May 2007 Archives

Play along at home, folks! Kamsky and Leko have 2.5-0.5 leads over Bacrot and Gurevich and can actually wrap up their matches early with wins with black today. The official site has put up bulletins with quirky but very useful annotations by GMs Ruslan Scherbakov and Yury Yakovich. Excellent!

Update: Just a quick note to celebrate the early arrival of Brooklyn in the second round! I mean, Gata Kamsky! He again ripped Bacrot apart with his bare hands as soon as the position began to open up. He wins in the minimum number of games, 3.5-0.5. Ouch. He will face the winner of Kasimdzhanov-Gelfand, which is going to go the full distance of six games now that they have drawn the first four. Kamsky shows that he still has the killer instinct and Bacrot shows that he has, well, whatever the opposite of killer instinct is. What squirrels have. He just totally collapsed after that game two loss on time.

We did get the bloodbath I predicted. Six decisive games! Leko again beat Gurevich smoothly to also advance 3.5-0.5. He faces the winner of Bareev-Polgar, which will be the Russian veteran (and the oldest player left now that Gurevich is out) unless Polgar pulls out a miracle. Bareev won again today, getting another big plus out of the opening and leaving the Hungarian no chances. Amazing. Grischuk is also a half-point away from advancing after beating Malakhov again. Aronian punched back and played a fine positional game to beat Magnus Carlsen in the only match so far to see both players with a win. Carlsen has white tomorrow. Shirov-Adams was exciting and probably headed toward a fourth draw when Shirov had a total brain cramp and hung the exchange. "I'm pinning your rook and... oh god you're pinning my bishop!" Unbelievable. Poor Alexei, who has the black pieces tomorrow. Rublevsky played cautiously with his one point lead against Ponomariov and it always looked like a draw.

Update 2: Adding a few game notes culled from ICC Chess.FM and our three GM broadcast. (Federowicz, Akobian, Christiansen). Bacrot tried the Kramnikian Catalan squeeze to break his losing streak against Kamsky. As you already know, it didn't work. Big Vlad took the key 10th game of his world championship with Topalov in this line. Kamsky played 10..Ne4 instead of the 10..Nh5 Topalov played then and at Corus this year against Radjabov (1/2 in 23). A 1995 Bareev-Renet game saw the wild 11..g5 expansion plan. Kamsky, with a two-point lead, played the more sober 11..f5 for a stonewall position like they had in game two. Bacrot, despite his desperate situation in the match, failed to come up with any way to sharpen the game. Instead he locked the center and put all his eggs in the queenside basket. That met Kamsky's risky decision, 19..b5. The Fed wondered if that might lead to trouble on c5 or c6, but Black had it under control. His rook on the 2nd was a wonder of attack and defense. Kamsky didn't wait around and got rolling on the kingside. Bacrot again was behind on time and again he failed to put up any resistance when Kamsky got active. 32.dxe5 looks like capitulation, although it took a few more lame and rushed moves by White to get blown away.

It's a concrete game in so many ways, but we spend a lot of time talking about psychology and killer instinct. Whatever that is, Kamsky's still got it. Those who remember his scary scores in candidates matches in the 90's will be getting flashbacks from this performance so far. (4.5-1.5 Kramnik, 5.5-1.5 Short, 5.5-1.5 Salov) Bacrot looked panicky, going on the defensive ahead of time when the positions opened up. He left his rook and knight sitting on the queenside doing nothing instead of looking for his own attacking chances. Maybe Bacrot has been playing too much poker (as it is said he does a lot of these days) because he kept folding.

Leko-Gurevich was a mismatch on paper and the 48-year-old just couldn't put up any resistance at all. He took an even, maybe even slightly better endgame, and with some time pressure turned it into a loss in just a few moves. Aronian made it look very easy to beat Carlsen, who slipped into a lost position without making any blunders. Malakhov got into time trouble and was already rushing his moves when he blundered with 29.Nb2 (29.f4 is fine) and Grischuk scooped up the point. Poker doesn't seem to have hurt his aggressive game much.

Kasimjanov and Gelfand are quietly playing some really interesting chess. They have four draws to show for it, but if you're looking for sharp opening theory so far, this is probably the match to watch. Kasim pitched a pawn early but got it back the wrong way. Larry C thought 25.Rxe6 was the way to go, although Black can still defend. Then it was Gelfand's turn to miss a good try for a win with 26..Bb4! and White is losing the e-pawn with no compensation. 27.Re2 f4! 28.Qe4 f3! Cute! Black should have had a plus in the endgame anyway but somehow it melted away in another game with time trouble at the first control.

Kasparov has been impressed with Bareev so far, and who hasn't? His preparation has been unreal so far and Polgar has just looked out of gas from the start. Garry pointed out that Bareev has been working with Kramnik, which couldn't have hurt. The Fed suggested that Polgar has never found a comfortable defense against 1.d4 since the King's Indian went out of style years ago.

Some tournaments we have looked at and at least one we haven't just finished. Something of a pity so many happened at once. Vassily Ivanchuk duly romped home (assuming one can duly romp, it sounds like a type of square dance) at the Capablanca Memorial. He won his last two games to finish with an great 7.5/9, two points ahead of the field. Dominguez and Gashimov stayed in equal 2-3 with 5.5. The last rounds were marred by quite a few non-game draws. The top three players were undefeated. This was one of those odd tournaments in which black won many more games than white. Eleven wins for the second player versus six for white.

The standings didn't change much in the final rounds of the Bosna 2007 tournament either. There were only two decisive games in the final four rounds. Sergei Movsesian hung on to his lead to win the event by a full point ahead of local boy Borki Predojevic. Big favorite Alexander Morozevich finished =3-4 with Ivan Sokolov. Nigel Short finished on -1 but at least had a few nice wins to compensate while Timofeev was in the cellar with three losses and no wins. Hmm, here black won eight games and white just four. But this is more normal for a Morozevich tournament. He won three games, all with black. He lost three games, all with white. Black is OK!

As you would expect, there was a lot more action in the Somov Memorial "Youth Stars" event in the Russian town of Kirishi (near St. Petersburg). A strong field of a dozen top young players came together for this one. Top seed Nepomniachtchi of Russia put on a sprint in the middle after a slow start, winning four in a row. But he later lost a game and had to share first with Mamedov (Azerbaijan), world junior champ Andriasian (Armenia) and Negi (India), who was the early leader. The Belorussian player Zhigalko was a spoiler. He gave Nepo his only loss and beat Negi in the final round to prevent an impressive solo victory by the 14-year-old Indian. (Just to make sure the world hadn't gone insane, I checked and here white won 25 and black 13. Whew.)

China fulfilled predictions by running away with the 1st Women's World ("World Women's" sound wrong to anyone else?) Team Championship held, fittingly, in Yekaterinburg. Of course it's hard to run away using the stultifying match point system and the only difference on the scoreboard was China's match win over runner-up Russia. But on board points it was total domination: 30.5 of a possible 36! Russia scored 23.5. Amazing. (Results are under the "Championship" menu.) They also beat Russia 4-0 in a match that had Russian team trainer Yuri Dokhoian (yes, Kasparov's long-time second) tearing out his little remaining hair. Tairova managed to lose an endgame with an extra pawn and the bishop pair, no easy feat. Regardless, the dominance of the Chinese players was again amply demonstrated. And this was far from their A-Team. I'm sad to see young star Hou Yifan playing in these events. She scored seven wins and lost a game in the Georgia match to a nice attack by Javakhishvili. Still, the 13-year-old needs to be playing 2600's, not 2400's. This was her second women-only event in a row and she's been higher rated than all of her opponents in both.

The rules and regulations that selected the teams in Yekaterinburg for this new event are here at the FIDE site. Is/Was there a women's continental team championship for the Americas? The marvelous Olimpbase website has some clarifications. Shouldn't the USA have been there as the 4th place finisher in Turin? Did they not send a team because of the US Championship? I thought I'd heard something about this but don't recall where.

Chris Bird reminds us that the massive Chicago Open took place over the long weekend. Milov and Shulman shared first place with Milov taking the official title by winning an armageddon blitz game. Both scored 6/7. Shulman was one of 16 GMs there, many sprinted from the US Championship in Oklahoma. Gagunashvili, Izoria, Erenburg and Aveskulov. That last, Ukrainian GM Valeriy Aveskulov, has become a nemesis for new US champ Alexander Shabalov. He's beaten him twice in the past few months, including in the last round in Chicago. You can replay some of the games at the MonRoi site here.

I'm always addressing you directly here anyway, but this time pull up a chair for a personal heart-to-heart about a subject dear to us all, the sound of our own voices. This is serious stuff, so I'm told. Some quick background.

The recent US Championship website was hosted by the Canadian company MonRoi, whose services included the live broadcast of the games. As is typical, people here, including me, complained when we experienced difficulties accessing the live games. Most of this occurred in the comments to this item and this item, some of which I noticed and some of which I did not. Some of the discussions turned into arguments directed at MonRoi in particular, some unrelated to the subject of the Championship website.

MonRoi's communications to me are confidential and their exact contents will not be discussed here. (I am aware that email disclaimers are not legally binding, especially in cases where confidential information is not being transmitted, as in this case. It's like writing "TOP SECRET" on an envelope in crayon. There is no condition of privilege and I could post our entire correspondence right here, says my attorney. I am simply acting in good faith by treating our correspondence as confidential.) My life and my work are not confidential, however, and I am free to describe my activities and my situation. Our situation. That situation is that the people at MonRoi are claiming that posts here in the Daily Dirt, of mine and of yours, are legally actionable as libel/defamation. They have requested that said posts be deleted and that information identifying the posters be given to MonRoi. This item is posted to reconcile with MonRoi in good faith by way of apology and correction. This was part of their original list of requests. It is mainly to avoid such conflicts in the future, and so you can protect yourselves accordingly, that this information is being provided.

I've been through this sort of thing quite a few times, back to the KasparovChess.com days. Canadian, even Quebecois, laws are different, but there are laws and lawyers there, too. I told MonRoi I would seek legal counsel and, if recommended to do so, I would take the action I deemed necessary and also inform the posters involved, as I feel I am morally obliged to do. As most post anonymously, this is the only way I have to inform you.

A summary of my actions follows. In Canadian law the host of a blog (me) can be liable for the content of the comments (unlike in the US). But I am willing to go to court here or in Montreal to defend these posts, and mine, on the basis of my own feelings and the legal opinions I have so far acquired. Two posts I was told by counsel could possibly qualify as "maliciously inciting hatred or ridicule" of MonRoi. They were: "Chess Auditor at May 23, 2007 17:52 and "This Is How We Do It In Texas! at May 24, 2007 18:12" I have deleted those two posts. I apologize to the posters, but the combination of evaluated risk and my perception of their low content value sealed their doom. It should be obvious that I am not responsible for the continued existence of these posts in Google's cache or elsewhere. I have made it clear to MonRoi that my actions were done in the spirit of good faith and collaboration and in no way recognize or imply any wrongdoing by me or other posters here.

And while I was assured by counsel that it is legal to call anyone, even a Canadian, a "jerk" or "hysterical" as this is blatantly subjective, I felt bad about it and deleted the "jerk" reference from one of my own posts and also deleted a post of unsupported and anonymous invective of the kind I generally don't like much anyway. That was "joeblo at May 22, 2007 16:10". (As owner I reserve the right to delete things that threaten my business, or even just bug me, though it's rare.) I also apologize to that poster. This is far from all the posts I was requested to delete. The others I am informed would be trivially defended as irrefutable statements of personal experience and/or opinion. Of course you can get a lawyer to sue anyone for anything, that's how they make a living. I'll keep you posted.

The next item is based on a comment posted here by "MonRoi Technical Support," which I hadn't even seen until these allegations of libel were made. If it is to be accepted as an authoritative rebuttal to my/our comments on what went wrong with the live broadcast, I could be obliged to post a correction. I am told this is not the case since I was 1) unaware of the post and 2) unable to know if the real identity of the poster and if they spoke authoritatively for MonRoi. But because I am continuing on good faith, I will publish that post here in full since it has now been confirmed to me that the poster does represent MonRoi.

My statements about their web server being down are literally unverifiable and I apologize for making said statements. Opinions, conjecture, and statements of my (and your) personal experiences on the MonRoi website will stand unaltered.

