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Two New Contenders Emerge for World Championship Slot
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Vugar Gashimov of Azerbaijan and Wang Yue of China, were the only two competitors who did not lose a game at the FIDE Grand Prix in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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Leonard Barden. May 10, 2008
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Last week's European championships in Plovdiv were qualifiers for the remunerative World Cup and women's world championship, so grandmasters turned out in force. Gawain Jones and Peter Wells, who represented England in the men's event, are two of our strongest GMs yet both were seeded outside the top 150 and had to work hard to score about 50%. The Netherlands' Soviet-born Sergei Tiviakov won the title.
The women's championship was a better story. Jovanka Houska, England's only female professional, played a bold and positive tournament and narrowly failed to qualify; her game below shows how to use a space advantage to create a winning attack on the king.
A significant UK international success may come in September when the EEC championship is staged in Liverpool. England's top pair, Michael Adams and Nigel Short, will compete and the entry conditions mean that many of the East Europeans who dominated the leading places in Plovdiv will be ineligible.
online chess
J Houska v M Tsiganova
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Great bungle, Bulgaria
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The Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov officially opened the fourth edition of the international M-Tel Masters at Sofia’s Central Military Club. For the first time there are two Bulgarians playing as Veselin Topalov’s trainer Ivan Cheparinov is also in the six man field and to celebrate this, Bulgarian Corporate Commercial Bank announced a 40,000 pound bonus for either of them should they capture first prize.
The lure of an extra 1000,000 Bulgarian Lev certainly seemed to spur the pair on although they are two of the most uncompromising players in the world today. Topalov defeated Levon Aronian of Armenia with black to avenge a few recent reverses while Cheparinov outplayed Bu Xiangzhi of China.
Vassily Ivanchuk played an outstanding game, sacrificing the exchange in the endgame against Teimour Radjabov. Ivanchuk’s position looked impregnable and a draw was the likely result but Radjabov immediately returned the material and embarked on a misguided winning attempt which he later described as ‘completely ridiculous’. He was soon worse and his resistance ended in a king and pawn endgame.
The players are housed in a 10-ton glass “aquarium” that isolates them from the noise in the playing hall and any possible kind of outside interference.
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An elegant finish
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Battle intensified in the penultimate round of the Fide Grand Prix in Baku with five decisive game and two very hard fought draws. There was another defeat for Michael Adams at the hands of the 17 year old Magnus Carlsen ranked world number 5.
It was a most impressive game by Carlsen who calmly gave up rook for bishop in a queenless middlegame, won back the material and then exploited the advantage of the bishop pair in the endgame.
Going into the final round the relatively unknown Azerbaijani Vugar Gashimov shares the lead with Wang Yue of China. Gashimov defeated Alexander Grischuk, nicknamed ‘The Gambler’ for his prowess at Poker and his risky style of play. Choosing this dangerous line against the Ruy Lopez was one risk too many.
V Gashimov – A Grischuk
FIDE GP (12) Baku
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Tiviakov reigns supreme
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Sergey Tiviakov emerged from the pack with a last round victory and took the title of European Individual Champion at the expense of former champion Emil Sutovsky in Plovdiv Bulgaria.
Sutovsky had played out five peaceful draws in succession but came up against an opponent who was in supreme form with the white pieces. Tiviakov employed his favourite 2.c3 against the Sicilian Defence, won a pawn and steadily converted his advantage to finish ahead of the field on 8.5/11. The winner scored 5.5/6 with white and took the 15,000 Euro (?12,000) first prize.
The final day at Plovdiv sees speed chess tie breakers for the players on 7.5 to decide who gains entry to next year’s World Cup knockout. Peter Wells and Gawain Jones finished on 5.5 and 6 respectively.
Here is the finish to Tiviakov’s only win with black. He has emerged with a winning advantage in this endgame. Although material is equal White’s queenside pawns are very weak while the black rook controls the open file and his king is nearer the centre. White’s bishop is also badly placed.
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Frenchwoman Wins Attention at an Event Dominated by Men
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Many women, when given a choice, prefer to compete in tournaments segregated by sex. Not so for Marie Sebag of France.
