January 2009 Archives

I made a serious error in calling this year's Corus tournament ridiculous when four players were tied for first on +2 with two rounds to play. Because this, THIS, is ridiculous. In one of the weirdest supertournament crosstables I've ever seen, six, count'em six, players are now tied for first place on +2 with one round to go. All the leaders drew their games while Carlsen and Karjakin joined the party, beating Smeets and Adams, respectively. Now they are in the lead, if a pack of six can be called a lead, with Dominguez, Aronian, Movsesian, and Radjabov. The only meeting of the leaders in the final round is Dominguez-Karjakin. Note that round 13 starts an hour earlier, at 6:30am EST.

A similarly bizarre, if inverse, crosstable stands out in my memory, that of Linares 2001. The final standings had Kasparov on top with 7.5/10 and the entire rest of the field, five players, all at -1. The winner then was barely ever in doubt, while here at Corus this year the winner hasn't been less certain since the start of the tournament. A tie for first at +3 between two players seems likely, but the improbable has ruled in Wijk aan Zee this year, so all bets are off. And courage has been in short supply there this year, so why not a six-way tie for first? Ugh. They don't use tiebreaks to decide the Corus champion, but they do use them to select the automatic qualifier to the Grand Slam final in Bilbao. If things are the same as last year, the first tiebreak is head-to-head and the second is Sonneborn-Berger system.

Carlsen seemed to overpower Smeets by brute force, finishing with a cute final move. You don't see Mickey Adams lose a Ruy Lopez so convincingly very often. Karjakin never gave him a chance after gaining a queenside initiative. Black could have won the exchange with 26..Ne2+ but the dark squares around the black king are so weak it's a position only a computer could like. The game wasn't much better though. To his great credit during a conservative round in a conservative tournament, Levon Aronian went for the clear lead against Morozevich. White doesn't quite have enough comp for the two pawns but it's devilishly hard for Black to get free from the back-rank bind created by the white f-pawn. Black had another shot at victory with 39..Qd3 40.Rg2 Nd7! when 41.Rd2 loses to 41..Nc5! So the white f-pawn falls and Black should be in the clear.

Radjabov and Dominguez are the only leaders with the white pieces in the final round. Round 13: Kamsky-Movsesian, Adams-van Wely, Dominguez-Karjakin, Morozevich-Ivanchuk, Smeets-Aronian, Wang-Carlsen, Radjabov-Stellwagen.

The sensible B group has only two leaders, Short and Kasimjanov, who beat L'Ami to catch up. We could have some drama in the final round as Short has black against Caruana, who's a half-point back along with Volokitin. Kasimjanov has black against Motylev. Wesley So locked up at least a share of first place in the C with a victory against his closest pursuer, former leader Hillarp-Persson. Both players were described as "very nervous" before the game by Italian chess journo Janis Nisii. So is 15 and only the even younger Anish Giri, 14, has a slim chance to catch him from a point back.

Thomas in the comments quoting Wijk aan Zee commentator IM Hans Boehm quoting Nigel Short (that's a high hearsay quotient, but it sounds like Nigel): "Why should I want to play in the A group? It means a tough game on every single day. Okay, I would earn a higher entrance fee, but I would have to hire a second so it isn't even that interesting financially speaking. No, I am perfectly fine in the B group! If I qualify for the top group I will sell my spot on the Internet!"

Even if in jest, this jibe jibes with his many previous comments about being very happy to have left the brutal head-crushing super-events behind in his dotage. He's been giving some good lessons in the B though, and next year's kiddies would certainly appreciate more. Maybe he could be B group member emeritus? I sympathized when Dutch legend Jan Timman ceased playing in Wijk aan Zee when he could no longer cope with the A group. (His last participation was 2004 at the age of 52.) But seeing Short playing good chess and having fun, I wish Timman would emulate him and return, even to the C group now that it's become so tough.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Is this the World Open or the Corus A group? Are we going to have five winners on +1? Yesterday I wrote: "Especially considering that Aronian is destined to lose now that he's the clear leader. It just seems to happen every time." I was kidding, Levon, kidding! You didn't have to go and throw away sacrifice a piece with black against Dominguez and lose without much of a fight just to prove me right. Yes, we're back to a logjam at the top, made even more complicated by Kamsky's bamboozling win against Karjakin, who was in clear second.

Radjabov pulled off another great reversal out of his King's Indian, this time taking out Wang Yue in an endgame. I don't know how Radjabov does it but it's not anything you can teach or explain. Keep these games away from your students, they're bad examples unless you come in near the end. Movsesian bounced back to beat van Wely, also with black, to retake a piece of the lead on +2 with Aronian, Dominguez, and Radjabov. It was a fascinating and difficult game. The potentially saving idea van Wely missed to keep the vital h2 pawn, as would any human in time trouble, is great: 39.Ba3! Rf7 40.Bd6! Cool. Movsesian finished spectacularly.

Kamsky played one of his patented offbeat passive openings with white against Karjakin. These get him into trouble sometimes but it also gives his opponents the chance to make mistakes early. Experienced players like Leko and Gelfand are happy to take the extra time without trying to do anything fancy. Others, like Karjakin here, get tempted into looking for a refutation and are ensnared in Kamsky's web. The impressive black pawn center and space advantage look very scary, but Kamsky showed that pawns, too, have value. 19.c4! shatters Black's illusions of central dominance. Within a few moves it was a dream position for White. A positional master class from Kamsky, who moved up to a reasonable even score.

During the round Macauley Peterson spoke with Aronian's second, Israeli GM Maxim Rodshtein (I think I met him in Israel when he was 10...) Aronian came in expecting an anti-Marshall and apparently wasn't inclined to play the Marshall anyway, had Dominguez played 8.c3. (More on the ICC Blog.) We were surprised in round five when Carlsen had the opportunity to play the Marshall against Ivanchuk and declined. It's conventional wisdom these days that they play it when they can. But Dominguez played d4, heading for a novelty he'd prepared to improve on Adams-Aronian, Corus 2008. 13.Bd5 was his new idea, playing to win the exchange immediately. Black gets plenty of play, but Dominguez had seen it wouldn't quite be enough. Going from an exchange down to a piece down looked desperate, but it may have been the only hope. Aronian began to play at breakneck speed, a decision that confounded GM Kaidanov on Chess.FM, who thought Black had practical drawing chances with careful play thanks to White's open king and underdeveloped pieces. But after missing the most active try with 25..Re5 Black went down slow but sure.

Smeets pushed hard against Stellwagen and it looked like he was making good progress for a while. He could never find a way to break through despite his central control and after he exchanged a pair of rooks there was little hope. Morozevich doesn't seem to have much fight left in him and the draw against Carlsen contained little action, although they gave it a good go. Several cute tactics put a few racing stripes on the minivan. Ivanchuk's Caro-Kann equalized without somersaults against Adams.

With two rounds to play, four players are on +2, two on +1, two on even. Crazy. In 2007, +2 after 11 rounds meant a tie for fifth place. Two of the leaders face off on Saturday. Round 12: Movsesian-Radjabov, Stellwagen-Wang Yue, Carlsen-Smeets, Aronian-Morozevich, Ivanchuk-Dominguez, Karjakin-Adams, van Wely-Kamsky.

Nigel Short won yet again, over a blundering Navara, to keep the clear lead in the B. Kasimjanov beat Mecking and Caruana defeated Sasikiran to keep up the pace a half-point back of the Englishman. So is in clear first in the C after leader Hillarp Persson was upset by Bitalzadeh, turning a win into a loss in an incredibly complicated game.

Update in a bit, but wanted to share what happened in Radjabov-Smeets (1/2). Radjabov played 39.Re7 but knocked the piece over and hit his clock. Smeets pressed his clock and said something like "correct the piece." Radjabov then flagged. In the ensuing mess, the arbiters couldn't decide what exactly should have been done since both players had infractions. You have to correct a piece on your own time and you can't speak to your opponent. Apparently you are supposed to stop the clocks and then you'll get a time bonus, but it's hard to imagine anyone having the sang froid to do that with a few seconds left even if you knew that's what you're supposed to do. And had Smeets done that it's quite possible Radjabov would have been physically able to make his 40th move and had a winning position.