I have denied and will continue to deny any and all requests to share the private information of users (email, IP address, etc.) with any third party and I have so informed MonRoi. A court order could change this without my consent, but since no copyright issues or threats are involved I am told it would be nearly impossible for a court to issue such an order. It is possible new Canadian counsel will advise me to make further deletions/corrections. I will consider those recommendations and inform the posters of any actions taken the only way I reliably can, by posting about them here. I invited MonRoi to publish a statement here, but that invitation has not been accepted.

I am not willing to chill or condemn free speech here or anywhere. Of course defamatory statements aren't encouraged. It's worth being aware of the line between opinion and malicious claims of information that cannot be proven factual. To quote a site on Canadian defamation law, "defamation tort law protects your reputation, not your feelings." For more information on MonRoi and their technology, you can visit them here. Thanks for your understanding and support. Here's hoping we can get back to chess now.

Also known as "Candidates 07 R1 Day 3". The official site is getting up to speed (today's results today), but now they tease us with "photos by Casto Abundo" without showing any photos! I imagine they are the same 'Grandma's home video" style ones by Mr. Abundo up at ChessBase. I'm sure there are at least a few professional photogs there with decent equipment, no?

Let's get to the chess, shall we? We are getting one additional decisive game per day, so round six should be a massacre. Probably not. The headline news of the day was 16-year-old Norwegian Magnus Carlsen passing another test and beating top seed Levon Aronian to equalize their match. Carlsen took a slight plus and found a very nice endgame idea to win. Carlsen decided not to repeat his game 1 attempt at outplaying his opponent in the most strategically sophisticated of openings and instead went for an English. Aronian started tempting fate early with 14..Bf6 and got a tricky endgame for his efforts. (White might have played more sharply with 19.Qf4.) Aronian also criticized his cute 24..Rc3, which is silly unless 25.Rac1 Nxe4!? works, something he wasn't convinced of enough to play. That still looks a lot better than the rook endgame he got with his king pushed up against the wall to be strip searched by the white pawns. 40.g5! was the final killer. A tremendous game by Carlsen, who goes into the off day with happy thoughts.

America's Kamsky won for the second day in a row against Frenchman Bacrot. Time was again a factor, as Bacrot was down under ten minutes when Kamsky started racing his pawns up the board. Somehow they looked like they were on fast-forward. Bacrot failed to find the stop button with 32..Rc4 and soon resigned when faced with the loss of a piece to the c7 pawn, which just a dozen moves earlier had been a lowly soldier on b2. 33.d6! is the nice shot Black walked right into. Nobody really knew what to expect from Kamsky, who flashed hot and cold at the Mtel right before this match. His openings are as offbeat as you might expect, following his plan to just get to a playable middlegame and win on his inarguable surplus of talent and grit. Today's 9.c3?! is suspect and White can't really be hoping for much after the logical 9..d5, even if a baby Bobby Fischer played it in 1958. Kamsky managed to cause Black problems anyway, especially when Bacrot sank into deep thought repeatedly. I wasn't aware he was such an impractical player, or maybe he's just having a nervous spell. When you spend 20 minutes on 13..Qd7 vs 13..Qg6, something ain't right. So at the halfway point it's Brooklyn 2.5, France 0.5!

A trivia item for Bacrot's time loss in the second game. Several people have reported that Bacrot's flag actually fell on move 37 but they were moving so fast they got in a few more moves before the arbiter could stop them. Shouldn't the official gamescore reflect that? Just because the sensory board put out a few extra moves to the world, if the arbiter called it after 37..Bd5 shouldn't the score end there? Just askin'.

Leko was the other player to win for the second time and take a commanding lead. He again made it look easy outplaying Gurevich. As experienced as Gurevich is -- he's a former top-tenner and former Kasparov second among other things -- the 48-year-old veteran is looking outclassed and hasn't been able to prevent Leko from getting Leko-friendly positions. The Hungarian smoothly transitioned to an easily winning endgame, leaving Black no chances.

Ponomariov and Rublevsky needed every minute of the time control and then some before the 2005 Russian champion chalked up the win with black. As they got through the first time control it looked like things were going to settle into a repetition draw in a queen and pawn endgame. But the ever-combative Ponomariov miscalculated badly with 49.Qb6 instead of holding tight. Rublevsky's queen ran wild after that. White's last best chance at defense was 68.Ke1 instead of giving up so many pawns. By that time they were into the last time control, which has a 30 second increment. Barney Rublevsky goes for the upset! I think this is my favorite time control, forcing the players to manage time appropriately but letting them conclude a decent endgame. Having an increment from move one distorts things too much; you should be punished for time mismanagement.

For the third day in a row, and despite having the white pieces, Polgar was again neutralized easily by Bareev, who holds the lead in their match. They played a sharp line of the Panov-Botvinnik that Bareev lost in to Grischuk a few years back. 12..Bxf3 was played then and analyzed by Grischuk in NIC 2005/1 according to acirce kibitzing on the ICC. As was the 12..Be6 Bareev played here instead. Both sides played accurately to a drawn rook endgame that still required precision from both. Polgar even had a nominal advantage at the end, but it had been a clear draw for a while by that point. As Susan Polgar and Jon Speelman both opined, 39.Kd5 was White's best chance to play for more.

Shirov had some some shiny new preparation in the same Lopez line he and Adams contested yesterday with colors reversed. His 14..g5 must have been extensively analyzed as he played it almost instantly, allowing a very dangerous-looking piece sac that Adams went for with 15.e5 after a long think. GM Joel Benjamin saw the perpetual check draw coming miles away and White couldn't find anything better. Malakhov solved his opening problems well against Grischuk but is still a point down.

Thanks to Misha Savinov for posting in the round 2 thread about the players' seconds:

Ponomariov: Mikhail Golubev and Yury Kruppa
Rublevsky: Maxim Sorokin
Leko: Arshak Petrosian
Gurevich: Alex Chernin and Mikhail Brodsky. They are all from Kharkov, you know.
Gelfand: Pavel Eljanov and Alex Huzman
Kasimdzhanov: Said Ali Iuldashev
Grischuk: (take a deep breath) Andrey Schekachev and Dmitry Jakovenko
Malakhov: Alexey Dreev.
Polgar: Jussupov and Goloschapov (the latter is here but I am not sure if he is with Judy)
Bareev: Ernesto Inarkiev
Adams: none, of course.

Nigel Freeman adds that Daniel Fridman is also with Kasimjanov. Carlsen has Norwegian GM Lie. Ganguly and Nisipeanu are reported for Shirov. (The Indian was his second at the Tal Memorial, too.) We believe Bacrot and Kamsky are both there unassisted. Aronian (Sargissian?). Cool to see my old Buenos Aires buddy Maxi Sorokin in the news. He and I moved to Argentina at almost the same time and hung out at the Club Argentino a lot before he moved back to Russia not long before I left too.

These boring item titles are getting to me, I must say. It was another fairly slow day at the office today, with three decisive games. It was particularly bad if you were Etienne Bacrot, whose hand was a second too slow to make the final move of the first time control against Kamsky. Holy heck! A few weeks ago at Mtel Kamsky lost on time to Mamedyarov on move 38. Today he got that clock point back in a big way. Amazing. The other two wins took considerably longer. Leko ground SovGiKish GM Mikhail Gurevich into a fine mist in a well-played effort with black. Bareev came close to beating Polgar yesterday and this time his technique didn't let her off the hook. Bareev's rating isn't very impressive these days, but he's crossed the 40-year meridian and is more of a trainer than player these days, he says. But he's probably spent more time in the top ten than Polgar (who hasn't played much herself lately thanks to the birth of her second child in 2006) and is no slouch at all. Bareev does have a tendency to walk into tactical blow-outs on occasion though, so stay tuned.

Polgar ended up with a passive position very quickly out of a recently popular QID line. I think we now know why Ivanchuk and Leko played 12..g6 instead of her 12..d6(?). The black king gets stuck on f8 and White has a lead in development that Bareev coaxed all the way to 1-0. Black had drawing chances with her strong knight on d4, but White kept making progress and the endgame is very tough to hold after 35.f4! Leko beat Gurevich with the silky-smooth technique he's capable of when he gets a position he likes. He won the exchange with a passed c-pawn and won the endgame with surprising ease.

I rode to Coney Island to have a Nathan's hot-dog to celebrate my fellow Brooklynite's first candidates match game victory since 1995. It was not an easy affair, that's for sure. (The game, not the ride.) This one saw some of the strangest time handling I've ever seen at this level. By around move 18 both players were under ten minutes and just a few moves later less than five! Much of this must have been because of the surprise opening from the American. Kamsky was assiduously patching holes in a porous 1.d4 f5 Dutch Defense position (Black usually plays the Dutch with the 1..e6 2..f5 move order but it wasn't relevant against this g3 line) and Bacrot was probably using up time trying to figure out why he wasn't much better. When they both got down to a minute or two they still had a board full of pieces and a dozen moves to go before more 40. That's when Kamsky showed he's still got a lot of talent in those hands and he outplayed Bacrot in the tactics that erupted. 36..Rd5 would have ended the discussion, but the final moves were banged out desperately. When the smoke cleared, the report came in that Bacrot had flagged before making his 40th move. Black has an extra pawn in the final position but it's almost certainly drawn. Unless Bacrot comes back, this game will be added to his list of curious behavior that includes his resignation in a drawn position against Aronian (in a semifinal elimination game!) in the tournament that brought most of the players to these matches, the 2005 World Cup.

Malakhov build up a lot of pressure against Grischuk and would have had very good chances of equalizing their match had he tossed in 20.gxh5 before capturing on d5. Black still had a lot of defensive work to do, however. 48.Nf5+ is another strong winning attempt Malakhov passed up. Instead, Black had just enough counterplay to hold the draw. Mickey Adams could say the same about his game against Shirov. White hung on to his sacrificed pawn but couldn't do much with it -- rather typical of this line. 52..Bf6! holds the draw because 53.Qxc7 Bxh4! 54.Kxh4 Qd2 gets the bishop back with an easy perpetual check to follow. Kasimdzhanov offered a draw against Gelfand instead of trying the shot 23.Bxh6 the fans were hoping for. Annoyingly, Black has it all under control anyway.

Magnus Carlsen came back swinging with the Benko/Volga after his first-round loss to Aronian. These fianchetto lines have been doing very well for White and this was looking like it was going to be another example. But Carlsen was clearly well prepared and banged out his moves instantly the entire time. White must need to push the b-pawn to b5 at some point if he's going to go for a win in this. Instead, Aronian's 15.Nb5 allowed liquidation and a quick draw. Now who is going to take the bet Carlsen won't try the Benko again? (We're also going to see the effects of a gluten-free diet on chessplayers.) Ponomariov was working up an attack on Rublevsky's king after listless play by White. Black seemed to lose the thread with 27..Bd5 instead of the immediate ..Na4, after which tactics abound. Bareev is looking like the class of the field so far, but it's very early yet. Now the real fun begins as the players repeat colors for the first time and opening battle gains more texture.

I'm {heart}-ing the official website much more now because they 1) improved their issues and the transmission was more robust and 2) apologized for the problems on day one. There aren't any guarantees when it comes to technology, but a little friendly communication goes a long way in a community like this. They do commit a few cardinal since of navigation, however. They have links that say "read more" that lead to pages that contain no additional content. And they have links that say "watch live on the official site" that lead to the page you are already on. Sort of a "this way to the egress" sign, web-style. The official site says something about upcoming annotated games, which would be cool. Back to the down side, they are still showing round one results on the main page.

Any info on the players' seconds pop up anywhere? GM Lie is with Carlsen, we know (see "gluten" above). Anyone else confirmed?

More of a squib than bang, but they're off! I do love me some match play. The drama and intrigue of the same two players battling it out day after day, three whites and three blacks, great stuff. It wasn't a bloodbath, but we didn't have the short draws I was fearing. Only two of the eight games were decisive after several players let solid advantages dwindle away. Aronian outplayed Carlsen on the black side of a Spanish in what Garry Kasparov called a very nice game by the Armenian. 26..Rf3! was quite a blow, although 27.Qd5+ Kh7 28.Rad1 looks a lot more active than what Carlsen tried. Grischuk stuffed and mounted his countryman Malakhov after a miserable opening by Black. Great to see Grischuk in action again. Remember when he used to be the great hope of dynamic attacking chess? For some reason it seems like I haven't seen a Grischuk game in a long time, but the databases say I'm wrong. He turned in several nice efforts in the Russian Team Championship a few weeks ago.

