 (4.0 out of 5 games). I wish Bangladesh can end up within a position within the first 40 teams in this tournaments and each of the players gain a very good rating point out of this.

Here is what The Round 7 News by Mark Crowther of ChessCenter mentioned about Zia and his game against Carlsen.

Carlsen (with black) against Ziaur Rahman (a man who plays a LOT of chess, believe me, so is extremely experienced) drew after provoking complications not in his favour from the opening but eventually reached a dead level ending after his opponent went wrong.

You can follow the full game here in chess.com forum.

Bangladesh Chess Olympiad Team 2008

Chess Olympiad Dresden 2008 has achieved the highest level of registration in history turning it into the biggest Chess Olympiad of all ages. After the final closing of the registration list on September the 19th there were more than 2000 active participants announced. It will be held from November the 12th till November the 25th in Dresden, Germany. A perfect place to play big chess events after a successful world chess championship match in Bonn, Germany last month.

With 152 registered nations Dresden surpasses the previous Olympiad 2006 in Turin with 7 more countries. The participants distribute themselves to 275 teams, therefrom 156 in the main tournament including the second team of Germany and the teams of the deaf, correspondence chess players and blind persons. 119 women teams are starting.

Susan Polgar's Popular Chess blog provided an entry on the Bangladesh Chess Team that left for Germany to participate this big event. I was proud to see Bangladesh's map in that entry. I know most of the players there personally and I wish success to this team whole heaterdly. To see the complete list of all the chess participating nations and players, click this link http://tournaments.chessdom.com/chess-olympiad-2008-teams .

What is Anand's Position Amongst the Crowds of World Champions in Chess History

I started a poll in this few years back thinking of which world champion is most favorite to us (look at the right side Poll#1 Greatest Chess Player). Susan is running a post on this in her blog today on this same topic.

My own opinion is Kasparov! But he will be closely followed by Capablanca, Morphy and Fischer. After them the other players whom I would rank almost equally would be Karpov, Anand, Botvinnik, Lasker and Alekhine.

Why Anand in this rank? Because of his versatile style of chess. He is one of the most naturally talented chess player (along with Capablanca) who didn't get big chess mentors (like Kasparov got Botvinnik and it's true for other Russian champions as well). Anand is a very sharp player and his raw speed of chess is simply unmatchable by anyone else, not even Kasparov! Also he plays quite well against top Computers although his blindfold may not be the best in the market. Kramnik was a great rival of Anand if we study both of their careers and Anand has repeatedly triumphed over him last few years showing his spirit even better than what Kasparov did against his great rival Karpov. Anand is playing in a time when the gap between top chess players are marginal which I believe only Kasparov had to face amongst the earlier champions. Anand's career is not over and he is already in top best chess players ever to many chess players / fans like me.

Anand Remains World Chess Champsion by Winning the Match Against Kramnik

From Blogs

The World Chess Championship started this October 14th in the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. The match consisted of twelve games between the defending Champion Anand (FIDE Rating 2783) of India vs the Challenger Kramnik (FIDE Rating 2772) of Russia.

Anand and Kramnik started out peacefully with two interesting draws, after which the Indian player exploded to score three wins - in game 3, game 5, and game 6. Especially difficult for Kramnik were the two loses with black in the same line which basically have decided the outcome of the match in early stage. Although Kramnik managed to pull a win in 10th game and Anand drew 11th game today with white pieces to win the match at a 6.5 - 4.5 margin.

The prize fund of 1.5 million Euro (approximately 2.35 million US Dollars) including taxes and FIDE license fees, and will be split equally between these 2 players. You can get a few more details on the match in the following links -

I have been following the games everyday in BART from my home to San Francisco or early morning at Chessbase, Susan Polgar's Blog, Chessdom, ChessMind and Official WCC Site, Chess Ninja Blog.

Except for today's drawn game the live rating at http://chess.liverating.org shows Anand's current live rating is 2791 (jointly topping the list with Topalov) and Kramnik's 2764. So for this draw I believe Anand may settle down 1 point lower than Topalov in the second position of the list. Here are few news on Anand's victory. So he now needs to prepare for another challenger next year - the winner of Topalov vs Kamsky match.

• http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Chess/News/Veni_Vidi_Vishy_The_mind_and_method_of_the_maestro_in_a_mad_world/articleshow/msid-3655782,curpg-2.cms
• http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4988
• http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2008/10/wc-organizer-official-statement.html
• http://www.chessdom.com/anand-world-chess-champion-2008
• http://www.chessninja.com/dailydirt/2008/10/wch-08-g11.htm

Anand Defeats Kramnik with Black Pieces in 3rd Game

Anand had a brilliant tactical game with black pieces to unsettle Kramnik in their 3rd game of World Chess Championship match 2008 in Germany. I wishAnand defend his title in this match successfully.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?autono=337745
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4963
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=621714