Radjabov did the same thing as Smeets to Ivanchuk a few rounds ago when Ivanchuk misplaced a piece, pressing immediately. I guess Ivanchuk should have let himself flag and then protested? So basically the arbiters hoped the players would agree to help them out and agree to the draw, which they did. "The best result for the arbiters," said Radjabov. The final position is clearly winning for white, if that sort of thing is important to you. It went back and forth like crazy in the final seconds. Radjabov had played a crushing sacrificial attack out of the opening. The players analyzed together amicably afterward. All info from Macauley Peterson on the scene. He has more, including clips with both players, appearing soon at the ICC Blog.

Alexei Shirov with a nice quip in the comments: "Actually Radjabov's decisive mistake was 39.Re7. 39.Rc7 would be faster to complete and no pieces would fall. :)" Now will some clever annotator of this game give "39.Re7?? (39.Rc7!)" But before we laugh too hard remember we've seen the "short move, fast move" blitz technique in action before, including in the recent women's world championship.

Aronian beat Adams to take the clear lead. Carlsen scored his first win, over Dominguez, who handled his clock very badly. Ivanchuk still pressing against Kamsky (drawn, impressive D by Gata). Full round update later after I slog through the snow for a bit.

Update: Lots of good information from the scene of the Radjabov-Smeets incident and about the rules and their history in the comments below. Thanks all. I'm not sure it's any clearer how this should be handled next time. Either the written rules should be clarified or a statement made about how the current rules should be interpreted.

Back to the games that were settled at the board for a moment. On Chess.FM GM Christiansen was unenthusiastic about Adams' position for most of the way. It was another nice Aronian effort in the Catalan, adding to his win over Movsesian with it. Black suffers to reach a position that is essentially a pawn down thanks to the worthless doubled pawns on the queenside. I really expected longer resistance from Adams but Aronian is playing very well over the last few days and would not be denied. His second consecutive win gave him the clear lead and the inside track in repeating his Corus victory of last year, when he split first with Carlsen on the same +3 score he has now.

Magnus Carlsen finally won a game and he did it against one of the leaders, Lenier Dominguez. White got a pull with an improvement (Qb3) against the Grunfeld, but then it was the Cuban who started fighting back with inspired play (..b5!). But in yet another game affected by poor clock handling, Dominguez was under 15 minutes for 20 moves and started to make inferior choices that Carlsen was happy to exploit. White even had the luxury of postponing the winning combination before smashing through nicely for the win. At +1 with three games remaining Carlsen certainly isn't out of it. Especially considering that Aronian is destined to lose now that he's the clear leader. It just seems to happen every time. Aronian finishes with black against Dominguez, white against Morozevich, and black against Smeets.

Karjakin is in clear second place after being held to a draw in the Sicilian for the first time. The young Ukrainian was 3-0 up until this game. Van Wely coolly handled his business on defense, though White's position looked so good Christiansen was sure Karjakin must have missed a forced win somewhere. Black came back to dominate the e-file and set up many threats against White's weak back rank. Van Wely even missed a chance, if a risky one, to win with 34..Qg3! threatening ..Re1.

Movsesian was working on a very strong build-up against Wang Yue only to take a short draw. Stellwagen's draw wasn't quite as bizarre as his countryman Smeets', but it was close. In a Zaitsev against Morozevich, the repeated the entire game Volokitin-Kasimjanov from the prior round in the B group! All the way the identical perpetual check on move 31. Truly ridiculous, though according to the official site Stellwagen was unaware of the precedent his neighbors played. (At Linares 2007, Carlsen knowingly repeated an entire game from an earlier round.) Interestingly, both Corus games reached a position from the Kasparov-Karpov, 86 WCh match on move 23, if by a slightly different move order. Curiously, old analysis to that game gives the rook lift to e3 a '?', and suggests that ..Ne5-Nc4 is very strong for Black. I guess these guys disagree.

Round 11: van Wely-Movsesian, Kamsky-Karjakin, Adams-Ivanchuk, Dominguez-Aronian, Morozevich-Carlsen, Smeets-Stellwagen, Wang Yue-Radjabov.

The king is dead, long live the king. Kings, that is. It has become abundantly clear that despite the glory of the top spot and the automatic seeding into the Grand Slam final, nobody really wants to win Corus this year. Are there rumors of an assassination plot against the winner? The latest victim of the Leader's Curse was Sergei Movsesian. Just like clockwork, the day after I extolled the virtues of Movsesian's solid play in Corus so far he lost to our only other clear leader so far, Sergey Karjakin. It was a very strong game by the young Ukrainian, who was soon joined by Aronian and Dominguez in the lead on +2. Movsesian remains in striking distance a half-point back, along with Radjabov. Just a point back in this comically dense field we find van Wely, Smeets, Adams, and Carlsen, who just drew his ninth game in a row.

It was a long round, all three decisive games ending after GM John Fedorowicz and I wrapped up our live Chess.FM coverage at the five-hour mark. Stellwagen kept offering material to Dominguez, or refusing to take it, until it was Dominguez's turn to sac the exchange for a winning endgame. It's always a little amusing when a strong GM plays a move no weaker player would consider and it turns out the move any beginner would play was better. It was hard to believe Black shouldn't take the rook on move 24. The too-subtle 24..Qf3 was a blunder that allowed the Cuban to take three pawns and a pair of bishops into the endgame for the exchange. It took White a little longer than we expected, but he got there eventually and his reward was a share of the lead.

Karjakin repeated Stellwagen's round one try against Movsesian's Scheveningen. The pawn-race ending that was to come started shaping up right at the start. It looked like Black wasted a few moves headed into the queen endgame, but as usual these are very subtle mistakes. Karjakin's 26.Rg5 was singled out as a star move by the Fed. It's not clear why Movsesian selected the more exposed g7 square for his king on move 49, or, to be fair, that it should matter. It did seem to help White centralize his new queen. Karjakin's technique was impressive throughout. Movsesian's losses say as much as his wins about the good level he's playing at. It has taken two of the best games of the tournament to beat him and he's still at +1.

Aronian played the Berlin against Kamsky and somehow the position got very messy, not a word commonly associated with the Berlin. White usually plays for control and either wins or doesn't. Here the position became unbalanced and Kamsky couldn't hold it together in the tactics near the first time control. You might be alarmed by Aronian ignored the hanging rook on a4, but he wanted to avoid the complications of 43..Nxa4 44.Ne6, although Black comes up winning after 44..Nb2. Wonderfully sharp stuff in this stretch. 44.Ne6 looks like the last best hope for White. Then Aronian sacrificed the exchange for endgame domination. Kamsky gave back the rook a few moves later but it wasn't enough. After that it was agony time as Aronian made good his two extra pawns.

Van Wely and Ivanchuk liquidated smoothly into a drawn rook endgame. Desperate for a fight, Carlsen resorted to his Dragon against Adams. The Englishman didn't oblige, playing a positional line with kingside castling. Carlsen neutralized White's queenside ambitions effectively and opened up the center to swap down to equality. Morozevich played an entirely unambitious plan against Radjabov's Grunfeld. Kasparov says that if White has any intention of playing, White should try 10.Bxd5 Bxb5 11.N1c3 and at least there are some imbalances to work with. Smeets and Wang Yue played 24 moves of known Sveshnikov, including the pretty bishop sac 24..Be3!, played a pair of times last year. Grischuk castled and played on against Illescas at the Dresden Olympiad but eventually drew in 39 moves. Smeets, either unaware of that game and the bishop move or happy with a short draw, took the immediate repetition. (The white king can't go to b1 because of ..Qxc6.) Time to go kick your second, Smeets! (Sorry Gusti).