Gelfand kept a pull against Kasimjanov into the endgame but couldn't convert his extra pawn. Kasim is as tough and sharp as they come. It looked like Gelfand still had some squeezing chances when Kasimjanov pulled the brilliant (Kasparov) 44..Nd4! out of his hat. Adams must have been much better against Shirov, at least judging by the disgust with which Kasparov met the news of Adams only drawing! Larry Christiansen also thought Adams was sure to score the full point in the heaviest of heavy QRR vs QRR positions. But the Englishman went up the hill and came down the mountain with just a draw, apparently deciding the position was too risky to press on. Kasparov wondered why Shirov didn't play 33..Rd1, eliminating a pair of rooks. As a suggestion for White he tossed out 39.Qe6 and the a-pawn is falling. (39.Ra4? 40.Rd2! with the deadly threat of Rxg7+.) Still a lot of work to win of course.

Bareev outprepared Judit Polgar in his favorite Caro-Kann, blasting out 20 moves in less than ten minutes and going up well over an hour on the clock. He was also better on the board with three pawns for the exchange and excellent winning prospects. Instead the Russian veteran decided to push pawns and try to blitz Polgar on the clock, a strategy that backfired completely. By the time she reached control her rook was very active. Bareev still had chances but White held on in the final game to finish. (Note there's no increment until the third control.)

Of less interest, Gurevich played very well out of his beloved French to even have the better of the early draw against Leko. Rublevsky looks to be putting his seconding work for Kramnik to good use and willingly suffered through a cramped, Kramnikian opening to hold off Ponomariov, who couldn't find a plan. I thought only Kramnik could hold these positions so easily! (To quote Mikhail Marin in the ChessBase MegaBase 2007, on Kramnik holding Topalov in this line: "I would like to comment here on Kramnik's strategic vision that enabled him to understand that Black can afford to play like this and stay alive.") Kamsky didn't look too ambitious against Bacrot, who returned the sentiment. The Frenchman played the ..a6 Slav that Kamsky himself plays, an annoying tactic.

A tentative but interesting first day in Elista, if not as interesting as the livestock-themed opening ceremony. Ah Elista, where men are men and the sheep are used in chess ceremonies. You've got blaaa-aaa-aa-ack in game one!

On to the meta-coverage, since apparently the only thing worse than my complaining about something is my not complaining about something else. The official site at globalchess.eu was slapped together in a hurry and is a joint effort of the new Global Chess BV FIDE spinoff run by Bessel Kok and the Turkish Chess Federation, which has emerged as a powerhouse under the aggressive leadership of Ali Yacizi. The site also being hosted in Turkey, which, while of course servers anywhere can be hammered to the ground, isn't exactly near the spine of the internet backbone last I checked. (It's more of a kneecap.) They do have the best pipe in the region (Bahrain, oy), with long shots to London and New York, but I'm not sure why they wouldn't rent a monster server on a fat pipe for such a big event. I say this because so far the reports on the official live broadcast have been a tad critical.

When your server is being hammered there are a couple of ways you can have your system deal with it. Option One, it can give the tiniest bit of access to each new visitor, guaranteeing that everyone has a miserable time but at least gets somewhere. You know, maybe a logo or a board after ten minutes. Option Two, it can deny any new visitors when things get heavy, only letting in new ones after someone else leaves. This gives some (maybe many, maybe most) people a slow but functional experience and nasty error messages to everyone else. Most webmasters know their bosses don't like to see (or hear about) nasty error messages, so they go with Option One. From the descriptions I've heard, this site went with Option Two. Which do you choose? Correct! You choose Option Three, which is to cut second dessert from the FIDE VIP menu in Elista and spend the $500 you save on a month's rental of a multi-core machine sitting on a pipe that Tony Hawk could skate in.

It's also confusing to have most of the official info about the event at the FIDE site instead of the event site. There are frogs in the Costa Rican rain forest that have mastered copy-paste, people. I wouldn't even know where to find info to send to the mainstream media about this event. Where is a handy downloadable press kit? Dr. Peter Rajcsanyi is press officer, but how to reach him? The only releases so far are about a plane change and a bus crash. What is this, a Steve Martin and John Candy movie?

The bios on the event site are nice though, and I hope we get at least some token on-site reports with photos. Some of the Russian-English sites excel at quirky on-site reporting, especially during the Topalov-Kramnik match. (I've often said that Russian chess reporting and writing is so much better on the whole than everything else because their chess culture was/is deep enough to produce good writers and reporters who wrote about chess instead of chess players writing and reporting.)

ChessBase has a fairly info-free round one item up and TWIC has notes from Markie Mark and IM Malcolm Pein. Susan Polgar liveblogged her sister's game with comments ranging from "black is better here but it's possible to draw" all the way to "black is better but a draw is still possible." Hey, it was true! Magnus Carlsen's dad, Henrik, is blogging the event I'm very happy to see. If you thought coverage was rough on the internet, you should try getting to Elista! Carlsen's trainer, GM Nielsen, is playing in Havana now and Norwegian GM Lie (pronounced "Lee" I'm told) is there in Elista. Opening prep is the lifeblood of match play.

Oh it's on, baby. Candidates matches! They may be short and they may be leading to a championship tournament instead of a match, but they are definitely happening. It took a path more tortuous than walking on hot coals to get to the dentist, but despite various efforts at self-sabotage, the next step of the FIDE world championship cycle sees the first pawns pushed today, May 27, in Elista, Kalmykia, as the first brace of eight candidates matches start off. We previewed them and took predictions a few days ago. Have you picked your final four yet? Kasparov wasn't really making picks, but he said he would take the other three against Aronian ("unstable") in group one. Leko clear favorite in group two. Ponomariov strong favorite in three. Group four he rated a toss-up, even Kamsky could make it. Rules and regs recap:

The first six games are classical, and not FIDE faux-classical. 40/2, 20/1, g15'+30". The tiebreak, on its own day, is four rapid games of 25'+10", then two blitz games if needed, then armageddon if the seas are boiling and dogs and cats are living together.

The winner of 1-16 (Aronian-Carlsen) faces the winner of 8-9 (Adams-Shirov)
Winner of 2-15 (Leko-Gurevich) meets winner of 7-10 (Polgar-Bareev)
Winner of 3-14 (Ponomariov-Rublevsky) versus winner of 6-11 (Grischuk-Malakhov)
Winner of 4-13 (Gelfand-Kasimjanov) versus the winner of 5-12 (Bacrot-Kamsky)

The final four go to Mexico City. Kramnik, Anand, Svidler, and Morozevich are already seeded.

The new official site is here. That site also promises live coverage. If you'd like some audio to go with your visual, ICC Chess.FM is offering the first three days of coverage free to non-ICC members! That's GM analysts like Larry Christiansen, Joel Benjamin, and Var Akobian, plus a few other losers who didn't win the US Championship and need the money. Just kidding! Of course somebody has to be around to tell the GMs the game has gone on 12 moves in a different direction... To tune in to the free preview, this is the magic link: http://www.chessclub.com/chessfm/Preview.asx. More info: Play starts 7:00am Eastern Time (11:00 GMT - 13:00pm CET). Please note that while audio is free for all, analysis board and entry into the daily New In Chess trivia contest (where each day a 1-year subscription to New In Chess is the top prize) is restricted to full ICC members. Yasser Seirawan is doing his thing live at Playchess and FICS doesn't list it but it's hard to imagine they aren't doing a relay.

Ta-dah! Here they are, folks, the prizes you've all been waiting for. The winners scattered to various parts of the country after the US Championship finished in Stillwater, so it took a little while to track them all down and get their comments. The envelopes please...

3rd Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prize of $200: Gregory Kaidanov for his his 8th round win over Ivanov. The modest Kaidanov, back home in Kentucky, said this attack "basically played itself." Well, it's winning a prize anyway. Judges Larry Christiansen and John Watson both liked this smooth kingside breakthrough demolition job. Kaidanov qualified for the World Cup with his 6/9 score. He said the secret this time was doing almost no preparation at all, contrary to his reputation as one of the best prepared player in the country. He said it worked out about the same as preparing, which would make it an easy choice for me.

2nd Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prize of $500: Alexander Shabalov for his 3rd round win over Ibragimov. The rich get richer. This effort by the eventual tournament winner was consistently referred to as the best game of the tournament. We just spoke to Shaba where he's currently at 2/2 at the Chicago Open. He also thought this was his best effort and is annotating the game for New In Chess. He said he was surprised Ibragimov followed this line, which was discredited in Kobalia-Akopian last year, and he played the first 20 moves in a minute.

In additional comments, Alex thanked the organizers and sponsor Frank Berry and also said he hoped to see Erik Anderson and the AF4C back next year. He said everything was great in Stillwater and had no trouble at all with the MonRoi devices. Shaba dedicated this tourney victory to Jesse Kraai, by the way. He said that without the wake-up call beating Kraai inflicted on him at Foxwoods in April he never would have won his fourth US Championship title! (Shabalov started out with 5.5/6 in Foxwoods, but lost to Kraai and then to Stripunsky.) Does that mean he'll be cutting Jesse a percentage of his winnings? I didn't think so.

1st Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prize of $1165: Julio Becerra for his 9th round win over Nakamura. This beautiful takedown probably got bonus points for the strength of the opposition, timeliness of the win, and cumulative points thanks to several other spectacular Becerra games. His wins over Sarkar and Akobian were also prize-worthy. (I teased him a bit when after I told him about the prize he asked, "for which game?" But he had a point!) Even his loss to Ibragimov was close to being a brilliant win. But the sacrificial assault against Nakamura was praised not only by readers and judge Larry Christiansen, but also by our other two prize winners.

We spoke with Julio back home in Miami at the popular Miami chess academy run by Blas Lugo and home to many of the "Cuban Mafia" in American chess. He was thrilled with the prize and also with his qualification for the World Cup and the quality of his play in Stillwater. He said it was the best tournament he's played in a long time. He surprised everyone by going back to his childhood love, the King's Indian, and that it really put him in a fighting mood. He wasn't depressed by the loss to Ibragimov because it was an exciting fight and he kept his confidence high throughout the tournament.

Of the final, prize-winning, game, Julio said he was happy to see Nakamura's offbeat Ponziani opening, although of course he hadn't prepared for it. He says he's sure now that his 3..f5 must be best against 3.c3. He added that he knew something strange was coming when Nakamura spent ten minutes thinking about his first move! I didn't catch the name of the person Julio said had been working with him and who mentioned this tidbit to him, but his friend and old trainer told him something from Alex Yermolinsky's excellent book, "The Road to Chess Improvement" on the subject of meeting players with unorthodox openings and styles like Nakamura. Namely, that it can be better to play for a win against them with black. (See also "Morozevich")

Grandmaster Becerra has already sent us the winning game extensively annotated and we'll put it up here in the Dirt as soon as we translate it. Many thanks to him, and congratulations to all our winners. The checks are in the mail! Thanks to everyone who donated and participated. It went far beyond my expectations and might even make inroads into new sponsorship models (actually old ones, just online now) for chess in places like the US where it's not really considered a sport. Museums, concerts, and other cultural events across the US are supported by enthusiasts. Why not chess? In the old days there would be subscriptions taken up for everything from tournaments to medical bills for Grandmasters. More on this topic later.

This tournament wasn't long on traditional brilliancy prize candidates, but there were many great games. Our judges really didn't agree on much so we went to the fans for the tiebreaks, so to speak. (I've learned my lesson. Next time just one judge!) The following really should be highlighted. I really wanted to give something to Eugene Perelshteyn's pretty 18..Rxe3! against Akobian. It was purest flash. But it was also forcing and one-sided, and as judge IM Watson put it, everyone in the room was expecting it. Onischuk's fine win over Shabalov was too much of a one-move pony to make the cut, although it was a beautiful idea. Onischuk-Browne and Nakamura-Onischuk were also touted. Three near misses for the defending champ, but his second-prize check will salve his wounds. You can download all these games in PGN here.

Thanks also to our estimable judges. Acclaimed author and reviewer IM John Watson was again an on-site commentator at the US Championship. His latest books include Dangerous Weapons: French as well as Mastering the Openings 1 and 2. GM Larry Christiansen is a three-time US Champion and author of Storming the Barricades and Rocking the Ramparts books on attacking chess.

Like a fine Cuban cigar, Vassily Ivanchuk just keeps rolling along at the Capablanca Memorial. The Ukrainian top-tenner has a tradition of putting up big scores in Latin America. In 2005 it was 9.5/12 at this event, two and a half points ahead of the pack. Last year it was a much stronger event with other strong internationals, including Bareev. Ivanchuk still took first with 6.5/10. After that he headed right to Mexico to add another Carlos Torre Memorial KO victory to his collection. His Morelia performances have been less impressive, but overall better than when they arrive in Linares. (Overall +1 in Morelia, -3 in Linares.)