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Leonard Barden. May 3 2008
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Fide's Grand Prix circuit, six tournaments spread over 19 months, is a new project to encourage more host nations.
Russia's Alex Grischuk led after nine rounds of the launch event at Baku, which is live on the internet today.
Shak Mamedyarov is a top ten grandmaster and playing in his home city. The Azeri came up with a home-brewed plan (7 Re1! then 12 Nd3! with ideas of Nf4-h5 in some lines) so Black was always on the defensive. The pressure told with 28...Qb6? (Be7 is only slightly worse) and then Magnus Carlsen missed the tactic 31 Bxa5! At the end White wins nicely after Kh7 38 Qxa8 Rxa8 39 Rf7 Rd8 40 Rxd7 Rxd7 41 Nxf8+.
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Wells digs deep
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The lure of qualifying places in the lucrative 2009 World Cup only served to encourage the leaders to protect their scores at the European Individual Championship taking place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Emil Sutovsky of Israel and Pavel Tregubov of Russia who are both former winners of the event drew with each other in round 8 and share the lead on 7/9 with five other players.
Peter Wells and Gawain Jones both have 5/9 and excellent rating performances as they have faced strong opposition. Wells defeated GM Alexander Huzman of Israel in the game below but then spoilt a good position against Tomas Markowski of Poland in the ninth round and lost.
A Huzman – P Wells
IX EICC (8) Plovdiv
Queen’s Gambit
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Queen's Indian pickle
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Former champion Emil Sutovsky of Israel leads the European Individual Championship on tie break after seven rounds. Sutovsky has 6/7 level with Pavel Tregubov of Russia and Sergei Movsesian of Slovakia the winner of the Wijk aan Zee B Group.
Gawain Jones has 4/7 and five of his opponents have bee rated around 2600. Peter Wells also has 4/7.
The players have the same high rating but Black’s eccentric interpretation of the Queen’s Indian lands him trouble very quickly. 14…Bf8 was necessary.
M Roiz (2659) – B Savchenko (2569)
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Dragon breathes fire
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Over the weekend the following game from the European Individual Championships caught my eye. It was a well played attack by the former Russian champion but what surprised me was Black’s choice of opening; the Moscow Variation of the Sicilian Dragon. The line was analysed by Tony Miles and the American master Erik Moscow. Both Miles and Jonathan Mestel enjoyed great success with it.
The line is thought to be discredited nowadays although I have always wondered whether it might still be playable as Kasparov employed it against Anand at their world title match at the top of the World Trade Centre in 1995. This makes me suspect their may be undiscovered resources for Black. If Kasparov’s played it, it’s probably good.
A Motylev – P Carlsson
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Still in the balance
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There was only one decisive game in the fifth round of the FIDE/Global Chess Grand Prix at Baku as Wang Yue outplayed the former prodigy Sergei Karjakin from a completely level endgame. I suspect the game would have ended much earlier in a draw were it not for the rule forbidding draw offers that is in force.
Wang shares the lead with Alexander Grischuk who drew with Michael Adams. Adams held the draw with black quite comfortably and after may exchanges there was no play left and the players were allowed to conclude.
In the Queen's Indian the battle often revolves around the e4 square. Black seeks to prevent White from advancing a third pawn in the centre before playing either c7-c5, d7-d5 or Nf6-e4 and f7-f5. Mamedyarov avoids the normal move Nb1–c3 which means that the Ne4 plan only exposes the knight to a possible pin on the g2-b7 diagonal.
S Mamedyarov – M Carlsen
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Award Helps Young Players to Compete, and Pay the Bills
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To make a living at chess, top players have to live off their tournament winnings or income from teaching or coaching. For up-and-coming players, an alternative is to win a Samford Fellowship. For up-and-coming players, an alternative is to win a Samford Fellowship.
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Bring on the pawns
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Long technical endgames were the order of the day in the third round of the Grand Prix tournament at Baku as three players successfully exploited the advantage of an extra pawn. When all the remaining pawns are on the same side of the board the game will often be drawn but it was not the case this time.