Round 10: Movsesian-Wang Yue, Radjabov-Smeets, Stellwagen-Morozevich, Carlsen-Dominguez, Aronian-Adams, Ivanchuk-Kamsky, Karjakin-van Wely Macauley has a clip with Adams and another with Navara discussing the Grand Prix debacle on the ICC blog.

After eight of thirteen rounds of Corus 2009, Slovakia's Sergei Movsesian is the clear leader. That's not a sentence even he might have dreamed of reading before the event, I imagine, but here we are. The field is remarkably balanced this year, especially if you discount Morozevich, who is in the cellar by a full point after losing to fellow sufferer Wang Yue in round eight. Movsesian's +2 is enough for first place right now, with four players a half-point behind. The leader's remaining opponents include two of them, Radjabov and Karjakin; the others are van Wely, Kamsky, and Wang Yue. What could be a key battle against the only other clear leader we've had so far, Karjakin, is tomorrow. The young Ukrainian was toppled by his veteran countryman Ivanchuk, who awoke from his nightmare to play one of the best games of the event yesterday.

Ten years ago, and I bring this up here because it became a chat topic on the ICC during the round, Garry Kasparov introduced a new term into the vernacular of the game: "chess tourist." It was in an article on the Las Vegas FIDE KO championship written for the website that was still called Club Kasparov, later to become KasparovChess. The quarterfinals were about to begin and Kasparov, who spent most of these pieces analyzing games, added a preview. I'll include the whole section for context. (I'll spare you the blue/green/gray page color scheme they used. I think we got more mail about that than anything. Not everyone loved the red we used when I was running it, mind.)

So, what do we have now? 3 tourists - Akopian, Movsesian and Nisipeanu. Due to the fact of the match between first two one tourist will travel to the semifinal. Great trip to Las Vegas and good reason to visit Disneyland!

Unpredictable and spontaneous Judith, who is always dangerous for her opponents and sometimes for herself.

Two very strong players Adams and Khalifman both capable of upsetting any favorite.

And on top the main favorites of the event Kramnik and Shirov. The possibility of new match between them looks now quite feasible though on the way to the final no victories are easy in KO championship.

I give the whole thing because one of the misconceptions that came out what turned into a mini-scandal was that Kasparov had called the eventual winner, Alexander Khalifman, a tourist. I have misquoted it a few times myself. To refresh the memory, this event of underdogs ended up with Akopian, Movsesian, Nisipeanu, and Adams in the semis. At the time, and now as well, it was little more than a humorous way to describe three outsiders in an event at a big tourist destination. Certainly nobody expected Movsesian to write an epic open letter in response, longer than the entire Kasparov column, attacking the #1, railing against the oppressive forces that be, Elo elitism in general, and finishing with a defense of his nationality. This last was based on the English translation of Garry's piece referring to Movsesian as "the ex-Armenian" player, which was only meant to state the obvious fact he didn't play for Armenia anymore.

And so "chess tourist" was born with a bang. Had there been no response (Akopian had a few words as well, a bit later if I recall) I doubt it would have caught on to the point it did, with players playfully using the term to refer to their own chances and habits to this day. The three original tourists would spend the next decade floating up and down the top 100 list. Akopian always in the 10-30 group until a recent slide, Nisipeanu everywhere from 99 to 15 and back, and Movsesian from 26 to 98 in 2006 before his steady climb to his current #10 position -- and the lead at Corus! It will be interesting to hear what he attributes his recent bloom to, if anything in particular at all. It will also be interesting to see where he is a year from now.

As much as I found this rise notable, my GM colleague on ICC Chess.FM during round 8, Ronen Har-Zvi, sounded downright shocked. He compared it to Topalov's sudden leap in 2005. Movsesian's career high rating was 2666 in 2000 before starting his current climb in 2007 to his current 2751. Topalov's peak was 2750 in 1997 before he shot up to 2813 in 2006. Of course such jumps are normal from younger players, while both Movsesian and Topalov did it at 30. Topalov's jump is more unusual and impressive since we can provide many examples of players adding 80 points over a few years. They just don't usually make it to the top 10 (let alone #1) and so don't make the news. I pointed out Krasenkow the other day and there are others. Ivan Sokolov went from 71 to 16 and back to 71 in the last decade. Getting to the top ten isn't easy, but it's much, much easier than staying in the top ten, no matter what Movsesian said about elitism and cushy life for top players in 1999.

Ivanchuk may have come back to life in round eight, but Morozevich buried himself deeper. His Grunfeld was ground down by Wang Yue in just the sort of position the Chinese loves to ground and pound on. 7..c5 seems to be a dubious novelty and Black never really got unwound until he was down a pawn. Ronen pointed out how similar the endgame was to the famous Kasparov-Karpov game 27 from their first WCh match. (Which allows me to plug that the latest Kasparov "Modern Chess" book, which includes that match, is our call of the day prize during our Chess.FM shows during Corus. Members can Skype to 'iccchessfm' and leave a voicemail.)

Aronian looked like he was returning to form and outplayed van Wely steadily. The caveman attack on the h-file somehow worked out. He spent 67 minutes on 15.h5. van Wely quickly decided to decline White's planned exchange sac. All Aronian had to do was finish the Dutchman off, but van Wely found an unsound and brilliant desperation defense of walking his king away from White's passed h-pawn and into the center. Aronian usually doesn't miss a trick in such positions but here he faltered as wins fluttered by like leaves. The dastardly 36.c6 is good (controlling d7), as is evacuating the rook from d3 early, ignoring the e7 pawn. The amazing 36..Ke4! made a win very hard to find. At first we thought the endgame was still a simple win (and perhaps Aronian did too), but the black rook works magic with two checks to get behind the e-pawn. 43.Kf2 was still a shot to play for a win but perhaps Aronian was just disgusted with himself by that point.

Carlsen tried a very entertaining gambit against Kamsky and we were all set for a classic contest of unstoppable force versus immovable object. But Kamsky defused things calmly and Carlsen, clearly frustrated, took his eighth draw in a row in 16 moves. (An hour later his Facebook status was changed to "this is getting ridiculous.") Movsesian picked an excellent time to offer a draw to Smeets, just when the position was turning against him. From what Smeets told Macauley Peterson on the air after the game, it was only when he looked at it later that he realized he probably should have played on. Radjabov, for the third time, decided to take a quick draw with white, offering after 14 moves against Dominguez. Stellwagen played a repetition against Adams just when we thought the position was getting interesting.

Round 9: Karjakin-Movsesian, van Wely-Ivanchuk, Kamsky-Aronian, Adams-Carlsen, Dominguez-Stellwagen, Morozevich-Radjabov, Smeets-Wang Yue.

As happens every so often (okay, all the time), I was recently taken to task for criticizing someone and when I looked up my offending words, I didn't see anything offensive. While we were commentating Corus round 1 and reviewing the prospects of the field, Peter Svidler mentioned that he and Sergei Movsesian had discussed my first column on the Pearl Spring event while they were there in China. Peter gave the impression that I had taken a cheap shot at Movsesian in my preview. And while I've made more than my share of bargain-priced comments, I didn't think this fit the bill.

It will be interesting to see if Movsesian has just been on a hot streak lately or has really raised his game. Now representing Slovakia after first leaving Armenia for the Czech Republic, he's a fun and emotional fellow who seemed destined for eternal B-list status, finishing in the lower half of most of the few supertournaments he was invited to and hanging on the periphery of the top 20. But his recent excellent results have put him close to the top ten and he can really make a statement by just keeping his head above water with this crowd. It would be refreshing to see an old guy (30!) make a move. New blood doesn't always have to be young blood, as Bologan proved at Dortmund in 2003.

