May 2009 Archives

Back in 2006 Czech David Navara jumped out of the junior lists and shot up to a heady #13 spot in the world rankings. Gravity and nerves dragged him back down and he almost slipped out of the top 100. He's in the Grand Prix but has gone largely unnoticed, turning in inconsistent performances and negative scores. As the top Czech player Navara has had the chance to play a series of rapid challenge matches against the world's best. He has punched above his weight class in rapid a few times in the past, especially in winning the Mainz Ordix Open in 2007. He certainly hasn't aimed low of late. Last year he was taken to school by Vladimir Kramnik. (Navara's self-effacing notes on that match in NIC were good stuff.)

This year he's up against another of the elite, and best rapid players, Vassily Ivanchuk, in the CEZ Trophy in Prague. After half of the eight games, it's 3-1 Ivanchuk, winning both his whites. Ivanchuk's 21..Bd2 in game three induces a flashback to his 32..Be2 against Dominguez at MTel two weeks ago.

That's what they used to call the way so many of Bobby Fischer's opponents collapsed against him. Now it can refer to how chess fans feel when they see the first of what will no doubt be a long list of mainstream media works about the legendary American world champion. Fischer died last January and it didn't take long for several film projects to be announced. ChessBase has a piece up on two of the first to to make it to the screen, at least the festival screen. The first is one of Damian Chapa's one-man projects. He plays Fischer and you can get a sense of the quality project just by the fact that Chapa's other recent biopic he also plays Roman Polanski. Let's just hope nobody sees it and that one day Fischer gets something worthy of him. "Walk the Line" was good...

The other is an Icelandic doc on Fischer's final years and his friendship with Sæmi Pálsson. Or "friendship" considering the bizarre circumlocutions of Fischer's life.

Of more interest there's a YouTube clip of an old and familiar Fischer interview recently posted by the CBC.

Been a bit busy here on the homefront in the past week with sister and nephew in town. Of course we had to go to Coney Island, every four-year-old's dream destination. My own Miglette will have to wait until next year for the rides, but she really liked watching her cousin in action.

Some bits and bobs from recently completed events. Several people have pointed out that the multiple pawn sac line of the Sveshnikov that Carlsen played against Shirov in the decisive game of MTel has been analyzed and Black's 21..Kh8 novelty was recommended in a book by Rogozenko. He called it "with compensation," which is one of the many shorthands for unclear. With so many lines, an author can't work them all out to a conclusion, fair enough. "Compensation" in such a sharp position isn't very helpful, however. It's kill or be killed and Black needs to make something happen very quickly with almost no room for error, as we saw in this game. Carlsen barely managed to generate any threats to compensate for his missing trio of pawns. The more direct line 25..e3 26.g3 Qd6 27.Rd1 exf2+ 28.Kxf2 is a little funky but still looks good for White. But it just seems unnatural to leave the pawns sitting on d4 and e4.

Boris Gelfand beat Svidler in the final match of the ACP Rapid event in Odessa. Svidler has been on an impressive hot streak lately, and looked ready to continue his winning ways against Gelfand. They drew the first two games and then Svidler was ready to take a commanding advantage with a win with black in game three. He finagled two pawns but couldn't contain White's activity. Not only did the win escape, but the bishop pair eventually even won the game for Gelfand. The script was repeated in game four. Svidler had the bishops this time and was pocketing material. Gelfand single-mindedly went after the white king and proved the theory that a bad position and a plan can beat a good position and no plan. Still with that winning position Svidler blundered and allowed an unusual mate in five. It's hard to see that the king is trapped by the knight on h1. Earlier, Svidler knocked out Grischuk using the Alekhine's Defense in a game well worth a look.

Congrats to Diego Flores for winning the Argentine Championship. I first saw him play when he was the only player to draw Kasparov in a simul on Garry's visit to Buenos Aires in 1998, which is when I first met him. ## Hikaru Nakamura was just added to the field of the London Chess Classic taking place in December. There's he'll be measured by Carlsen, Kramnik, and Adams, as well as Short, Ni Hua, and McShane. One spot in the field is still open. Who would you like to see fill it? ## Believe it or not, unkillable chess zombie Vassily Ivanchuk plays on and on, going directly from his catastrophe in Sofia to play a rapid match against David Navara in Prague. The plucky Czech is out of his league here, and maybe Chucky can catch some Zs on the train?