This year's Capablanca Memorial has expanded the field to 10, moving away from the often tedious double round-robin. Those have a certain majesty at the elite level, but when you have an unbalanced field it can get pretty ugly. The top Cuban players, Dominguez and Bruzon, are joined by a few countrymen as well as Gashimov (AZE), Miton of Poland, and Peter Heine Nielsen of Denmark. Bruzon and Nielsen were favorites but are both struggling so far. The Dane, who has been coaching Magnus Carlsen of late, is at 2.5/6 and Bruzon is at the bottom with just two points. Ivanchuk is in the clear lead by a point and a half with 5/6. Gashimov and Dominguez are =2-3 with 3.5. Three of Ivanchuk's wins have come with black, including a boggling game with Nielsen to start the event. In the last round he won a nice endgame against Miton.

Just to get in an Argentina shout-out, the first of these Capablanca Memorial events was won by Don Miguel Najdorf in 1962. (Despite his losing his first two games, his only losses!) The event was very strong over the next decade and winners included Smyslov, Korchnoi, and Larsen. In 1965, Bobby Fischer famously played the 21-round marathon by teletype machine from the Marshall Chess Club when the US State Department denied Fischer permission to travel to Cuba. Even though his sessions took many hours more than regular games, often ending at past two in the morning, Fischer still came =2-4. This commitment made Fischer very popular in Cuba from what I was told. When I went there in the early 90's chess fans still wanted to talk about it. Fischer went to Cuba the next year for the Olympiad. He had even been there before, in 1956, and given a simul in Havana. Thank goodness US policy toward Cuba has gotten so much more intelligent in the last 30 years and that the embargo got rid of that Castro guy.

The annual Bosnia GM tournament has had its ups and downs over the year. From an obscure local event up to a supertournament with Kasparov, and back down the slope. It continues its reascent again this year with Morozevich in the field. Last year's exciting field produced a remarkably stodgy event. Nisipeanu, Carlsen, and Malakhov shared first on +2.

At the halfway point of this strong double round-robin in Sarajevo, Sergei Movsesian, representing Slovakia this week, is in the lead by a full point. It's a six-player event with Alexander Morozevich as the top seed by a long mile. Short, Timofeev, I.Sokolov, and local boy Borki Predojevic round out the category 17 (2669) field. The two lowest rated players are in the top two spots. Moro has lost twice and Short thrice, while Predojevic has borked the competition and sits at +1. (The 20-year-old made a solid even score last year.) Movsesian, an Armenian player who represented the Czech Republic for a while before heading for the border a few years ago, is the only player without a defeat so far.

Typically zany is Morozevich's box score: four decisive games, all wins by black! He was holding a difficult position against Movsesian in round four but missed the power of the cute 25..Ng7! and White is defenseless against the knight invasion. Those dastardly backwards moves get you every time. Moro's draw with Predojevic finished with an amusing king waltz before a perpetual check.

The Nige, soon to be confronted with the full-on comfy chair treatment by the FIDE Ethics Committee [sic], hasn't been able to get on track. He did score a nice win with ye olde Evans Gambit against Sokolov. The advancing pawn wall was surprisingly menacing and the final position is witty fun. Games at TWIC.

Complete final standings are now up at the official site. Shabalov, as he has done before, put on a final burst to win the last game and take clear first place with 7/9 and the $12,000 first prize. Shaba did the same thing in 2003, beating Akobian while all the other top boards were quickly drawn. Today his victim was Sergey Kudrin, who was dropped out of the top five spots. No tiebreaks are required to settle that five. Onischuk took clear second with 6.5 points after being held to a draw by Boris Gulko. Kaidanov, Shulman, and Becerra are the other three qualifiers. (Other yanquis who want to qualify for the World Cup will probably need to do it at the Continental Championship in Colombia in July. Kamsky might make it by rating, unless of course he's the defending champ by then!)

A statement from Shabalov on the official site, under "home." "Huge thanks to all the fans! I'm so happy I was finally able to pull it out after so many misses earlier in the tournament. In the last round game Sergey surprised me with 2…Nc6!, which totally killed all my preparation versus Dragon or 2…g6. But I couldn't remember a single game of his after 3.Bb5. Does it matter that I'm not playing it? No! So the resulting position was very much in the spirit of pet variation 1.e4 c5 2. Na3 and I did the grinding!"

Most of the top boards were drawn, but Becerra landed un nocaut against yet another antique and offbeat opening with white by 2005 champ Hikaru Nakamura. A spectacular effort from the Cuban and his best result in a US championship yet. IM norms for Langer and Bradford.

Well, we have some preliminary selections but as of 6:30pm EST we still don't have hardly any games from round nine, which started 5.5 hours ago. [Update: Results are now all up together. Shabalov is the only winner at the top and takes clear first place in the Frank K. Berry US Championship! Becerra beat Nakamura and should qualify for the World Cup along with Shabalov, Onischuk, Kaidanov, and Shulman. New item soon.] I've been trying hard to be kind, but the live broadcast has suffered serious problems every day and usually the results and games aren't available until well after all the games are over. A quick glance through the comments here and at the chat windows at the MonRoi site confirm my experience is not unique. Their server simply didn't handle the load. I'm really only pointing it out now because it's going to delay the awarding of the first Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prizes since our judges (at least the ones who aren't in Stillwater) can't see the games.

On to more positive notes, there were many great games to choose from. No final announcement yet of course, but a few of the hot contenders so far are Shabalov-Ibragimov, Akobian-Perelshteyn, and Onischuk-Shabalov. I must say, that one of the games that has come through on the official site today, Nakamura-Becerra, should also be considered!

Do you guys want a day to talk about all the games here and have some debate before sending nominations to the judges or are you happy to let them do it themselves, with the limited feedback we've had so far. It didn't seem like the idea of nominations here ever caught fire. But let me know. IM John Watson, IM John Donaldson, and GM Larry Christiansen are standing by. As Stern mentions, it's not paramount to award the prizes at the closing ceremony in Stillwater today. But it would be nice way for everyone there to find out about them and share the love. Let us know your thoughts asap, especially if you contributed to the fund.

Best new thing of the day: in the Firefox spellchecker (I just upgraded), its first suggestion for "Shabalov" is "Hullabaloo"! Awesome.

Defending champ Alexander Onischuk beat 2005 champ Hikaru Nakamura to move into a tie for first place with Alexander Shabalov with two rounds to play at the Frank K. Berry US Championship taking place in Stillwater, Oklahoma. They both have 5.5/7 and are trailed by Kudrin at 5 and a big pack of hungry GMs with 4.5. The loss left top-seeded Nakamura with 4 and he'll have to win both his final games to have even a chance at making the top five and moving getting into the World Cup, the first stage of the 2008 FIDE world championship cycle. He has black against Dmitry Gurevich today. Somewhere at a table out near the foosball tables, blogger and Dirt regular Michael Aigner scored his first win and is now only tied for last! His exciting double pawn sac to win the exchange almost backfired, but things worked out in the end. There are finally some on-site reports and photos coming out at uschess.org.

I'm equal parts amused and stricken that my little joke of posting those hotel reviews has become such a hot spot. I wonder if anyone has actually read what I wrote, or it's just going around that "Mig is attacking the hotel and the event," which is ridiculous. (It also seems to have gotten into a few heads that I've been critical of MonRoi in some way, which I can't figure out at all. I have barely mentioned them and I think their little devices are neato. Do they not sell Le Chill Pill in Montreal?) The hotel thing was a little scary, but mostly funny, as my comment about sending them balls for the foosball tables should have made clear. And I was happy to print subsequent reports from the site that the hotel is much better than those reviews make it sound. People are naturally defensive about an event they put a lot of time and money into, and deservedly so. I'm the same way. But it helps if you keep an even keel about who your friends are.

The Nakamura-Onischuk game really lived up to the hype. Things got wild and crazy early after another do-or-die opening by Nakamura. (See his game against Yermolinsky for another example. The Vienna Gambit!) Onischuk sacrificed a pawn with 18..c4, getting tremendous compensation with the powerful bishops and mobile passers in the center. Eventually that was enough to net the exchange and Onischuk handled his bidness in the endgame to win this critical encounter.

Another game that looked sure to end in a decisive result was Shabalov-Ehlvest on board one. They played the now-famous triple pawn sac Najdorf line revived by Radjabov against Karjakin last year, analyzed by Kasparov in NIC, and since played by Anand (who won on both sides in at Corus this year) and Shirov with white. Only one game has finished drawn, and it was the one Shabalov and Ehlvest followed until move 24, Shirov-Ftacnik from the Bundesliga six weeks ago. Shabalov decided that risking his second straight loss and endangering his qualification chances was a bit too much and he took an immediate repetition. Black could have avoided it with the risky 25..Qb6!? but his queen is off-sides after 26.c5 (the point of c4, I assume) 26..Qb4 27.Bh5 and White's attack is still raging.

Smith missed a chance to beat Langer with a pretty shot: 29..Rd3! 30.Be3 Nd5! wins material with captures on e3 and a1 coming. Other notable games include Gulko's pretty exchange sac to beat Krush and Perelshteyn's spectacular demolition of Akobian out of a Grunfeld. You don't see a move like 18..Rxe3 every day, that's for sure. It's a beautifully symmetrical threat after 19.fxe3 Ne4, with mate on h4 or a bishop falling with check on c3. Maybe Eugene heard about our prizes?

Speaking of, things are in motion now. I had a good long talk with one of the organizers in Stillwater, US chess evergreen Jerry Hanken. One of our judges, IM John Watson, is also there as a commentator. Daily Dirt readers have generated an amazing $1800 dollars that will be split into three Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prizes of $1100, $500, and $200. (You can still donate! Any new money will go to the 1st Prize.) Nominations can begin HERE in this item. A short list will be submitted to IM John Watson, IM John Donaldson, and GM Larry Christiansen. They will make their picks and we'll do a quick round of email to hash out the winners. A few comments from the judges will be added to the winning games and everything will be published here.

In order for the prizes to be awarded at the closing ceremony tomorrow, we need nominations asap. We'd like to have the candidates to the judges for the first eight rounds and then keep a close eye on the ninth for late entries. Basically we want to have the potential winners selected by tomorrow morning. Note that the final round begins two hours earlier than the other rounds -- 12pm local and 1pm EST. There is a rapid playoff for the title if there's a tie for first. So please start going over the games, and not just the ones from the top players and frontrunners! Put yourself in a brilliant state of mind. After all, it's your money!

Maybe some scholastic chess folks can enlighten us as to how many high schools offer chess scholarships. I was under the impression that Hunter and a few other top American private schools did so, or at least recruited chessplayers. This in the The Times today.

Cumming doesn't seem to be in the prodigy category, with a 3/9 sub-2000 showing at the last Hastings Masters. But I'm sure chess ability is only one part of the scholarship. (Being able to cough up the other 50% of tuition is no small thing either. Ouch.) A few American universities have chess scholarships, something that would be great to see expanded across the country.

By the way, a cute story about an upset in the New York chess scene. The so-called "kings of New York" were brought low by a Brooklyn junior high (!) team coached by none other than Liz Vicary. Go team!

Here's the full schedule and other info about the candidates matches that start this week. The first games of the first set of eight matches begin on May 27. Then it's three days, a rest day, and three more days. Tiebreaks, if needed, and they will be, are on the next day, June 3. Then there is a two day break and the second set of four matches begins with the same format. Each match has a tasty $40,000 prize fund thanks mostly to FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Another sponsor is an industrial tech company, Rosenergomash.

The games are classical, and not FIDE faux-classical. 40/2, 20/1, g15'+30". The tiebreak is four rapid games of 25'+10", then two blitz games, then armageddon. They haven't put up a bracket, but it's standard KO pairing. Full regulations here.

The winner of 1-16 (Aronian-Carlsen) faces the winner of 8-9 (Adams-Shirov).
Winner of 2-15 (Leko-Gurevich) meets winner of 7-10 (Polgar-Bareev).
Winner of 3-14 (Ponomariov-Rublevsky) versus winner of 6-11 (Grischuk-Malakhov).
Winner of 4-13 (Gelfand-Kasimjanov) versus the winner of 5-12 (Bacrot-Kamsky).

The final four go to Mexico City to play in the FIDE world championship tournament they have turned into a candidates tournament (if anyone other than Kramnik wins). Kramnik, Anand, Svidler, and Morozevich are already seeded.