On the air Peter agreed that this was fair. Of course the language barrier can be a problem and the past tense of "seemed" is important -- though if his poor result in Nanjing had been replicated at Corus it might have required an update. I confess I didn't look up all of Movsesian's results before writing that, and doing so now the Bosna events where he often did very well were stronger than I'd remembered. But until his recent rise he hadn't been in the top 30 since 2001 (dropping to #98 at one point), which is why I thought it noteworthy and possibly fluky. Corus, even clocking in at "only" a category 19 this year without Topalov, Anand, and Kramnik, is the sort of place flukes go to die. Movsesian is here by virtue of his tremendous 9.5/13 B group win last year and so far he is showing he has every intention of staying in the A group -- and on the A list. And as I said in December, that's new blood and good news, especially since he plays the Sicilian! I'll repeat my question: has anyone else entered the top 10 for the first time after turning 30? In the last decade? I think Krasenkow (now out of the top 100) peeked into the top 10 for a list or two when he was in the Corus A himself. Other late bloomer candidates?

After seven rounds the Armenian-Slovakian is in a tie for first place with more wins than anyone, three, and they came against Adams, Morozevich, and Ivanchuk. And it's not Movsesian's fault Morozevich and Ivanchuk are playing like they need to be drug tested for stupid pills. Ivanchuk was already worse today when he performed his habitual zeitnot hari-kiri routine, leaving himself three minutes for the last 15 moves of the first control. Movsesian efficiently picked the position clean, just as he had against Morozevich's desperate attempts at chaos the day before. The opening was a classical Scheveningen, which is somewhat rare these days because of the Keres Attack, which Ivanchuk declined to play.

The win moved Movsesian into a tie for first on +2 with Karjakin, who offered up 18 moves of theory against Aronian and took a draw in 25 minutes. Not exactly the way to press your lead, but fitting in with the overall conservative tone of this event so far. Adams-Radjabov lasted a few minutes longer to draw on move 15, also one move out of theory. I wouldn't be surprised, and I'd certainly be happy, to see Sofia-style rules at Corus next year if this keeps up.

Two games went long in round seven, Morozevich-Smeets and Kamsky-Stellwagen. On Chess.FM Joel Benjamin expected only the latter to offer real winning chances for white in th endgame. Smeets had been significantly better again the imploding Russian but now had to make a technical defense down a pawn. Instead he played one of the worst blunders I can recall at this level in such a simple position, hanging his one remaining pawn to the only tactical possibility in the position and resigning immediately. Incredible, and with 40 minutes on his clock. Stellwagen was in trouble after a nice attacking effort by Kamsky against another Scheveningen netted him an extra pawn in a heavy-piece endgame. The young Dutchman went rogue, sacrificing his rook for a perpetual check attempt that wasn't clear even to the computers. After longer analysis, however, it does seem that with perfect play White can escape the checks and win. It was a forced draw after 66.Ka4. 66.Ka3 seems to be a winner, although it takes forever and there are still many places for White to go wrong. Daring choice from Stellwagen, who hasn't dared much so far.

Van Wely put Carlsen under pressure and the Norwegian, our unlikely drawing master, felt desperate measures were required. He remarkable 27..Bf2?! was rewarded when van Wely played 28.Red1 instead of the much stronger 28.Re2. The draw was quickly agreed when van Wely realized he couldn't hold the exchange with any advantage. Dominguez gave it his best against Wang Yue's Berlin but didn't have much success. Round 8: Movsesian-Smeets, Wang Yue-Morozevich, Radjabov-Dominguez, Stellwagen-Adams, Carlsen-Kamsky, Aronian-van Wely, Ivanchuk-Karjakin. A chance for Movsesian to really make a move against Smeets if the Dutchman can't collect himself after today's nightmare.

Nigel Short took over clear first in the B by beating Kasimjanov in a nice endgame. Caruana, Motylev, and Volokitin are a half-point back. Mecking got his first win, and over top seed Sasikiran to boot. Werle missed a winning shot in his loss to Caruana. The computer finds 32..Nc3 33.Bxc3 g4! with ..f5 coming. Against L'Ami Navara played a freakish exchange sac on move 10 that is apparently theoretical. He was getting his money's worth until he allowed the exchange of queens. 17.Qd4 and not 17.Qc3 and then Black doesn't have the check on f4 after 17..Qf6 18.e5. Hillarp Persson won to move into a tie with So in the C. Check out Leon Hoyos-Bosboom, in which the young Mexican sacrificed a second knight when the first was rejected and ended up with a queen for three pieces. Fun stuff. Black was playing for the win but blundered and lost.

Much like the 2008 Tal Memorial, it seems like nobody wants to win this thing. Two members of the modest leading pack in the Corus A group lost in the fifth round, threatening to make the crosstable into the first winter traffic jam ever seen in Wijk aan Zee. Coming to our rescue was Sergey Karjakin, who scored a very nice win over Stellwagen to become the first player to reach +2 and become the clear leader. Not to be outdone, Morozevich also stretched the field by losing twice more, to a nice effort by Dominguez and then an efficient mop-up by Movsesian. Both the Cuban and the Slovakian representative are aggressively good calculators and not the kind who bluff easily. And in bad form, bluff is what Morozevich's wild game turns into. He's now on -3 with four losses. Colonel Moró?

Van Wely bludgeoned Radjabov's King's Indian for the second time in a row. He also got the better of his nemesis at the Dresden Olympiad two months ago. The Dutchman considers it a matter of honor at this point, after criticizing the soundness of the KID, if not the kid. He lost a few against Radjabov but the ball is clearly now in the Azerbaijani's theoretical court. It was a pretty one-sided affair after Black missed the best defensive attempt 23..Nh7, which GM Larry Christiansen discussed on ICC Chess.FM. Even after that Black is in trouble, which doesn't bode well for the line since they were only three moves out of theory by that point. Afterward, according to Macauley Peterson, there for Chess.FM and producing videos and blog entries as well, Radjabov said "I just forgot everything, as usual." You can't forget things in the KID and expect to live long. Radja has a good score with it and we love him for playing it, but his was getting cleaned up by Ivanchuk the other day and here he just got stomped. Van Wely analysis video at ChessVibes (h/t Manu in the comments).

Radjabov got back to an even score today with a win over Kamsky. Black looked like he was doing well but missed a couple of nasty little moves on the queenside (23.Bc3!) and was suddenly down a pawn and in trouble. The computer offers 25..g5!? as an attempt to avoid the bad endgame Kamsky ended up with and couldn't hold. That dropped the American (who I hear is spending more time in Russia than Brooklyn these days) down to an even score. Movsesian was ground down by Aronian's Catalan in the 5th but took his turn bashing the Morozevich piñata in the sixth to move back to +1. Moro played the currently chic Caro-Kann and got squashed. It looked like an opposite-side castling Sicilian with White two or three tempi ahead. Black sacrificed a bishop for a desperation assault that just wasn't there.

Adams got his first win of the event by outplaying Wang Yue in the Chinese player's own specialty, a dynamic endgame. Black plucked a pawn and won confidently when it appeared it would be much more difficult. Stellwagen got an impressive push going against van Wely's Najdorf but couldn't seal the deal. 32.Qe3! planning a Qa7 invasion would likely have been decisive. Another disappointing outing from Stellwagen, who so far hasn't missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Aronian-Ivanchuk looked like a clean no hits, no runs, no errors game out of an offbeat opening sequence. A subtle struggle but I admit we didn't give it much attention with so much action on the other boards in round six.

Much of that action was in Carlsen-Karjakin. It looked at first like Carlsen, playing yet another offbeat line (eschewing b3), had overreached in his attack and that Karjakin had chances to move to +3 in a hurry. But the tremendous knight on e5 compensated for the ugly kingside pawn structure, and even the doubled h-pawns turned out to be quite helpful. Karjakin set up a solid defensive position but then went about blundering elsewhere, allowing Carlsen's knight to invade to squares they could scarcely dream of when they were ponies. Soon we were waiting for Carlsen to deliver the knock-out blow and score his first win of the event with 29.Nxf8 Qxf8 30.Nd7 Nf6 31.Qxf5 is over. (29..Kxf8 30.Qxg7+ Ke8 31.Bxh6 is curtains.) Much to our surprise he missed it after a considerable think. But White kept the pressure on and soon Carlsen had another chance to put the game away. He even had more time than Karjakin. But 35.d5? let the win slip away when the natural 35.Qxg6 ends things quickly. It did take some startling moves for Karjakin to save himself, admittedly, but it was still poor finishing from Carlsen after a very impressive attacking game. He showed his moxie by playing on in the rook endgame for another hour or two before settling for his sixth draw in a row. A lucky escape for Karjakin, and don't they say the tournament winner is always lucky?