Word games, poetry, and a knight's tour all mixed into one. For the bored only. This classic Lewis Carroll trick has nothing to do with chess but is certainly a much better poem.

Want drama? Just add Shirov! Spatvian GM Alexei Shirov won clear first at the MTel Masters in Sofia with a clutch final-round demolition of leader Magnus Carlsen in the final round. Topalov drew with Wang Yue, so Shirov's +3 undefeated 6.5/10 score gave him the trophy over Carlsen and Topalov, both with 6/10. The decisive game itself was rather anticlimactic (echoing the last-round Nakamura-Friedel steamrollering in the last round of the US Ch). Carlsen kept offering pawns to load up on a kingside attack. Shirov kept taking them. When the kingside attack turned out to be a mirage Carlsen could only resign on move 30 down roughly 14 pawns. Congratulations to Shirov, an eternal fan favorite who might be the latest veteran to begin a second spring. I wonder how Shirov feels his play these days compares to his early "Fire on Board" years as a tactical phenomenon.

The win over Carlsen was also a convenient confirmation that Shirov was playing very well, and his score couldn't just be explained away by saying his wins came only against Ivanchuk, who has played like roadkill. Speaking of, Ivanchuk is still trying to assuage his pains with a consolation win against Dominguez up two pawns in an opposite-colored bishop endgame. Update: Chucky wins! Deserved if only because he was killing the Cuban in their first-half game and missed various wins.

Add: I totally forgot to mention that this win also puts Shirov into the Bilbao Grand Slam final with the already-seeded Karjakin (Corus), Grischuk (Linares), and Topalov (Nanjing 08). According to the recent Grand Slam Chess Association press release from Sofia, this year the Grand Slam final will only be those four players, unlike last year's six. Still just double round-robin or will they go to a real 4x4 match-tournament? Just six rounds doesn't seem a worthy distance. But this sentence in the May 22 press release isn't ambiguous: "The Masters Final 2009 will be played exclusively by the four winning players of the tournaments that, along with Bilbao, make up the Grand Slam Chess Association." If it's a 4x4 I'm even happier Shirov made it in. That would be a super-concentrated dynamic field.

In Odessa, Ukraine, a 16-player rapid KO sponsored by the Pivdenny Bank to reward the top point-scorers in the ACP Grand Prix. Top seeds are Gelfand, Grischuk, Jakovenko, and Svidler. If Karpov was playing to break the rust off before the San Sebastian event in July it didn't do him much good. Svidler just knocked him out in the first round. Scores seemed tweaked in places. Is this "Run a Crappy Chess Website Month" and nobody told me? I've been doing it for years and pre-qualify for such any contest, dammit.

New US champ Hikaru Nakamura is blogging in detail about his triumphant tournament run in a fun game-by-game chronology at his site. Part One and Two, with a third coming. Great stuff direct from the source and it sure beats waiting for a watered-down, chopped-up version to appear in print a month or two from now. The raw feed rules!

Then there's Nakamura's post-tournament interview from ICC Chess.FM with Macauley Peterson and Jen Shahade. If you're wondering about his second "Kris" mentioned in his blog, the interview has a little more about this mystery man.

On a separate note, was this the strongest US championship ever? Reshevsky and Fine were super-elite at a time when there weren't many, and Kashdan was no slouch. Fischer, Benko, Evans and R. Byrne had their achievements as well. Browne-Christiansen-Dzindzi-Seirawan? Kavalek certainly raised the class of a few events. Then the Soviet invasion fields, though few other than Gulko were ever top-20 from what I can tell. The format argument is separate, really. Obviously there were quite a few weaker players in this swiss than in the old round-robins, but the top ten guys in St. Louis were very strong and that's what I'm measuring by for the sake of the argument. (That is, strength and depth of the elite, not top to bottom.) What's your pick for strongest US Ch ever?

With two rounds to play in the MTel supertournament, Carlsen and Shirov are tied for the lead a half-point ahead of Topalov. Carlsen handed Dominguez his first loss in the 7th to join Shirov on +2 and all three games were drawn in the 8th round. Topalov has white against Ivanchuk tomorrow and conveniently enough the two leaders meet in the final round on Saturday, Shirov with white against Carlsen. Topalov has black against Wang Yue in the final round.