Time to start playing favorites and making guesses? Who's in your final four? Make sure to check it's a legal final four. So pick one name from each line above. The Elo slaves will pick Aronian, Leko, Ponomariov, and Gelfand. My heart says Shirov, Polgar, Grischuk, Kamsky. My head says Shirov, Leko, Ponomariov, Bacrot. My stomach says mmmm, nachos.

If Alexander Shabalov was a raging fire for the first five rounds, defending US champion Alexander Onischuk was a big bucket of ice water today. This hot Alex on Alex action went in favor of the Alex with the white pieces in a typically sharp, all-or-nothing Botvinnik Semi-Slav. Shabalov, ever the maximalist, must have figured the only thing better than +5 is +6! Instead he crashed to a brutal 26-move loss to the highly motivated defending champ. Ehlvest came very close to beating Nakamura's new weapon, the Dragon. 43.Ka4 c3+ 44.b4 looks like the St. George variation. Had Shabalov survived this round with a draw it would have been almost impossible for anyone to catch his +5 score in the final three rounds. He's still in clear first place with 5/6, but now the pack has moved up on him and another loss would turn the race into a mad scramble for the $12,000 first prize.

Onischuk is now at 4.5 in clear second and there are seven GMs right behind with four points. In the 7th round Shabalov faces Jaan Ehlvest. The 2005 and 2006 champions face off in Nakamura-Onischuk, which was a tremendous battle at last year's championship in San Diego. If there is a tie for first the top two players on formula tiebreaks play rapid games for the title, but the prize money is divided equally. The top five finishers qualify for the FIDE World Cup, the first stage of the world championship cycle. Official site. Chess Life Online promises on-site reports, fpawn's blog, new 'Gambit' New York Times chess blog (!) by Dylan Loeb McClain.

The script was already written, the actors just had to play out their roles. Topalov beat Sasikiran in the final round to flip places with him and take clear first in the 2007 Mtel Masters. Incredibly, Topalov's +1 score was enough for clear first place. He played a gutsy, sacrifical game and won when the Indian missed the best defense in a very difficult position. Possibly the best game of the tournament as well as obviously the most crucial. Strictly speaking the 32.Nxh5 sac wasn't necessary, or even the best. Kasparov told me White could have won without the fireworks with a straightforward reorganization and attack on the weak black pawns. In the game Sasikiran could have walked the tightrope to salvation with 38..Qxd4, which looked logical enough. Perhaps he missed 39.Kg3 Kh6! and Black defends, leading to a draw. Sasi was down to three minutes on move 38, and his 38..Qe7 allowed Topalov to force a winning endgame with three pawns versus a bishop. He still needed to show some precision, which he duly did.

This is Topalov's third straight win on his home turf at Mtel, all of them coming after a rocky start and a powerful comeback. It almost seemed preordained that he would follow through again against Sasikiran today. The Indian underdog was the improbable leader by a full point just two days ago, but lost to Kamsky and then today to finish in the big pack with an equal score.

Mickey Adams balanced out the field as the only player with a negative score. He put the squeeze on Kamsky in the final round but Gata again showed his defensive chops to secure the draw and an honorable even score. Nisipeanu got a promising attacking position against Mamedyarov in a c3 Sicilian. Every white piece was aimed at the kingside but Mamedyarov got over in time to defend. Both finished on even scores, which are not created equal. Mamedyarov was a favorite in the event and started out with +2 only to fall into difficulties and struggle. He came close to losing a few more times as well. Nisipeanu surprised with his resilience, coming back to beat Adams after faltering.

In his live post-tournament comments to us on ICC Chess.FM, Topalov didn't say much to surprise, but it was nice of him to come on. Thanks to Macauley Peterson for the get. "It was very important to strike back after the loss to Mamedyarov, where I played terribly. I was lucky to get a good position out of the opening against Sasikiran and he didn't play too well. My style is very risky so I'm used to losing. It's not such a big deal. It's not easy to come back [after a loss] but it's just part of the game. There are three possible results: lose, draw, win. That's just the way the sport is. [At the press conference he said he wasn't happy with his play, but that his preparation had been good.] I made a couple of good choices in the openings. Today this was a good choice to play for a win; it went well against Sasikiran in both games. I played at a very bad level for the first three rounds. After this I will play in the rapid tournament in Leon."

Macauley asked him about the candidates and Mexico City but there seemed to be a misunderstanding. Topalov seemed to take it as a request for predictions and said he would prefer it if "players from different countries qualified." We also had a little chat with Vladimir Georgiev, who talked about how famous Topalov is in Bulgaria. Georgiev compared him to Madonna and Brad Pitt, no less. Congratulations to Topalov as the deserving winner of a tournament it seemed like no one wanted to win! He went from -2 to +1 and two players fell from +2 down to even. Kamsky fought back to even and should be in a good mood for his trip to Elista.

We were told that there aren't any prizes at the Mtel, only appearance fees. This was a little surprising. It's been common for years for the prizes at these big events to be almost tokens compared to the appearance fees the players get. Still, it's remarkable to simply abolish them. Had Sasikiran won the event it would have been very odd for him to get nothing but glory for the achievement while earning considerably less than the better-known players with their higher fees. A few years ago Linares went the other way, dropping (or cutting drastically) appearance fees and putting it all into the prize fund. With such a small field like Sofia, you think it would be enough to just have a balanced prize distribution.

Viva Bulgaria! Bob chorba for everyone! Now we've got Bosna with Morozevich and Short, and the last few rounds of the US championship.

The final round is just underway in Sofia. The posted tiebreak rules are written confusingly, but I think they play a tiebreak match no matter how many people are tied for first. They just take the top two by system. Sasikiran is in the lead on +1 going into the final round, but has black against Topalov. Anyone can win the tournament except for Adams!

Alexander Shabalov is running away with the Frank K Berry US Championship in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Yesterday he scored his fifth consecutive win, beating Gregory Kaidanov. Shabba started out with wins over Sarkar, Gurevich, Ibragimov, and Nakamura. In today's sixth round he faces defending champion Alexander Onischuk, who is one of the chasing pack of six players on 3.5/5. Shabalov has been doing it with both colors and every which way on the board. Apparently he doesn't want to wait until 2013 to win the title he took in 1993 (shared with Yermolinsky) and 2003.

The level of fighting chess has been excellent so far as the dozen top contenders slug it out for the top five spots that mean passage to the FIDE World Cup. (The $12,000 first prize wouldn't hurt either.) It didn't take long to notice that the rule on no short draws (under 30 moves without arbiter approval) was in effect again this year, which was confirmed from the tournament press center by Jerry Hanken. There have been quite a few very good games so far and I hope to have time to take a closer look now that Mtel is ending. It looks like we have enough for a $1000 Daily Dirt Reader 1st brilliancy prize, a $500 2nd prize, and a "whatever is left over" 3rd prize. I'm sending a note to the folks at MonRoi to get the announcement there. Rock on.

Yermolinsky may have lost on time against speedster Nakamura in round five. The final position is wonderfully tricky and worth playing on. 34..Rc1+ 35.Kg2! e2 36.Bf2 Be3 37.Bg3 Rg1+ 38.Kf3 Rxg3+ 39.Kxe2 Ke7 with chances. Time forfeit seems a little unlikely considering the 30 second increment that is in effect now that the new clocks have arrived. We know that thanks to Michael 'fpawn' Aigner, who is posting reports from the site, perhaps at the expense of his results in the tournament so far. I hope he keeps it up because it's the only reporting so far that includes information you can't get from the games. The news items at the official site and at uschess.org are just result recaps with a few game notes. There was a blitz tournament after the fourth round, no word on the winner yet.

Speaking of Aigner's info, he was one of several people to let us know that the hotel is far better than the horrific web reviews I quoted would have us believe. Thank goodness! But what about the foosball tables?! A player or two should help out the new management of the Stillwater Quality Inn and post some new reviews!

Let me say right off that the Mtel Masters has been an amazing fighting tournament. No matter if the games start slow or fast, in offbeat openings or deep main lines, it has been a battle on just about every board of every round. GM John Fedorowicz and I had three slow ones today in round eight and you just knew that we might not have much hand-to-hand combat until the third hour. The players didn't let us down. But first, a few comments on round 7, which I was too busy to get to yesterday.

In round seven, Kamsky-Nisipeanu followed Kamsky-Karpov from the tournament where I first met Gata, though I doubt he remembers it. The Buenos Aires Polugaevsky Sicilian Thematic tournament was a star-studded affair and all games had to be Open Sicilians. The opening is a tricky pawn sac in exchange for a bind that has been considered passé for a while now. White got a little pressure but it all evaporated into exchanges after 25.Nc4. 25.b4 first was worth a shot just to keep more wood on the board.

Then we had two Closed Sicilians, one reversed! Well, sort of. We did get a pair of Botvinnik pawn triangles, although nobody has ever emulated the results the Patriarch had with this system. Adams turned it into a very strong plus against Topalov, who defended too casually (11..b6 looks overconfident) and was in serious danger for quite a while. The pawn sac with 24.Be3!? Rxd3 25.Rb1 looks overwhelming, but Black can gain a critical tempo with 24..c2 25.Rc1 Rxd3 with decent defensive chances. Adams continued to press but lost the handle with 30.d4 when the natural 30.Bc6! causes disaster after 31..Ke8 32.Bf3!, a great maneuver. Instead it was Topalov who was suddenly playing for more, although Adams handled the defense easily to draw.

Sasikiran played a conservative and suspect defense with black and when he lost some time to play ..a5 it looked like Mamedyarov was getting very good attacking chances. The excellent 13.c5! highlights White's lead in development nicely. It's hard to say exactly where White went wrong, but Sasikiran kept defending accurately and all of Mamed's knight hopping got him nowhere. White got right back on the attack after Black declined to grab the d6 pawn on move 26. Even with the buried bishop on h1 White would have had good attacking chances after the annoying 30.Nc7! Qg5 31.Qe1. White avoided a repetition and both players were getting into time trouble. Mamedyarov might have missed 38..Bh3 (39.Bg2 Bxf2+!) and the stage was set for a do-or-die move from White as the first move of the new time control. The position is nothing less than insane. Computers are right at home, and Jon Speelman and I certainly needed them to make sense of what was going on in less than a week. White's next move, after a 10-minute think, was the losing 41.d7. Mamedyarov bailed out of the post-game press conference so we don't know if he thought he was winning or missed the drawing line and thought he had no other choice. Kasparov's opinion was that Mamed missed the ..Bg2+ theme entirely. Sasikiran took a good long time before playing 41..Rg8, which wins with the same trick as the other winning move (which we expected since it looked more 'human', 41..Bxg2+ directly). It's hard to call it luck, but in our post-game interview with him on Chess.FM Sasikiran said he thought he was losing after the time scramble and 41.d7 only to find that he was winning by force! 41.Nd8 is a forced draw by perpetual check and White can even play some amazing mates if the black king tries to escape the box. Crazy. Work out the lines with the silicon of your choice. Many of them are spectacular on both sides.

That left an increasingly weird crosstable with Sasikiran the only player on a plus score and in clear first by a full point. As has been the tradition so far, the new leader came under immediate fire in the next round. Doesn't anyone want to win this damn thing? Topalov is going to end up taking it practically by default the way this is going!

Nisipeanu was the first to score when he blew up Adams' kingside in a vintage Ruy Lopez attack. Mickey's rook battery on the a-file looked mighty silly over there as his king came under fire. He must have understimated White's chances at least once or twice or he could have at least brought a rook to the second rank to help defend. Things went from bad to hopeless after ..h6 instead of ..h5. A nice attacking game by Nisipeanu, who gets back on track after fading steadily since his first-round upset of Topalov. Adams was looking very good early, but now a blunder and a bomb have dropped him into last place, although that's only at -1.

Topalov-Mamedyarov lived up to the hype in a very difficult game. Mamedyarov tossed the game into chaos with 20..f5!? Black later had the choice of whether or not to give up his queen for two rooks, which he decided to do after a healthy think. The Fed thought Black was in serious trouble, but he managed to avoid the various ugly R vs N+B endgames on offer. He instead got two rooks and a bishop versus queen, bishop, and knight. Black got just enough play to liquidate the dangerous white b-pawn and, after some adventures, head to the fortress R vs Q draw I'd pointed out an hour earlier. It's always nice to stick it to the spectating afritzionados, who see their machines on +4 or something for the queen in a totally drawn position. Another tremendous save from Mamedyarov to stay out of the clutches of Topalov, who played the complications with great power and accuracy. Truly a thriller.