Smeets and Dominguez drew so quickly that the Dutch champ had plenty of time to come on to the ICC and kibitz with us, admitting his game hadn't been particularly entertaining. They made all of four moves out of theory (Stellwagen-L'Ami, 2008) before splitting the point and preserving their +1 scores. Caution and time are not on your sides, my friends... Round 7: Ivanchuk-Movsesian, Karjakin-Aronian, van Wely-Carlsen, Kamsky-Stellwagen, Adams -Radjabov, Dominguez-Wang, Morozevich-Smeets.

Navara, Kasimjanov, and Short lead the B group with 4/6 scores. Nigel is the sort of player who would particularly savor the rare act of checkmating his opponent, as he did today against Reinderman. Reinderman! It would be great to see The Nige back in the A group next year, though he might not enjoy it so much. As far back as 2000 he was waxing rhapsodic to me about the joys of playing in weaker events in sunny, friendly locales instead of having his brains bashed in by top-10 heavies. He last played in the A group in 2005 and scored -2. (Btw, Moro went -4 that year.) Top seed Wesley So, all 15 years of him, has moved to the top of the C group with two consecutive wins. The 2010 B group beckons.

Let it be said that on one day, on one occasion, sanity prevailed in FIDE.

January 21 2009 - FIDE

Drug testing is still relatively rare in chess. However, it does occur in various official events and was carried out during the course of the Dresden Olympiad. Unfortunately, a high proportion of the tests were scheduled during the last round and there was a lack of personnel, which lead to a procedural error: there was not a designated Doping Control Officer present at this match (USA v Ukraine).

After losing a crucial game for his country, Mr Ivanchuk was distraught. The Hearing Panel concludes that although the arbiter attempted to inform Mr Ivanchuk in English that he should accompany him for a doping test, Mr Ivanchuk apparently failed to understand the instructions, especially since English is not Mr Ivanchuk's first language. If there had been a Doping Control Officer present, he would have immediately gone to Mr Ivanchuk's board and there would have been communication between him and Mr Ivanchuk. In that case the outcome might have been different. Because there was no notification by the Doping Control officer, there was no refusal in the sense of the regulations.

The Conclusion:

The procedural error allied with Mr Ivanchuk's state of mind led him unintentionally to miss the test. The Hearing Panel therefore concludes unanimously that there should be no penalty.

Pretty much what I figured would happen. Nobody loses face. But had the same thing happened to a lesser-known player from a less important federation, I seriously doubt the result would have been the same. Nothing new there, or unique to chess, but not a comforting thought. Btw, when he was on Chess.FM with me for round one of Corus, Peter Svidler took a moment to criticize the continued existence of drug testing now that Ilyumzhinov's dream of getting chess into the Olympics is long dead.

Seriously, doesn't anybody want to win this thing? After four rounds in the Corus A group we have five players on +1, three on even, and five on -1. Two years ago by this point Radjabov was on 3.5/4 with Topalov a half-point behind. Three players, including Carlsen, believe it or not, were on -2 already. And Shirov was really helping out the cause by losing three out of four to start off. Last year after four rounds the eventual co-winners Carlsen and Aronian were on +2 and three players, including Topalov, were on -2. Leko had drawn 4/4, but he's not even around to blame this year, nor is Kramnik around to scapegoat. Morozevich and Ivanchuk are responsible for six out of the seven decisive games!

Whatever the reason, we had a rare day of 7/7 draws in round four yesterday. Last year this happened in the third round and it was the first time in anyone's memory. Last year we had 20 draws from the first 28 games. This year it's 21. This tournament is significantly weaker, swapping Anand, Topalov, and Kramnik, for Smeets, Stellwagen, and Dominguez, a net loss of nearly 200 400 points. Most expected this drop to liven things up. Outsiders looking to prove themselves usually play aggressively and, let's face it, 2700s make more mistakes than 2800s. Or so we thought. Instead, both Dutch newcomers, who scored -1 in the B group last year, have played both well and conservatively. Smeets got a gift time forfeit from Ivanchuk in the first and drew the next three. (Not sure what to call playing the ultra-sharp Botvinnik Semi-Slav when you have already analyzed the final position. Not exactly conservative.) Stellwagen and Dominguez have drawn all four games. Stellwagen in particular seems bent on making nothing out of something and seems happy with draws despite gaining good positions consistently. You have to figure that Elo being destiny most of the time this policy will eventually backfire. Outsiders should be playing for scalps, not half-points!

Aronian and Carlsen are also unlikely drawing masters, if for reverse reasons. They played a wild battle in round four, Aronian sacrificing a piece for a pair of pawns and then desperately holding on to draw the knight-down endgame. Radjabov is doing his usual routine of offering up quick draws with white so he can rest up for do-or-die battles with black, especially in the King's Indian. His round-three win with it over Ivanchuk repeated his standard formula of being positionally crushed only to break loose in time trouble and win. Kasparov pointed out several ways for Ivanchuk to continue on to a nice zugzwang win. But the time-trouble addicted Ukrainian wizard was down to a few minutes by move 30 and just couldn't handle the sudden complications. Horrible.

That moved Radjabov up to a share of the lead with, it seems, half the field. Smeets, Karjakin, Movsesian, and Kamsky are also on +1. Kamsky destroyed Morozevich in a remarkably straightforward game. Kamsky's openings still look suspect on occasion, but when he gets a tailwind and can attack, he is as good as anyone in the world. Fast and merciless. We've seen some impressive endgame saves in the first third of the event. Wang Yue has been on both sides, holding off Karjakin in a marathon and then being frustrated by good defense by van Wely. Adams held on to draw Morozevich in a rook endgame that must have been very close to lost. Stellwagen had the better of the draw against Ivanchuk. With Black so tied down I wonder if Ivanchuk would have gone for 31.g4!? as a winning attempt had colors been reversed.

Thursday's round five: Aronian-Movsesian, Ivanchuk-Carlsen, Karjakin-Stellwagen, van Wely-Radjabov, Kamsky-Wang Yue, Adams-Smeets, Dominguez-Morozevich. We should get the latest chapter in the epic tale of King's Indian battles between van Wely and Radjabov. The ball is in the Azerbaijani's court right now after van Wely beat him at the Dresden Olympiad. Carlsen owned Ivanchuk for a while, but Chucky has begun balancing the ledger lately with two classical wins late last year and knocking Carlsen out of Cap d'Agde. At this point it would just be good to see more hard punches thrown and a little blood on the canvas.

One great thing about Corus is that even if there are a few lame draws you always have more than enough great chess to around. Radjabov indulged his penchant for occasionally taking a pass with white and made a 15-move draw with Aronian. Morozevich and Ivanchuk rebounded with wins, co-leaders Smeets and Karjakin drew their game, and Movsesian joined the lead with a win over Adams.

The game of the day looked like it was going to be nothing more than a brief blooper when Wang Yue hung a piece against Ivanchuk on move nine. The Chinese missed 9..Rb4!, pulling the rook up short of the expected destination on b2. The knight on a7 was stuck for good and it was only a question of whether or not Wang Yue could find enough play to avoid resigning on the spot. If this is all sounding eerily familiar, congratulations, your memory goes back to May 10, 2008. That was round three of last year's M-Tel Masters, in which Wang Yue's countryman Bu Xiangzhi was on the border of resignation after nine moves against the same Ivanchuk. There was also a sac on b5 in that one, though colors were reversed.