Michael Adams lost a queen and pawn endgame against Sergey Karjakin. Alexander Grischuk took the lead, reaching 2.5/3 by overcoming David Navara with rook, knight and three pawns against rook, bishop and two pawns.
English GMs Gawain Jones and Peter Wells both won their first round games and then drew with highly rated opponents in the second round of the European Individual Championship underway at Plovdiv in Bulgaria. The 322 player field includes over 70 rated over 2,600. It looks like the majority of players ranked between 30 and 150 are competing.
The first prize is 15,000 Euro but more importantly there are starting berths in the 2009 World Cup KO at stake.
This game has a bit of the ‘from the opening into the pub’ about it but it’s an amusing miniature nonetheless. If 23.Kb4?? a5 mate would end the game even quicker.
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English master stroke
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Michael Adams has made a great start to the Grand Prix tournament at Baku. In round one Adams drew solidly as Black against Teimour Radjabov whose Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation achieved no advantage. Adams even got the edge but had to accede to perpetual check in a queen and pawn endgame.
In round two Adams defeated Ivan Cheparinov, the Grandmaster whose disgraceful behaviour led him to be defaulted in his game at Wijk aan Zee against Nigel Short when he refused to shake hands. The game was replayed and Short won, Adams made it an English double over the Bulgarian.
Adams shares the lead with Gata Kamsky who finished this round one game nicely.
Kamsky
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Early sacrifice settles it
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Veselin Topalov took the honours at Dos Hermanas with a comfortable victory over Paco Vallejo in the four game final of the Rapid Chess tournament in which games were played at the rate of 20 minutes plus an increment of ten seconds per move.
Topalov won the first game with a double piece sacrifice after Vallejo was unable to find the best defence and was forced into a lost rook and pawn endgame. After that Topalov was untroubled in the next three games which were all drawn.
J Polgar – V Topalov
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Title Inflation Waters Down the Meaning of Grandmaster
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The World Chess Federation has not addressed title inflation, so an informal two-tier system has evolved. There are now grandmasters and super-grandmasters.
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Champions of child's play
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More kids are coming. Last week there were three notable successes for young players around the world. In Dubai, 14-year-old Wesley So of the Philippines won a very strong Open tournament. So is one of the youngest players ever to be a GM and scored 7/9 to finish level with GMs Merab Gagunashvili of Georgia, Ehsan Ghaem Maghami of Iran and Li Chao of China but the youngster had the superior tie break and was awarded the Sheikh Rashid Bin Hamdan Al Maktoum Cup.
Salem Abdulrahman Saleh of the UAE, the Asian under-14 champion who has yet to qualify for the IM title looks like he may not need to as he secured his first GM norm with a round to spare. Twenty nine GMs and twenty one IMs competed.
In Ukraine 11 year old Ilya Nyzhnyk, won the 6th Nabokov memorial held at Kiev. Nyzhnyk was born on 27th September 1996 and scored a GM norm which could be the first step to becoming the youngest GM in the history of the game.
Leading scores: 1 FM Nyzhnyk (2405) 8.5/11; 2 GM Kruppa (2543) 8; 3 GM Vysochin (2521) 7.
In Holland a 13 year old Russian boy won the Intomart GfK Open held at Hilversum ahead of several highly rated Grandmasters. England’s Simon Ansell made a strong showing. This boy also looks like he will dispense with the International Master title and go straight to Grandmaster.
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When disaster strikes
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The field for the 2008 Staunton Memorial has been announced and will be the strongest yet with eleven of the twelve players being holders of the Grandmaster title. The twelfth player, IM Bob Wade may well be setting a world record. At the age of 87 he is thought to be the oldest player ever to be pitted against an all Grandmaster field.
Wade has recently competed with success in both senior and Open events. He was for many years a researcher for Bobby Fischer and assisted the American in his preparation for the ‘Match of the Century’ against Boris Spassky in 1972.