Sasikiran looked ready to put the tournament away as he slowly broke apart Kamsky's kingside out of another ugly 4..a6 Slav from the American. But somehow, as we were focused on the craziness of Topalov-Mamedyarov, Kamsky reorganized and took control of the center. By the time they reached move 40, Sasi thought he didn't have anything better than sacrificing the exchange to struggle to a draw. But Kamsky calmly liquidated to a winning rook and knight endgame to reach an even score for the first time in the tournament. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. This is the second time Kamsky has defeated the leader of the tournament. He should ask for a bonus from Danailov! But first he has white against Topalov tomorrow. Sasikiran, still the leader of an even stranger crosstable, has white against Nisipeanu. Mamedyarov has white against Adams. Topalov-Sasikiran is shaping up to be the key matchup in the final round, but it's still anyone's tournament with two rounds to go. Crazy.

In other news, Kamsky received his new laptop today in Sofia. ChessBase has FedEx'ed their latest and greatest to him as well. A great effort from AF4C board member Jim Roberts (who sponsored the "Larsen Fighting Chess Prize" in recent championships), who didn't need to be asked to make a fine gesture. Thanks also to ChessBase in Hamburg. A GM's laptop isn't worth much without ChessBase on it!

Three players are tied for the lead with 2/2 in the Frank K. Berry US Championship: Shabalov, Stripunsky, Ibragimov. (I swear to God I hope Frank's middle name is Ken. That would be the best thing evar.) No surprises in those names, or just about anywhere else for that matter. Favorites are already meeting and it's going to be a brutal slugfest all the way through for the eventual winner. Games and standings here. One of the various hats IM John Watson is wearing in Stillwater is that of putting together brief round recaps at the official site. Michael "fpawn" Aigner, one of the competitors and a Dirt regular, is blogging at the ICC website here. There we learn that the clocks provided couldn't handle the announced time control! Oops. fpawn's website is also the only place I found a handy list of all the players and how they got to the Championship. Damn right if it's your website you put your own name in big blue letters! Rock on, fpawn. The Chess Life website is finally posting items on the Championship from Jen Shahade.

In round 2, Kramnik was present on the top two boards, which finished drawn. Nakamura-Kudrin followed Kramnik-Leko from this year's Amber and the Perelshteyn-Onischuk Marshall was what Kramnik played against Aronian a few weeks ago in their rapid match. The difference was that Kramnik won both of those games. Ibragimov fended off Becerra's piece sacrifice with great sang froid. Black might have been all right had he bailed out and swapped queens, but Becerra kept looking for a mate that wasn't there and eventually had to resign as White kept harvesting material. Shabalov showed the power of the black pawn center in a Semi-Slav against Gurevich. A nice final breakthrough. Stripunsky pocketed the full point against Sevillano with a petite combination. Shulman savaged Black Belt annotator Irina Krush, ending the game with a pawn move checkmate on move 29! Ouch. I thought Black was supposed to play 10..Qd5 in this line, with crazy play after 11.Be2 Qxg2. Lower down, Sarkar-Zenyuk was a wild battle with passed pawns for a rook. Smith was busted against Airapetian, but the upset was averted when Black allowed a mate in one still with a superior position.

I do hope some people on the ground there in Stillwater are letting the players know that the Daily Dirt Reader Brilliancy Prizes are quite huge at this point. By the way, I don't think the complete prize list has been published anywhere: 1st $12,000, 2nd $8000, 3rd $5000, 4th $4000, 5th $3500, 6th $3000, 7th $2500, 8th $2000, 9th $1900, 10th $1800, 11th $1700, 12th $1600, 13th $1500, 14th $1400, 15th $1300, 16th $1200, 17th $1100, 18th $1000, 19th-20th $900, 21st-22nd $800, 23rd-25th $700, 26th-30th $600, 31st-34th $500. [We're now told that it's been bumped up a bit and the bottom prize is now $700.]

Two patrons, Bonin and Browne, brought the field up to 36 players. But from what I understand, none of their combined $8,000 fee goes into the prize fund, which means they are probably slightly hurting the earnings of other players if two more $500 prizes are added (from where?). Nicely done! Way to make the players embrace the idea of patron fees. Unless you are sleeping in a box and eating raw hot dogs for all your meals (this means you, Yermo), you're probably losing money if you don't finish in the top seven, which is a little ironic because the top five finishers also get the coveted spots in the FIDE World Cup, the first stage of the world championship. Benjamin, Polgar, Kamsky, and de Firmian all declined to participate. Defending women's champion Anna Zatonskih, who just had a baby, also declined. She recently wrote a letter that was published on the Polgar blog, which has turned into a political platform, if understandably. She refers to the US women's championship, which may be scheduled for July.

Super extra bonus info came when I was looking to see how much it might cost the players to get to and stay in Stillwater for ten nights. (Many arrived the day of the first round to cut costs. We are a frugal lot, we are.) I looked up hotels in Stillwater on Google Maps and also the Quality Inn where the tournament is taking place. The latest reviews on that Quality Inn, which has a 1/5 reader rating, are priceless: "This hotel is unkempt and dirty. The stairs are rotted out, none of the equipment in the exercise room worked. Pool table and foosball tables don't have balls. The sheets were dirty with crusty stains." -- "The back stairs are rotted out and dangerous, the jacuzzi in our suite had mildew in all of the jets, no mattress pads on the beds..." -- "I would stay 70 miles outside Stillwater if the Holiday Inn was the only available hotel. This was the worst experience I have had at a hotel."

Jesus wept. Sure, we can live with a $500 prize for 10 days at the US Championship. But no balls on the foosball tables?! That's just inhumane, man. I wonder how the internet connection is. Maybe we can donate some of the Brilliancy Prize money to sending them a few foosballs.

Three decisive games and the leaders were falling like my internet stocks in round six. First place Mamedyarov had his Pirc pierced and pricked by Kamsky. Nisipeanu's favorite offbeat Najdorf got a serious offbeatdown at the hands of Topalov. Adams blundered an exchange against Sasikiran and quickly had to exchange his seat on the stage for a bar stool.

All three games developed quite slowly and Joel Benjamin and I feared we were looking at a slow day at the ICC Chess.FM office. But it soon became clear that Topalov had cooked up a strong plan against Nisipeanu's lame 7.Nde2 Najdorf with ..g6 and ..h5 and even when the queens came off Black had the better prospects. (Topalov also was quickly better in this line against Nisi last year in their Bucharest match.) Kamsky effortlessly gained a comfortable attacking position against Mamedyarov, who was too impatient. And just as those battles were starting to take shape, Adams hung an exchange out of a clear blue Queen's Indian, just two moves out of very topical theory. Weird.

Macauley Peterson brought Sasikiran and his trainer Lev Psakhis (a truly wonderful sort) on for a few minutes after Adams trudged on for a little while and resigned. They were both pleasantly surprised, of course, both with the game and Sasi's having a share of the lead at +1. Psakhis on how his protege spent 15 minutes to take the hanging material: "Adams doesn't blunder every year, maybe only every two or three years!" The easiest win you'll get over a top-tenner in a lifetime, that's for sure. Mickey said he simply missed 20.Qxc4 or he wouldn't have played 17..Nf6 in the first place. (Carlsen played 17..Nb6 and Karjakin tried 17..Bb4.) I asked Sasikiran, who has been playing very conservatively, if he'd made a conscious decision to be more cautious in this, the strongest event he's ever been in. He said yes, definitely, but didn't think it would affect him in the long term. He said everyone aspired to become a universal player and this was part of that effort for him. Psakhis added, "I'm the perfect coach for anyone who wants to become a boring player!" I heart Lev.

Topalov steadily ground Nisipeanu into the dirt in a well-played rook endgame. It's always nice to see a game in which all the general advantages -- better king, active rooks -- actually convert into a tidy win. In trademark Topalov fashion he has jumped back to an even score. He also got help on the other boards, as Adams was dragged down to even and Mamedyarov cut down to +1 by Kamsky. The American beat Mamedyarov in a completely one-sided effort. It was almost as bad as Mamedyarov-Topalov. We've seen some good games at Mtel this year, but most of the decisive encounters have been blowouts, which is strange. Benjamin, a Pirc/Modern player himself on occasion, was critical of Mamedyarov for allowing a line that is known to be thoroughly unpleasant for Black. White didn't have to do anything spectacular to gain a great deal of pressure. Then when he got his chance, Kamsky pounced without hesitation. Just as in the fifth round, Kamsky played with much more speed and confidence than in the early days of the event. He banged out the attack practically a tempo and it was Mamedyarov who reached the control with just 18 seconds on the clock -- and a totally lost position on the board. Viva Brooklyn!

Kamsky has been battling his own laptop during his free time and couldn't prepare for this game at all. But he said he instead felt fresh and ready for the game. It probably wouldn't have been as much fun to face Topalov and a Najdorf without preparation though. The Pirc is one of those defenses that invites the direct logical attacking play that Kamsky specializes in. Just consider it Gata doing the job the organizers hired him to do, just like last year when he beat Anand but lost to Topalov twice. He beat the leader and now Topalov is only a point behind. The perfectly symmetrical crosstable persists but tightened up considerably. Now it's two at +1, two at even, and two at -1.

Round 7: Kamsky-Nisipeanu, Mamedyarov-Sasikiran, Adams-Topalov. Three more decisive games?

[I took down the laptop item because enough channels have been opened already. Thanks all.]

The Frank K. Berry 2007 US Championship is underway! Live games are finally up here. They must have had a late start. Funny, a first-round Friedel-Nakamura rematch. Josh beat the then-defending champ last year in San Diego. Onischuk-Browne doesn't appear to be working. If Walter is having to use one of those little computers they are in trouble. I've seen what that man can do to his own laptop. Note that the "brilliant game" vote thingy at the Monroi site has nothing to do with our game prizes, which are for the whole tournament.

Sorry for the redundancy, but this is where I'll list the names of all those who have donated. I'll spruce it up tonight but I just wanted to get it going. To answer a few questions and provide more details, this money is going to go directly from me to the players. The USCF is not involved. If you don't want the name on your PayPal account to be used as is on this sponsors list, send me an email with how you'd like it to read. Feel free to let me know where you are from, what you do, anything you'd like to include. You can dedicate your donation. You can also include a link or a sentence or two next to your name. If you don't want to use PayPal you can send me a check. Email me first.

The 2007 US Ch Brilliancy Prize Sponsor List

Name			Notes and Dedications
Greg Koster	20
Timothy Newman	25
BionicLime	5
Howard Goldowsky	25		Author of Engaging Pieces: Interviews and Prose for the Chess Fan coming out June 19
Russell (Rusty) Miller	50		Out & About - Photojournalist -- www.GoLakeChelan.com
Matt Phelps	50
Nikita Lukish	20
Mark Luna	40
Joshua Lilly	25
Gerard Snitselaar	20
Yuri Kleyner	20
Kerry Hubers	25
John Henderson	50		The Henderson One! Producer at the ICC and a man who knows his Scotch.
Dimitar Bojantchev	100
Patrick Harley	6
David Steer	20
Janet Newton	25
Warren Lewis	25
Peter Schilling	50
Ryan Richardson	1
Chris Farmer	6		"To Mimi, a wonderful person."
Guanyao Cheng	50
Gennadiy Geyler	20
Rade Milovanovic	20
K Varadadesikan	25
Tim Lewis	50
Anna Hahn	100
Paul V Allen	25
GM Anonymous	100
Ganesan Sundaresan	30
Richard Van Riper	25
Todd Reynolds	5
John O'Brien	100
William Mount	50
Karl Irons	92
William Simmons	30		In memory of Aleks "Wojo" Wojtkiewicz (1963-2006)
Don Aldrich	25
Abolaji Ogunshola	10
TOTAL SO FAR	1365		HURRAY
	(+ 500)

ChessNinja.com will match your donations up to $500! (Achieved! So matching is over.) So if you guys come up with $500 that will be $1000 for prizes. (If you guys totally wimp out I'll still put up a few hundred for a prize. But I have faith in you for some reason.) IMs John Donaldson and John Watson have agree to help out both as auditors of the donations and judges. I'll list the names of everyone who contributed here in the Dirt and I'm sure there will be recognition in Stillwater at the Championship. You don't need to already have a PayPal account. Just a credit card will also work. It's fast and secure. Click the above flag button to donate now!