This case of déjà Bu doesn't end there. Wang Yue also played on instead of adding his name to a list of humiliating miniatures. But he did a far better job of conjuring up counterplay as Ivanchuk collected the material. With a great bishop sac and a little help from Ivanchuk, Wang Yue even came very close to a miraculous recovery. But the time he spent kicking himself after his blunder had left him with very little clock and he missed 20.Qg4+! (20.Qf7 is also difficult to meet) and allowed the black king to find cover on e8. But who can resist castling with check in the middlegame? After that the white king was in more danger than Black's and the game was safely back in Ivanchuk's hands. He even finished with a nice rook sac and Wang Yue, who was literally unbeatable for most of 2008, resigned on move 25. A bizarre game.

Morozevich decided to take it slow against van Wely's Grunfeld, likely both to calm his nerves after his disastrous r1 loss and because van Wely is no fan of maneuvering games. The Dutchman is trying to recover from a miserable 2008 and comes into this Corus rated 56 points lower than last year's. He looked determined to prove Morozevich correct in this one though, and some ill-advised pawn pushing on the kingside allowed White's central control to become decisive with surprising speed. 22..g5 is a case study for bad pawn pushing. van Wely still came close to holding things together with tape and wire partly thanks to sloppy finishing play by Morozevich. 39..Ng7 would have made things harder for White. The win brought Morozevich back up to an even score, along with Ivanchuk.

The third decisive game came out of an enterprising old Giuoco Piano gambit that goes back to Lange and Anderssen. Movsesian is one of several players near the elite who uses Bc4 instead of Bb5. It seemed apt against Adams, one of the best Lopez players of this generation. White built up fearsome pressure on the f-file and basically kept it up until Black cracked. The try 23..b5!? 24.Bb3 Na6 25.Bc2 Nc5 might have been the last best chance. The knight looks impressive on e5 but couldn't hold back the tide.

For the second day in a row Stellwagen had his chances. Carlsen's unorthodox handling of the Berlin, allowing a quick e6, gave White a strong initiative. He added to it with the sac of the b-pawn and GM Benjamin spent a while showing various lines that could lead to serious danger for Black after the natural 24.Nh4+ Kf7 23.Rd7+ Ke8 24.Rad1. Black has to play accurately to hold the balance, although analysis shows a draw. Then Carlsen avoided the quick repetion and the game continued until swaps led to a draw. Interesting stuff, though it's hard to imagine anyone repeating 11..Bb7.

Smeets played one of the fashionable quiet lines against the Najdorf with kingside castling against Karjakin and didn't get much. Kamsky's Caro-Kann held comfortably against Dominguez. Nobody with two wins, nobody with two losses. Tea and cookies for everyone. Movsesian gets a stern test of his share of the lead with black against Carlsen, who probably won't play g3 against a Sicilian again. Round 3: Carlsen-Movsesian, Aronian-Stellwagen, Ivanchuk-Radjabov, Karjakin-Wang Yue, van Wely-Smeets, Kamsky-Morozevich, Adams-Dominguez.

No one could win for the second day in a row in the B group either. Hou Yifan beat top seed Sasikiran to move back to an even score. Short beat yesterday's winner Vallejo with some entertaining knight maneuvers. Brazilian veteran Mecking, a prodigy and WCh candidate in the 70's who left the game for a dozen years due to severe illness before returning in 1991, lost for the second time. David Howell lost his second as well. The clear leader in the C group is Dutch veteran IM Manuel Bosboom, who bamboozled (bosboozled?) his countryman Nijboer after barely surviving for a long time.

Did someone say "favorites"? Two of the three highest-rated players in the Corus A group lost in the first round. It's no coincidence that they are the two least consistent players in the elite, Ivanchuk and Morozevich. They both showed their dark sides today, at least as dark as things get for 2770+ players. Ivanchuk went from a position my compadre on Chess.FM's live coverage, super GM Peter Svidler, called close to winning to equal and worse before losing on time on move 40. We're used to this sort of thing from Ivanchuk, who comes close to losing at least a dozen games per year on time, though he doesn't often actually flag. He does turn many wins into draws and many draws into losses in made time scrambles, although we don't have stats on this because chess ignorantly discards the time per move info.

How hard would it be for the organizers to include the time per move in the official PGN files? All relay software maintains the times. Then we need to make sure TWIC and ChessBase keep it too. This can't be hard. Imagine how much entertaining and insightful data we could cull if the databases had the time for each move as well as the time control of each game/event. FIDE should get on this instead of collecting piss cups. Who needs to take the first step? The elite organizers, I suppose. Perhaps they could work together with DGT and/or ChessBase on this. The Grand Slam folks could strike a blow for professionalism by implementing a standard others could easily follow.

Oh yeah, Corus. So Ivanchuk, the top seed, lost on time with white to Jan Smeets, the lowest-rated player in the field. The final position doesn't look that hard for White to defend. Earlier Ivanchuk could have put Smeets on the ropes with 23.a6! b6 24.Bxb6. After the game, GM Jan Gustafsson, kibitzing on the ICC from Wijk aan Zee where he is seconding Smeets, joked that "all the bullet games we played in training paid off!" Behold, the Smeets tag!

That game ended well after the only other decisive game of the day. Morozevich achieved the positionally desirable ..d5 break in a Paulsen against Karjakin only to overlook that he was also achieving the tactically undesirable getting his butt kicked. Apparently Moro didn't see a nice queen sac combo until it was too late to defend and he resigned on move 26. Svidler was positive about Black's position after the opening, believing in Black's defense on the kingside. Moro likely missed the spectacular 26..g6 27.Bxg6 hxg6 28.Qxg6+ Kg8 29.Qg7+!!. Ouch. Just a few weeks ago we saw Bacrot-Leko end with a similar queen sac for double check.

It looked like it was going to a banner day for the home team, which is composed of the three lowest-rated players in the event. Smeets won and Stellwagen was on his way to a win in what Svidler called "a technical position" against Movsesian. But time trouble worked against the Dutch this time and he let things slip before accepting a well-timed draw offer with seconds on his clock. Van Wely had a tricky exchange-up position against Dominguez but the last game to finish also ended in a disappointing draw for the Dutch. Grunfeld virtuoso Svidler had much to say on the opening and van Wely's new 17.h3. Black seemed well-equipped to hold after his forced exchange sac.

The headline game of the round was Carlsen-Radjabov and it was a little surprising to see Carlsen avoid main lines with 3.g3 against Radjabov's Sicilian. It was likely a quick decision to avoid surprises when Radjabov played 2..e6 instead of the 2..Nc6 he is practically married to. Once again the young stars, who are my favorites for the top spots, showed that it's not the fight in the opening that matters, but the fight in the players. Carlsen dropped 14.Bh6 on the board and the boring opening suddenly got very interesting. The players navigated some remarkable complications to reach a heavy-piece endgame. Carlsen seemed content to head into the second time control instead of looking for chances against the open black king. The Norwegian tried every trick to squeeze the four-rook endgame with 3 vs 2 on the kingside, but Radjabov never looked in trouble. The pretty find 53..Rg6! proved Black had things in hand.

Aronian misplayed a slight edge against Wang Yue and had the worse of the draw. 30.Be5 was criticized by Svidler. Kamsky-Adams was the fizzle of the day despite an interesting novelty by Kamsky and was drawn after 23 cautious moves. Down in the B group, favorites Efimenko, Vallejo, and Kasimdjanov all scored. Navara, who has fallen a ways after nearly hitting the top 10 a few years ago, beat Motylev with black in 30 moves. In the C, the ever-dangerous IM Manuel Bosboom (claim to fame, beating Kasparov in the 1999 Wijk aan Zee off-day blitz event, may it some day return) beat favorite Howell with black using the 3..Qd6 Scandinavian. Top seed Wesley So of the Philippines passed his Nijboer test with a black win. The reigning world junior and women's world junior champs, both from India, had an awkward first-round pairing. The WWJCh beat the WJCh as Gupta had plenty of comp for the exchange but lost track of the Dronavalli's b-pawn near the the time control and apparently lost on time in what looks like a balanced position.