Wade is hugely out-rated but will take heart from the performance of Glenn Flear at the GLC tournament in 1986 when as the lowest rated player in a world class field Flear pulled off a sensational victory.
The tournament venue will again be Simpson's-in-the-Strand, the traditional home of chess in London and entrance to the games will be free. The sponsor Jan Mol has again chosen a mix of UK and Dutch players with the exception of the Russian Alexander Cherniaev, although he is UK based and plays for Guildford ADC in the 4NCL.
Line up: Ivan Sokolov, Jan Timman, Jan Smeets , Jan Werle, Erwin L'Ami, Loek Van Wely – all Holland, Jonathan Speelman, Peter Wells, Michael Adams, Nigel Short , Bob Wade OBE – all England, Alexander Cherniaev (Russia).
Play begins on August 7 and the last round will be August 18. The Chief Arbiter will be Dr Eric Schiller.
One of Flear’s wins from 1986, incredibly, he scored 5/7 with Black.
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Pole is poles apart
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The former world champion Piotr Murdzia of Poland outperformed the finest line up of British solvers ever assembled at the Final of the 2007-2008 Winton Capital British Chess Solving Championship held at Oakham School on 16th February. Murdzia led throughout and won by a big margin.
Thirty three solvers took part, including for the first time, all six titled British solvers. The British title was expected to be a duel between the defending champion and reigning World Champion John Nunn and Jonathan Mestel, himself a former World Champion. Nunn had a disastrous second round, dropping 6 of the 10 points on the mates in 3, which left him in 7th place overall, 6 points behind Mestel. A determined fight back fell just short and Mestel took the title by half a point, his fifteenth victory.
The event consisted of six timed rounds, each involving a different type of problem
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Tsk, tsk, Tomsk
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Last week I wondered how Tomsk 400, a team composed almost exclusively of world class players could be performing so badly at the Russian Team Championships recently concluded at Dagomys in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The tournament was won by Ural of Ekaterinburg.
It has emerged that Tomsk, who are former European Team champions were fined 1000 roubles by the tournament organisers for what was described as a “breach of sporting discipline”.
In Soviet times there were coded phrases for a variety of transgressions and this particular one often referred to drunkenness which is a rather compelling explanation as the fine was levied the morning after the rest day. What’s more, as reported last week, Tomsk 400 scored just a half point out of six against opposition rated below them.
Tomsk only just avoided the ignominy of relegation thanks to a last round 4-2 victory over a strong Moscow 64 team who were the only team to defeat the winners and had it not been for another fine performance from their board one Alexander Morozevich they would surely have been doomed.
Morozevich did have one disaster as he missed a tactic in his game against Ruslan Ponomariov and was immediately lost.
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Pawn grabbing punished
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Garry Kasparov turned 45 on Sunday. At the end of March the 13th world champion returned to the board to give two simultaneous displays, one at Pasching in Austria and another simul at Hluboka, Czech Republic.
The games have not come to light bar a couple of fragments. Here Kasparov finishes handily after the opponent errs in a difficult, but possibly not lost position.
In the position below Kasparov’s bishop is far superior to his opponent’s and he has a space advantage, a better king and there is a weakness on b5. However, the blocked nature of the position makes it hard for the white king to penetrate and Black always has a protected passed pawn on g6 to rely on if play should reach a king and pawn endgame.
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Historical Stalemate: Chess Book May Have Leonardo Illustrations (or Not)
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Reported discoveries of lost works by Leonardo da Vinci are almost as common as images of the Mona Lisa. The latest attribution to be proposed involves the design for a chess book from around 1500.
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Adams Lopez home
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A novelty in the opening was sufficient to secure the draw Michael Adams needed to ensure outright first place at the Ruy Lopez Masters tournament held at Mirida in Spain. Adams held last year’s tournament winner Gabriel Sargissian to a draw by improving on a previous game played by Sargissian’s fellow Armenian Levon Aronian in the Queen’s Indian Defence.
The last round draw with black took Adams to 5.5/7 and a winning margin of a full point. The England number one was the highest rated player in the field but his victory was particularly special as he scored 3/3 in games with the Ruy Lopez.