The sponsorship fiascos, politicking, and silliness take a backseat (I hope) to the US Championship games that begin today in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Apparently the official site is at Monroi, the maker of those little digital handheld move recorders. I imagine this means all the players will be using them. I suggested to Var Akobian, when we were on together doing Mtel coverage the other day, that he sneak in a Pocket Fritz instead to see if anyone would notice. Oh well, as long as they get the games out okay I don't care if they used Speckled Jim to do it.

The field is a very strong one, if not as big as in recent years. There are 36 players listed, although the prize fund explanation only mentions going down to 34th place. Maybe the last two finishers get a hearty handshake and a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni? Those final finishers get $500 bucks and from what I can tell around half of the field should lose money after deducting for travel and other expenses. It's a nine-round swiss system with a time control of G/150 plus 30 seconds increment. There aren't any off days and no one has answered my question about if they are again using he rules that prohibit draw offers before move 30.

The favorites for the $12,000 first prize are the last two champions, Hikaru Nakamura and Alexander Onischuk. Ehlvest is eligible for the first time. Kaidanov, Ibragimov, Shulman, Shabalov, Akobian, Stripunsky are the other top contenders. The top five finishers qualify for the IFIDE World Cup, the first stage in the world championship cycle, and that will clearly be the goal for most of the players.

From what I can tell, the preposterous "Patron Entry Fee" idea flopped like a landed mackerel as expected. I guess no amateurs wanted to pay many thousands of dollars for the privilege of being slaughtered by FMs and IMs and no GMs wanted to pay three grand with only the tiniest chance of even making the money back. [I'm now told that GM Walter Browne and IM Jay Bonin are there as paying patrons. Why wasn't this announced anywhere? Where is the money? That would be $3000 for Walter and $5000 for Bonin. I'm quite happy to be wrong about it! Not as happy as I'd be if that money went to the prize fund where it belonged, mind you.] Joel Benjamin even dropped out of the field, breaking his record streak of 23-consecutive championships (which may now be tied by Browne?). Sad.

Meanwhile, a long sequence of emails flew by me while I was on vacation in Washington a week ago. Eric Moskow, a real chess patron who has done his share of pay-to-play over the years, was trying to get in but to play online because he is traveling. Unfortunately, such games couldn't have been rated by FIDE, ruining norm chances for his opponents according to the USCF. Too bad they couldn't have made it work out as Moskow was offering an amount close to the current first prize! Speaking of money on the wing, the Monroi site says something about the "unexpected withdrawal of the previous sponsor," which would be the AF4C. Everything I saw at the time and since has made it clear that the AF4C was willing and able but the USCF (and some top players) wasn't comfortable with the largely online format the AF4C wanted to use for the event. Anyway, kudos to Frank Berry for stepping in with the cash and putting on the event in Stillwater. Let's hope we get some good fighting chess.

Speaking of, I'm told there will already be $100 round prizes for best game and Crenshaw prizes for things like best combination, endgame, etc. This information and other rules and such don't seem to be posted anywhere. I wonder if the players are aware of them. Even though the games start in just a few hours, I'd still like to kick in some cash for an old fashioned brilliancy prize or two and I hope you feel the same. ChessNinja.com will match your donations up to $500. So if you guys come up with $500 that will be $1000 for prizes. (If you guys totally wimp out I'll still put up a few hundred for a prize. But I have faith in you for some reason.) IMs John Donaldson and John Watson have agree to help out both as auditors of the donations and judges. I'll list the names of everyone who contributed here in the Dirt and I'm sure there will be recognition in Stillwater. You don't need to already have a PayPal account. Just a credit card will also work. It's fast and secure. Click the above flag button to donate now!

[This is going to go directly from me to the players. The USCF is not involved. If you don't want the name on your PayPal account to be used as is on the sponsors list, send me an email with how you'd like it to read. You can include a link or a sentence or two next to your name if you like! If you don't want to use PayPal you can send me a check. Email me first.]

Three more draws in round five, one each of small, medium, and large. Nisipeanu-Sasikiran had a comical start and a silly finish. The opening was a known piece of stupidity for White to get a slightly inferior position after three moves, no small achievement. 3..a6 is the refutation of 3.Na3, as has been shown various times over the years. One of those who learned that lesson long ago was my co-host for the first half of the round on ICC Chess.FM, GM John Fedorowicz. He fell into it against Josh Waitzkin back in 1994, only to realize he was struggling for equality after Black's simple 3..a6! (which took the suspicious Sasi some 15 minutes to play. His trainer, Lev Psakhis, "you can take five minutes to play such a move, but not more!") 4.Nxa4 b5 5.Ne3 Bb7. As the Fed put it, White would pay ten bucks to have his knight back on b1! A remarkable number of decent players have done this to themselves with White over the years, including Topalov and Danailov. Of course it's still a chess game with all the pieces on the board. But Nisipeanu and Sasikiran either couldn't or wouldn't make a try to unbalance things. They maneuvered around behind the lines for a long time (on the clock, at least) before finding a convenient set of exchanges and an even more convenient repetition of position. By that time I'd been joined by GM Jon Speelman, although we also mostly ignored that game. Looking at it now, Black could have played on a bit. (E.g. 25..Rxd1 26.Nxd1 b4 and the a2 pawn could be be an issue in the endgame.) But they'd clearly been intending to split the point for a long time and the Sofia rules can only lead the horses to water.

Topalov-Kamsky was a very interesting, if efficient, draw. Kamsky was super solid right from the start. He even had a few opportunities to play for more but said after the game he didn't want to take any undue risks while trying to get up to back up to speed at this level. In a live interview with Macauley Peterson on Chess.FM after the game Kamsky said he might have been better but wanted to ensure the draw. "Nothing against the players in America, but here they've just been hammering me with strong moves one after another. I'm slowly getting my level back. They're making me aware of what I'm doing wrong. Of course I'm looking forward to the Candidates matches, like everyone. Preparation has become a problem because first my desktop [computer] at home broke down and now my laptop here!" Topalov played an interesting idea, allowing Black to capture his knight on e5 to create a long pawn chain in the center. It transposed into a Tukmakov-Miles game from 84, not the first time during this tournament that Tukmakov's openings have come up, oddly. Topalov's ambitious 16.a4 almost backfired, but White continued to play aggressively with 18.Rd4. You have to give Topalov credit for always swinging for the fences even when he's not in great form. We spent some time looking at 18..Nxe5!? but couldn't make it work better than what Kamsky played. White's counterplay with b4-b5 was just in time to force liquidation and Black's 25..Kg8! eliminated the last of the danger. Lots of fun in the notes.

The biggest battle was between the two leaders, Adams on +1 and Mamedyarov on +2 in clear first. Adams set Black all sorts of problems by improving on a game he played against Svidler a few years ago. Black pushed back and got a big pawn center, but, just as Adams planned, it couldn't be defended. It looked like White could have gotten a better version of the endgame (22.fxe4 for one), but to be fair it still looked like Adams was still very close to winning. It was great to have a great endgame expert like Speelman on hand. Adams slowly improved his position while Mamedyarov could only wait passively and hope he wasn't lost. When Adams finally moved forward with his king with 53.Ke5? Mamed pounced with the move he must have been praying for the entire time, 53..e3 and, amazingly, it's White who is lucky to draw! Miracle swindle. Adams was lucky to have the 55.Bxa6 bail-out or else he might have been tortured in a theoretical pawns vs bishop endgame for a while. The main point of 53..e3 is 54.Kf6 Rc7 55.Be2 Rc6! 56.Rxc6 Bxc6 57.Kxg6 Bb5 winning the bishop. The White king makes it back in time and Black has the wrong color rook pawn but these endgames can still be lost with zugzwang. 54.Rxg6 Rd5+!? is a comical (if unnecessary) option that finishes in a perpetual check. White should still have been winning after 53.Kc3.

Today is the free day. At the half, it's Mamedyarov +2, Adams +1, Nisipeanu and Sasikiran =, Topalov -1, Kamsky -2. Topalov has just two whites in the second half, but one of them is against Mamedyarov. Let's hope nobody gets hurt today in the football (soccer) game of the chessplayers against members of the Bulgarian national team. For revenge, I believe Topalov will then play a game of chess against one of the footballers (or a coach) who is an avid player.

The Internet Chess Club is announcing it has acquired two other major online playing sites and will be merging them into a single service. World Chess Network and Chess Live will be merged into the new World Chess Live. I'll have more later, but for now there's a press release with lots more info here. Any users of those sites with comments? I haven't looked at either of them in years.

In Sofia, Bulgaria, where the Mtel Masters is currently underway, the organizers of many of the world's elite tournaments have announced the completion of the Grand Slam circuit. (Original item from last year here.) Mexico City is the surprise fifth entrant, although details have not been provided as to the nature of the event they give for June 21-July 6 of 2008. From the press release: "The Mexico City candidature, supported by its Town Council, has been unanimously accepted during the Grand Slam Chess Association meeting in Sofia, as it fulfils all the required conditions. The Bilbao Final Masters will have the winners of the other four Grand Slam tournaments. The total prize fund of the Final Masters in Bilbao will be 400.000 euros approximately."

The other events are Corus Wijk aan Zee (Jan 11-27), Linares (Feb 15-Mar 9), Mtel Masters (May 6-18) and the final in Bilbao (Sep 15-27). The rules and regulations are still sketchy and probably not all agreed upon yet. One Spanish paper says the five winners will be joined by a sixth specially invited player, but that doesn't make sense because the fifth tournament is the Bilbao Final. Four players. The president of Bulgaria, Georgi Parvánov, has said he'll be delighted to attend the final. Maybe not if Topalov's not in it! Note the Bilbao date is earlier than their previous events, perhaps to evade FIDE's stated plan to have a similar "Master's Cup," as announced by Ilyumzhinov a few months ago. That event sounds like vapor anyway.

I'm all for the Grand Slam concept. The devil is in the details, as usual, and most of the players seem to be withholding judgment until all the rules and regulations are announced. I hope they are working with the players, or at least keeping them informed. Feedback and transparency, rinse and repeat. (See "FIDE" for counterexamples.)

By the way, another Spanish report says this year's Bilbao event will again be a blindfold show. Last year it was Polgar versus Topalov. This year they will be joined by Carlsen, Karjakin, Ponomariov and, possibly, Bu Xiangzhi, in a double-round robin of blindfold. I'm not at all enchanted by blindfold becoming more prevalent at the elite level. It's fun as a lark or a show in simuls with amateurs, and we're used to Amber by now. But trading a dozen good elite games for one or two "good for blindfold" games and a stack of blunders is annoying. I suppose if it puts butts in the seats it's just part of life. Last year it looked like interest was high at the amazing Guggenheim playing site.

Lots of blood in the water in round three with all the games decisive. Mamedyarov demolished Topalov's dubious opening line. ..e5 looked just as lousy as it did when Euwe played it against Fine at AVRO 1938. At the press conference, covered by ICC Chess.FM by Macauley Peterson, Topalov said he just had trouble keeping all the lines clear in his head. Things really went downhill fast for Black after 16..a5. Mamedyarov, who has been described on the scene as looking very confident and energetic this week, said he felt good about his winning chances when he played 21.c5, a move Larry Christiansen had been calling for in many lines. A model attacking game from Mamed, who is now in clear first on +2.

Adams crushed Nisipeanu with a piece sacrifice right out the opening in his (Adams') favorite Tarrasch French, in which the Englishman maintains a terrifying score. Nisipeanu thought for a while before playing 12..Qc5 (12..0-0-0 has been played but also looks dangerous for Black) so he must have missed something. He may not have noticed in time that 13.Bxe6 Qxg5 loses instantly to the surprising 14.Nf3! instead of the weaker 14.Bxd7+. Lots of afritzionados thought the position was only a little better for White after the sac, but it's not even close. Adams maintained a brutal bind to the end, taking his time as only "The Spider" can. (The Green Goblin was nowhere to be seen.)

Kamsky-Sasikiran looked like it might have been drawn on move 15 or so without the Sofia no-draw-offer rules. I'm sure Kamsky isn't fond of them right now. He slipped into time trouble in a balanced position and the alert Sasikiran found a nice sequence of exchanges to fracture the white pawns. Then Kamsky blundered a cute tactic that gave Black an easy bishop vs knight endgame win. Larry called Sasikiran's the best game of the day.