Coincidentally, the two leaders meet in the second round. Round 2: Movsesian-Adams, Dominguez-Kamsky, Morozevich-van Wely, Smeets-Karjakin, Wang Yue-Ivanchuk, Radjabov-Aronian, Stellwagen-Carlsen. I'm back on ICC Chess.FM with Joel Benjamin. ICC members can Skype to 'iccchessfm' (or call +1 (321) 422-3283) and leave a voicemail comment, question or anything else to participate in our call of he day contest. A winner per day gets a copy of Kasparov's latest Modern Chess book on his first matches against Karpov, signed by Garry.

Busy couple of days with a trip to DC with Garry and a couple of sick people here at home. And then there was always the possibility of my fingers freezing to the keyboard. Holy icicles it's cold.

It's the Corus chess festival again! So our last page of 2008 polling will have to wait for the first Corus off day next Wednesday. Aside from my live ICC Chess.FM coverage with a coterie of GMs (starting with Peter Svidler in, oh, eight hours or so) I'll be putting up my usual daily round reports here as well as video podcasts with animated game replays and trivia questions. (ICC members can win a House of Staunton chess set, one given out each round. How many times do I have to mention this before they send ME one, dammit?) Macauley Peterson is in Wijk aan Zee bringing on-site reports and audio-video goodness.

There's room at the top in the Corus A group this year, and usually it's not a good sign when who's not playing in a tournament is bigger news than who is playing. But that's the case this year, if only because Corus always puts together a fantastic field with most of the top ten, some hungry outsiders, and a few Dutchies praying for survival. Anand, Topalov, and Kramnik are absent this year. But all three of them played a year ago and none of them even had a share of first place. That was split between Aronian and Carlsen on a mere +3 score in a very hard-fought and balanced event. Every player had a win and only Ivanchuk went undefeated. Anand and Radjabov were a half-point off the lead. Kramnik, who rarely does well at Corus, only managed an even score. Topalov lost four games and finished -1.

So who's going to miss those guys? Certainly not the top seeds in this year's event, a list that includes both defending champions. Aronian also split first in 2007, with Topalov and Radjabov, who is also back. Ivanchuk and Carlsen are obviously top podium prospects. I'd have to give Carlsen the best odds and a decent shot at a big score in this lower-octane field. Speaking of people who put up big scores, Morozevich is back in Wijk aan Zee for the first time since completely bombing out in 2005, where he lost six games and only missed last place thanks to Sokolov. Moro had a mediocre second half of 2008 and as usual, could finish anywhere from last to first at Corus. Radjabov's solid results continue to impress. Though the Grand Prix leader can't count on +3 from his King's Indian every time out, he should be in contention for the top spot.

The second tier in the event, those who would be minor surprises to see on the podium, include Movsesian (last year's B winner and still sporting a spiffy high rating), Kamsky, Dominguez, Adams, and Karjakin. They all have the skills and have had the occasional great result, but can't be considered favorites on par with the other five. As these things usually go, however, at least one of them should get hot and get up there. Wang Yue belongs somewhere in between these two groups. His aura of invincibility fell away with his even score at the Elista Grand Prix, but there is no way his incredibly solid 2008 results were a fluke. He's a natural born grinder who seems impossible to ruffle. Stamina is very important in a 13-rounder like Corus.

Hometown hero van Wely is joined by two first-timer countrymen, Stellwagen and Smeets. They are mostly competing against each other to stay out of the cellar and to score an upset or two. Smeets and Stellwagen both finished -1 in the B Group last year. But stay positive!

The full schedule is up and the event starts with a bang: Carlsen-Radjabov. A Dragon, we hope? The rest: Stellwagen-Movsesian, Aronian-Wang Yue, Ivanchuk-Smeets, Karjakin-Morozevich, van Wely-Dominguez, Kamsky-Adams. Looking ahead, defending champs Aronian and Carlsen meet in round four. Final rounds are usually anticlimactic, but Morozevich-Ivanchuk and Radjabov-Wang Yue could be critical encounters.

The B group is again incredibly strong with a 2641 average. Let's see if Vallejo's ego-boosting in weaker events has put him in shape for a big result among peers. Reinderman! Young David Howell and even younger Wesley So are the top seeds in the C group, which is weird. They'll run the dreaded Nijboer Gauntlet along with India's world junior champion duo Abhijeet Gupta and Dronavalli Harika.

Games begin at 13:30 local, 7:30am EST. They have a new time control, finally adding increment to the third set. Off days are 21, 26, 29. Live java at the official site here. Add your finest coverage links for promotion tomorrow.

Can anyone let me know asap where to buy a good wooden set and board in DC? Don't seem to be any chess shops and the few toy stores don't have much. Does the US Chess Center sell such? Bookstores or big chain toy stores happen to have any? Thanks much.

Just a few bits and bobs before our last 2008 polls and the start of Corus 2009. I was embarrassed to find out today that a new chess and game store opened up right under my nose here in Brooklyn six months ago and I hadn't noticed. Weird. I was walking by with daughter #1 (6 months old last Saturday!) and stopped in at the grandiosely named New York Chess & Game Shop at 192 Flatbush Ave. I chatted with one of the owners, Christian, for a while. They have classes for kids and adults and a surprising amount of space with tables and a computer downstairs. Lots of sets, not so much on the books. Next weekend they are hosting a 30-game blitz match between Alex Lenderman and Yaacov Norowitz. Charging admission for it seems a little cheeky to me, even $5. Get people to the door and then in the door to sign up for classes and buy stuff. Looks like a good space to host a chess party. How many people would show up in Brooklyn if I hosted a Linares party (say) next month?

What started as a Shirov comment on a ChessVibes note on Kramnik's ChessBase interview turned into a back-and-forth with a few illuminating bits. I'll add that it's not fair or even logical to expect the players to unite and condemn any perceived unfairness in the chess universe. Everyone has their own buttons and limits. A holier-than-thou attitude just makes useful, pragmatic solidarity that much harder to reach. We only need enough players to stick together on enough of the big things to make a difference. E.g. having one or two local seeds in the Grand Prix as a way of greasing the sponsorship wheels wasn't going to crash the system. Giving a wildcard a free pass into the final eight candidates tournament, on the other hand, is ridiculous favoritism and abuse. This is why principles come first, not the principals. Har har.

A few of my old KasparovChess.com friends and colleagues are doing interesting things in Israel. I taught Boris Alterman more useful English than he taught me useful things about chess, which shows only how much better his brain is than mine. I miss ya, Deep Boris!

Can someone please explain why the USCL team "the Queens Pioneers" gets an apostrophe? If it ain't the "New York's Yankees" or "Manchester's United" it ain't the "Queens' Pioneers." Argh. -- Ah, I see it was only a rogue editor's gaffe at Chess Life Online. Still, argh.

I'm going to be rocking the mic on ICC Chess.FM for Corus, so make sure you pick up extra cotton balls for your ears this week. Our first GM commentator (I'm just there to run the various contests, ask leading questions, and be annoying) is none other than St. Petersburg's greatest living cricket expert Peter Svidler! January 17, mark the date. Expert analysts Joel Benjamin and Larry Christiansen follow. Thanks to our generous sponsors we'll be giving away New In Chess subscriptions, beautiful House of Staunton chess sets and Everyman books hand-signed by Garry Kasparov. (He just signed two boxes of them Sunday and they are currently taking up space in my hallway. So no delay in receiving your prizes.) I'll also being doing podcast wrap-ups.

One review item per week, that's all we ask. It works for how pro sports hand out awards. This one might look like a forced move, but I couldn't bring myself to allow lame multiple item voting. So it's one and done, with items in convenient alphabetical order. You can give your #2 and #3 choices in the comments, and of course add any items I missed. I was tempted to add "continued FIDE craziness" to the list, but decided it was too depressing and too vague.

Next week, we'll get specific about best games and performances.

Vladimir Kramnik seems to be going for more than an OTB makeover after his WCh match loss to Anand and his split with longtime manager Carsten Hensel. He seems to be looking for a new start on other fronts as well, all coinciding with the birth of his first child in France a few weeks ago. (I was startled to find out her name is the same as that of Garry Kasparov's wife, Daria (Dasha). No doubt a coincidence, and it's not an uncommon name, but it was still startling.) Kramnik came looking for a platform, a sort of "not that anyone asked, but..." The result was this interview with Frederic Friedel at ChessBase.