Here is Adams’ victory over the teenage prodigy and Italian champion Fabiano Caruana in the penultimate round. Black’s Sicilian Defence variation is very risky but he was doing quite well until one over-optimistic move allowed Adams to pounce.
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A prodigious victory
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A victory over the teenage prodigy and Italian champion Fabiano Caruana enabled Michael Adams to secure at least a share of first place with a round to spare at the 2nd Ruy Lopez Masters tournament at Mirida in Spain. The England number one reached the impressive score of 5/6, a point clear of last year’s winner Gabriel Sargissian.
Another case of pin and win for Adams who put the teenage Hou Yifan in a deadly pin in a game given on Friday. Adams uses the Classical Defence to the Ruy Lopez and gradually equalises even though it looks like White’s pin on the e file is going to win material at any moment.
M Perez Candelario – M Adams
2nd Ruy Lopez Masters (5) Mirida
Ruy Lopez
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He May Not Be a Grandmaster, but He’s Hard to Beat at Blitz
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Jorge Sammour-Hasbun, a child champion, gave up tournament chess for years. Now, at 28, he often beats grandmasters in blitz chess.
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Leonard Barden. April 12, 2008
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Fide's new list of the top 100 English players shows some significant changes behind the world ranked pair Michael Adams and Nigel Short. The England No 3, Luke McShane, now plays little but retains his strength, drawing with the world No1, Vishy Anand, in this season's Bundesliga.
The big mover is our youngest grandmaster David Howell, 17, who has advanced to fifth place, the same spot as his Norwegian contemporary Magnus Carlsen has reached on the world list. Howell has regained the edge in his race with England's other young hope, GM Gawain Jones, who has dropped to ninth.
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Two of Yesterday’s Stars, Battling It Out With Gusto
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In chess, as in life, the elders deserve a little respect. The game’s legends may not regularly face the rigors of tournament play, but they can still put on a good show.
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Carlsen’s Top Finish at Corus Signals Changing of the Guard
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At the Corus international tournament in the Netherlands only Viswanathan Anand registered a plus score.
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Fine victory for Boris
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A defeat for Ural of Yekaterinburg in the sixth round did not deprive them of the leading position at the Russian Team Championships taking place at Dagomys in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Moscow 64 defeated the top seeds by the narrowest of margins thanks to an impressive victory for Boris Gelfand over Alexey Shirov on top board.
On board five there was a replay of the 1999 FIDE Championship final at Las Vegas when Alexander Khalifman defeated Vladimir Akopian. On this occasion the game ended in a draw.
Moscow 64 3.5-2.5 Ural: Gelfand 1-0 Shirov; Harikrishna draw Kamsky; Wang Hao 1-0 Grischuk; Bareev 0-1 Malakhov; Khalifman draw Akopian; Rodshtein draw Motylev.
Gelfand was badly beaten in the main lines of the Gruenfeld Defence by Shirov last year so he avoids them and achieves a big advantage in the opening.
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Svidler gets his man
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The Russian Team Championships are being contested at what is now their traditional home of Dagomys in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. After five rounds, Ural of Yekaterinburg who boast a squad that would be a match for virtually any national team are the leaders with maximum points.
Ural have the American world title contender Gata Kamsky on board three, their full squad is Teimour Radjabov, Alexey Shirov, Gata Kamsky, Alexander Grischuk, Alexander Malakhov, Vladimir Akopian, Alexey Dreev and Alexander Motylev. It is quite a luxury to have a former Russian champion on bottom board.
Not for the first time, the old enemies Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi are playing on the same team. Other leading players include Alexander Morozevich, Peter Svidler and Vasily Ivanchuk.
In round five Morozevich ground down Karpov in a 111-move endgame. Ivanchuk defeated his compatriot Ruslan Ponomariov the man who overcame him in the Fide championship final in 2002 while Peter Svidler managed to score a rare win against the Petroff Defence of Boris Gelfand.
In this game Svidler is rewarded for an aggressive policy when he plays with the black pieces.
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