I'll add the round 4 update here since I didn't have time to finish the r3 before play started today. (The good news is I finally slept for a few hours.) Kamsky-Adams is still underway, deep into a N+P vs N+2P endgame. Adams hasn't made any progress in a long time but there are always zugzwang dangers in these positions. Mickey may just figure it's worth playing on until Kamsky gets into time trouble yet again. No increment! In the game Kamsky "won" a piece for a few pawns but Adams got the better of the deal and Kamsky had to return the piece for two black passers. [Game drawn on move 92, just a few moves before the 50-move rule would have kicked in.]

Topalov made astonishingly short work of Sasikiran in a surprise King's Indian. White simply looked planless and inferior even before he tried to break loose with the wild 19.f4. Topalov's new 16..b6 (instead of Smirin's 16..Nxb3) asks White how he intends to make progress and Sasikiran couldn't find an answer. Black's queenside weaknesses were far less relevant than White's inability to get any play. Black has all sorts of ways to improve. GM commentator Varuzhan Akobian on ICC Chess.FM had hopes for White after 19.f4 but it soon became clear all the tactics were working for Black. Topalov finished powerfully, although there was a nice mate he could have played at the end with fxg2+ instead of ..f2. The KID continues to rule at the elite level and we can expect to see even more players following Radjabov's lead.

Mamedyarov-Nisipeanu was a wild Blumenfeld Gambit that followed Ehlvest-Alekseev from Aeroflot 07 at the start, something Nisipeanu knew and Mamedyarov didn't. He played better than Ehlvest (who lost horribly) and it looked like he had chances for an edge. Mamed declined a piece sac that would have given Black a brutal attack and after further sharp play a forced repetition arose. Not all short draws are the same! White could quickly land in hot borscht if he takes the piece with 13.Nxe4 Qd5 14.Nb3 c4! with all sorts of threats. Creative show by both players and Nisipeanu survives his latest opening experiment.

After four rounds it's Mameyarov +2, Adams +1, Nisipeanu and Sasikiran =, Topalov -1, Kamsky -2. Round 5 is Nisipeanu-Sasikiran, Topalov-Kamsky, Adams-Mamedyarov.

Three more tense games in the second round of the Mtel Masters today. All resulted in draws just minutes apart after they reached the first time control. Kamsky's position out of the opening again looked suspect, this time with his favorite 4..Qb6 in the Slav. But he steadily outplayed Nisipeanu to gain an advantage with black. GM Christiansen expected 20.Na4 with pressure for White, but in the post-game press conference Nisipeanu said he thought he'd gone wrong earlier. In the mutual time crunch Kamsky's creative play (29..g5!) came close to inflicting real damage. 33..Bxh4 was the test we were expecting. After 33..Bxd4 things boiled down to a draw quickly. Kamsky was down to 1:18 for move 40.

Topalov had some pressure against Adams in a well-known QID line. He flashed some preparation with the interesting idea of playing e3 to solidify the center and then bringing his queen over to b2. Adams defused things very well with 25..Bc5 taking most of the sting out of the b5-Nc6 plan by White. In the press conference Adams said he looked at a few chances to play for more, but didn't see anything convincing.

Sasikiran played a tranquil set-up against Mamedyarov's 1.d4 g6 and soon looked like he was getting the worse of things. This seemed to be confirmed when Mamedyarov played very aggressively and Sasikiran kept choosing the calmest continuations. 11.Nxe5 would have been the standard shot, for example. But despite the mutilation of his kingside pawns, White always had tricks and chances and Black never managed to get at the white king. Eventually Mamedyarov had no choice but to liquidate into a drawn opposite-colored bishops endgame. A difficult game not at all easy to evaluate. It always looked like Black should have something but he may not have been much better at all.

I had a feeling at several points during the round that at least two of the games would have been drawn fairly quickly without the presence of the no-draw-offer Sofia rules. We got three interesting maneuvering games as a result. So Topalov starts out with two whites and scores 0.5. That's the same score he had after two rounds last year and he ended up winning the event. Tomorrow's round 3: Mamedyarov-Topalov, Adams-Nisipeanu, Kamsky-Sasikiran.

A wild first round in Sofia (pronounced SO-fia, not so-FIA like Loren) today. I has the luxury seat online with GM Larry Christiansen as my co-host for ICC Chess.FM and he rocked the mic as always. There was considerable less rocking on the board if you were Gata Kamsky. His black against Mamedyarov looked a lot like several of his losses at Corus last year when he played his first big event back from retirement. He was busted early and decided to give up a full piece so he could suffer with swindling chances instead of just suffering. Kamsky managed to work up a little counterplay, but it was Mamedyarov trying to blitz him that really allowed Black back in the game as the first time control approached. But the Azerbaijani's strategy eventually paid off when Kamsky ran out of time on move 38, even though by then he was no worse on the board according to GM Yermolinsky and other kibitzers. Rust is always most noticeable on the clock.

The opening was an offbeat 4..Bg4 line in the Slav followed by the horrible-looking 6..Be6, which was tried by Taimanov once. Mamedyarov's straightforward plan of pushing Black off the board was hard to deal with, and if 12..Nbd7 is the best Black has it would be better to head straight to the bar to get a good seat. After going up a piece White let things slip with a wasted set of queen moves, first to c4 and then back to d3. By the time Mamedyarov missed 35..Re2+! he was playing nearly as fast as Kamsky, who was down to seconds. In the post-game press conference, Kamsky said his hand was ready to play 38..c5 -- the best move -- but summed it up by saying he's no longer a young man. (Despite the abovementioned evalutions, Black is still in considerable danger after, say, 38..c5 39.Kc1.)

Topalov-Nisipeanu was a very taut game throughout. White had pressure and nursed a small advantage while keeping the tension and the pieces on the board. The Romanian kept finding good moves and eventually Topalov decided to force matters, which backfired. 38.f4 was already a little risky and 40.b5 allowed Black to create many threats against the open White king. Topalov had a considerable time advantage before the control but Nisipeanu refused to crack. It was Topalov, after a long think, who blundered into a pretty tactical shot with 43.Qd3?? Bd4! and White either loses his queen or gets mated. Black settled for winning a piece instead of mating with 46..Qg2. An amazing oversight after such a long think. Bronstein wrote about this phenomenon, saying it was common to see various themes at first sight and then forget about them while in a deep think. We can't exactly chalk this up as a win for Nisipeanu's surprise use of the Scandinavian, I'm afraid. I'm still surprised Black survived after 6..g6 and ceding so much space. Nisipeanu played very well and deserves full credit. He got rolled 3-1 by Topalov in their match last year.

Adams got a small pull against Sasikiran in a "Caro-Nimzo" line he used against Jobava at Dortmund last year. Larry thought White would be able to generate real chances against Black's weak dark squares, but Black managed to hold without too much drama. In tomorrow's second round it's Nisipeanu-Kamsky, Topalov-Adams, Sasikiran-Mamedyarov. Larry's on the record calling for a win by Mamed with black!

Kudos to today's ICC Chess.FM trivia winners bioniclime, rusi, and WhiteEagle. The latter won a year's subscription to New In Chess magazine. Who was the only player to defeat Kamsky at last year's Mtel tournament? / Who is the president of Bulgaria? / Who was the last player to beat Topalov in the first round of a tournament?

Today is the first round of this mighty event. This is the third edition of the Sofia, Bulgaria, supertournament. The field this year isn't as shiny as the last few, but it's still a strong and interesting double round-robin. Topalov is the clear favorite as the top-rated player and also playing at home with big local support. He and his manager Danailov are founders and organizers of the event as well. Topalov is the only winner this event has ever had and he will be looking for a big result here to perhaps take back the world #1 rating he lost to Anand on the current list.

Then we have the other Azerbaijani. No, not that other Azerbaijani, the other one. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov is actually ahead of his more famous countryman Teimour Radjabov on the rating list these days, and of course Kasparov isn't on it at all anymore. Mamedyarov hasn't shown much at the supertournament level so far, although he did finish ahead of an exhausted Topalov at Essent last year.

Next we have England's Mickey Adams, who really doesn't need an introduction. He's been a solid top-tenner for a decade now, with the occasional brief hiatus. He also has a good score against Topalov over the years. USA's Gata Kamsky has played very little since nearly becoming the shock winner of this event last year. He was ahead most of the way only to be overhauled by a trademark Topalov surge.

Then we have the relative outsiders, the ones without giant ratings or long elite track records. Romania's Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu is still best known for his FIDE KO semifinal appearance in 1999 in Vegas. He's floated in the top 20 since but will need to outperform to keep his head above water here. Less consistent is the long-time Indian #2, Krishnan Sasikiran, who has recently been fighting for that spot with Harikrishna. He just dropped a bunch of points and will have to show new consistency in this, the strongest event he's ever played in.

I'm live with GM Larry Christiansen on ICC Chess.FM. More soon.

Open thread, happy thoughts, look at the pretty Washington wildlife and let the rancor melt away. Pic I took last weekend near the Dungeness Spit (the "longest natural sand spit in the United States," I'll have you know).

Armenia's Levon Aronian defended his home turf by beating world champion Vladimir Kramnik in 4-2 in their Yerevan rapid match. The official site has reports and photos. ChessBase has some light game notes. The score didn't really follow the play, which was uneven with equal chances for both players. Kramnik was coming straight from his narrow win over Leko in a similar match and couldn't put together a complete effort here, it seemed. Aronian displayed all the speed and opportunism he's known for, as well as enough technical solidity to hold up against Kramnik until those other traits could do the rest. Actually they seemed to take turns, first splitting two wins on the first day. Then Aronian won twice nicely on the second day and only needed a half point on the third to wrap up the match. Kramnik came close to evening up the score, however, missing clear wins in zeitnot in games five and six.

Aronian played a wild exchange sac out of the early ..b5 Benoni in game five, well worth a look. Kramnik was a move away from a very pretty mating net but couldn't find it in time, which is a little surprising considering the ten-second increment. 39.Rf7 Kg8 40.Re7 Rc8 41.Rg7+ Kf8 and here 42.Kh7! is a cute king advance for mate I could see missing, but 42.Rf7+ wins bluntly, if a move slower. In game six Kramnik wove a nice kingside attack, exploiting the offside white rook. The afritzionados at ChessBase miss what a great move 41..Qc6! was from Kramnik. With so much going on he takes time to retreat the queen from a dominating square to blockade the white c-pawn, keeping the white rook trapped. There were then a few exchanges of blunders, but Black could have scored a consolation win with 45..Ng4 instead of allowing White to scramble to safety with his pawns.

April errors bring, umm, May errors. Still haven't had time to rip everything apart to fix the errors still popping up in the comments. But it has stopped spam completely! Will do it first thing I'm back from Seattle. Some items to keep things jumping:

Kramnik plays another rapid match on another top player's home turf, this time against Aronian in Yerevan. He's already won the first game in impressive style. Talk about Russian imperialism! After Hungary and Armenia, watch out Baltics.

Kasparov was just named a member of the "TIME 100". He's in NY now and will attend a special gala for the honorees next week. If you wonder why things have slowed down here at the Dirt it's because I'm full time on politics with Garry's rapidly multiplying speeches, editorials, media requests, website, and the dozen+ versions of the book. We just got our hands on the proofs of the American edition, which is out in October. (My name is smaller than in the UK edition, but in italics. Is that an improvement?) On the bright side, in the Russian opposition movement I finally answered the question, "does anything pay worse than chess?" Thank goodness I married for money.

I want to heat the covers here before we dive into bed on the 2007 US championship next week. It starts on the 15th. A majority of the players will lose money on the deal based on the prize list and travel costs and expenses. AF4C sponsorship totally broke down when a member of the USCF board accused the AF4C of distributing pornography. (Really.) GM Joel Benjamin will break his record streak of participating in an amazing 23 consecutive US championships, withdrawing over frustration with the USCF (with no slight intended to the Oklahoma organizers, who are doing their best).

Bessel Kok and Global Chess BV are moving forward on several fronts. The money is in the bank, I hear, so let's see if it takes money to make money. Sponsorship, it's about sponsorship! Show us the money! I also hear rumbles of a big website in the works...

Scholastic chess has been a surprisingly hot topic around here on occasion. This Slate article by Ann Hulbert doesn't have much new for this audience, but it's a step beyond the usual local paper cheerleading. The final paragraph about one young player who became over-obsessed with the game is interesting. We all know how addicting it can be. On the other hand, someone with that personality could equally end up obsessed with the lastest Playstation game.

Has anyone read the The Kings of New York book she talks about? Funny, I read this a few minutes after talking on the phone with Erik Anderson of America's Foundation for Chess. I'll have more on that in a bit, but they're going to have 25,000 kids in their program next fall, more than double what they started with last year.