First there's some nice chitchat about fatherhood and childbirth -- I went through the same thing six months ago. Then there's a bunch of bizarre stuff about player questionnaires solving the problems of the chess world, as if Ilyumzhinov and FIDE could give a flying flock about what the players say whether it be in writing, on a conference call, or written on the wall in the Kalmykian presidential palace bathroom. It's what the players DO that matters, and as long as the broad majority of elite players keep lining up to do Kirsan's bidding, he has nothing to worry about. Right now the Grand Slam is the only hint of anything that would challenge Ilyumzhinov's position as the only game in town.

While I'm on that tangent, several sensible insiders (and there aren't many) have written to me to say I shouldn't be so harsh on Ilyumzhinov and FIDE about the mess with the Grand Prix since I don't know "what really went on." But that's the point. FIDE continues to do the business of the chess world as if it were a personal toy box instead of an international sports federation. If doing everything behind closed doors is deemed to be necessary then YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Back to Kramnik. After the rules have been changed in his favor several times, it's time to criticize the changing of the rules in the favor of others. Kramnik's proposal, however, isn't exactly for equal treatment for all, but making sure he is treated at least as well as Kamsky and Topalov.

"I am not asking for any privileges. The only thing I am asking for and insisting on is that I must have exactly the same rights as the loser of that match."

I guess that would be "fair" to Kramnik, if not the rest of the chess world. (FYI: Getting the same privileges as Topalov and Kamsky is still getting privileges.) Freddy then comes close to the right question, asking whether or not Kramnik would participate in a cycle from the bottom, along with the commoners, if Topalov and Kamsky are stripped of their post-match privileges. Kramnik says he would "be ready to play in Khanty-Mansiysk World Cup or anything." I would LOVE to see that happen, of course, because it would mean the ridiculous favoritism of Ilyumzhinov's proposed candidates tournament has been derailed. However, it's far more likely that if Kirsan has backing for the event he'll simply do the expected and proffer a spot to Kramnik, perhaps earlier than planned.

This is the way it usually goes, with more favors instead of fewer, more wrongs to try to make a right. Kramnik makes a valuable distinction by saying it's not about the individuals, but the system. Kamsky and Topalov inevitably will take offense and defend their privileges on some grounds other than the simple fact they belong to them and not to someone else. It's not wrong to defend your interests. The problem is that no one comes out against favoritism until they've collected their share. It's always fair when you're getting and always unfair when you're not. Kamsky can say he deserves it because he was forced to play this idiotic extra match with Topalov. Topalov can say he deserves it because he's the world #1 or whatever else pops into his head. But none of it has anything to do with what's fair. It all compounds the unfairness to the rest of the "unprivileged" players who just want a clean shot at playing for the world championship on a level field.

Just for a quibble, Kramnik also adds that the loser of a WCh match has "always" been seeded into the finals of the next cycle, which takes us back a mighty long way. Back then the challenger had battled through a brutal cycle in the first place and couldn't participate in the qualifier for the next cycle because he was preparing for and playing in the match. The other guy was the world champion. And while it was reasonable, if not essential, to skip the Grand Prix, the World Cup is still nearly a year away. But of course that's far from the main issue.

By all means, let's have questionnaires, hearings, phone calls, town hall meetings, whatever. But you aren't going to make all the people happy all the time and FIDE's changes aren't being done to accommodate players anyway, unless you mean what some players represent, by which I mean money. It would be interesting to see Kramnik reborn as an opposition leader, but I fear he's merely looking for leverage he'll swap for those privileges he's not asking for.

Kramnik concludes the first part of the interview by saying he won't be playing in Linares this year, which is a shame but understandable. I wouldn't trade my first months of fatherhood for anything and I hope Kramnik enjoys it as much as I have.

Is your nation's gas supply being choked off by a disgruntled former superpower neighbor? If you need to heat things up a bit, why not invite Peter Leko over for a rapid chess match? That's what they did in Mukachevo, Ukraine, where their number one, Vassily Ivanchuk, just beat the Hungarian 3.5-2.5 in their six-game affair. Ivanchuk had the better of things most of the way but didn't break through until game five, winning the only decisive game of the match. Leko tried to get counterplay with a passed a-pawn in an endgame, but 20 moves after his 53..a3, all three of his kingside pawns had disappeared and his a-pawn hadn't moved a cubit.

The official website of the Mukachevo event is being blocked by the Google "safe browsing" protocol if you use Firefox or any other browser that uses that service by default. This isn't uncommon. Careless designers and admins do a lot of copy-paste of scripts and other code, especially ad code, and often don't bother to check it all for links to malware sites. Apparently they caught it before the event started but not before Google blocked it. Anyway, you didn't miss much. The site looks like something done in Frontpage in 1997. (Amusingly there is a design firm credit. They really shouldn't put their name on things until they learn to, you know, design.) Still, you don't see many chess event sites with a music section.

Meanwhile, in the far north, Peter Svidler and Magnus Carlsen were battling it out in the final of the Aker Chess Challenge rapid event. But first, a three-way tie for first in the group phase between those two and America's Hikaru Nakamura required a quick round of blitz to see who played in the final. Tiebreaks were made necessary by Carlsen's defeat of Svidler on the final day of rapids. Nakamura tempted fate and decided to go directly to blitz instead of trying to beat Carlsen with white in the rapid, agreeing to a 12-move draw. I suppose this makes sense for a putative underdog, though he'd already beaten Carlsen with black in rapid. Of course hindsight is 20-20, blitz is a crapshoot and it looked bad when Nakamura went on to lose both blitz games and be relegated to the bronze match against Lie, who lost all six of the rapid games.

Photo from Christoffer Strand's Facebook page

In the final, Svidler didn't get much with 4.d3 against Carlsen's Berlin in the first game. But the second Ruy Lopez and their second oppo-bishop position was good enough for the Russian Champion to play on and he eventually ground out the win to take the title. Congrats to Svidler, who bounces back a bit from his -1 Pearl Spring result. Nakamura duly destroyed Lie with white and then got out of a little spot of trouble in the second game with a pretty bishop sacrifice leading to perpetual check. Not a bad result going 2-2 with Svidler and Carlsen in the rapid.

This spiffy little event starts today. The Aker Chess Challenge is a rapid event with Carlsen, Svidler, Nakamura, and underdog Norwegian GM Lie. Six rounds of all-play all lead to gold and bronze matches. It's part of the Gjøvik International Chess Festival, the traditional swiss of which is already underway. The live link is here. Games start at 1320 local time, 7:20am EST.

It's nice to see Norway trying to put on events worthy of their golden boy Carlsen. I don't think he played in Norway once in 2008, unsurprising considering his busy global schedule. I wonder if his success could lead to the creation of a Norwegian equivalent to the MTel supertournament? Topalov and Danailov basically created that themselves. It would almost be a shame to see a great event like Gausdal blown into another category 20 when there are so few international round-robins with norm chances. When was the last time Anand played in India? 2002?

UPDATE: Don't see anything on the results page, but the games page comes through. Day 1 results: Svidler 1-0 Nakamura; Carlsen 1-0 Lie; Nakamura 1-0 Lie; Svidler 1/2 Carlsen. Obvious errors in the Svidler-Carlsen score at the end.

UPDATE 2: Nakamura beat Carlsen with black on the second day to tie him for second in the standings with two rounds to play. Svidler is in first with 3/4 thanks to the tender mercies of Lie, who was completely winning against the big Russian after a nice little combination but went on to blow the win and then fall into a mate in two. The better player is always lucky, no? It's Svidler 3, Nakamura, Carlsen 2.5, Lie 0. Sunday's pairings: Lie-Nakamura, Carlsen-Svidler, Svidler-Lie, Nakamura-Carlsen. There are blitz tiebreaks if needed to decide who plays in the match for first place.