Whaddya think, can Topalov do it again? Before Ivanchuk steamrolled the field last year (yes, the same guy who is playing like fertilizer right now) Topalov had patented comebacks at MTel. But beating the Great Wall of Wang in the final round with black will be a tall order even if he beats Ivanchuk tomorrow. I'm rooting for Shirov, as I was before the tournament started. He's due for a big win and for more elite invitations. And with so many players bombing out of the top ten lately, he has a nice warm spot back there waiting for him on the next list. Ivanchuk may be dropping out of the top 30 the way he's going. Incredible. He doesn't need just a rest or a vacation, he needs one of those Keith Richards blood replacement procedures. He's set to lose 44 points right now, on one list! From scraping 2800 to below 2700 in less than a year.

Tiebreaks are number of wins (favoring Topalov), then head-to-head, then Berger, then number of moves (!). A three way tie on +2 is one of the most likely results but let's hope for some blood in the water in the final rounds. MTel has usually been good about that.

Has Vassily Ivanchuk become the most active elite player in history? Has any other player in the top ten ever played as many games, year in, year out? You don't have to look back into the history books. Despite our many sponsorship troubles, modern players play far more many games than their peers from the olden days. It's barely worth looking prior to WWII, when primitive transportation and poor economies made for few opportunities. Many of the stars kept busy with simul tours and exhibition matches, but it was unusual for Alekhine, for example, to play in more than two or three big professional events per year. Some years there might only be one. True, they were much longer than supertournaments today, usually round-robins with with fields of at least 16 and often over 20. But they didn't have all the rapid events and league games squeezed in, which while they aren't as tiring as a supertournament, still require the travel. But at least that travel isn't by steamship.

There are quite a few hyper-active strong players in the world today, some may even play more than Ivanchuk's amazing average of nearly 100 rated games per year over the past few years. These are the hard-core warriors, rarely making it into the supertournaments but playing all the time. Guys like Tiviakov and Movsesian (who recently jumped into the top ten for a list or two). But when it comes to the top 10 -- with a few of his typical plunges, like the one he's in now, Ivanchuk has been thereabouts for twenty years -- nobody compares to the Ukrainian wizard these days. And he seems to be playing even more as he gets older. Other candidates? Tony Miles played a ton. Carlsen and several of the young Chinese stars are playing more or less constantly. But that's normal with the new hotness. Piles of juicy invitations come in while you're still cute and fuzzy and have limitless energy.

We had a little exchange in the comments the other day about whether or not Ivanchuk's current nosedive in the standings is due to exhaustion in turn due to playing too much. I took the contrary stance that it's difficult to make that argument about Ivanchuk because sometimes his best results come right at the end of one of his marathon streaks of activity. Of course he's human (well, maybe not "of course") and I'm sure the pendulum must swing back and forth between "rusty" and "burned out" for everyone. But he's just a total mess right now in MTel, despite playing the first four-fifths of a brilliant game against Dominguez only to flub it and draw.

Add: fonz in the comments brings some data from Runde's essential Live Top List site. Sorted by number of rated games since January 2007. The top ten:

305 Wang Yue; 295 Ivanchuk; 264 Movsesian; 256 Jakovenko; 254 Ni Hua; 237 Carlsen; 230 Gashimov, 225 Naiditsch; 224 Svidler; 207 Shirov

Glad my general impressions and cursory database glances were more or less confirmed. Particularly notable are those who aren't playing in the new FIDE Grand Prix events, which have added a lot of games to the totals of many top players.

Ivanchuk's latest chess equivalent of a cake left out in the rain was his second loss to Shirov as the second half of the MTel tournament kicked off in Sofia. That dropped him to -4 and pushed Shirov up to +2 and clear first ahead of Carlsen. Topalov is as Topalov does and the Bulgarian has come back from his early loss to Carlsen to reach a +1 score. Dominguez is the drawing master, 6/6 so far. Wang Yue is on even, and if you're following along at home you realize that makes Ivanchuk the only player in the field under 50%. Ouch.

Looking at the round six games, Ivanchuk's loss this time looks like a perfectly reasonable way to lose a slightly inferior endgame to one of our best endgame players. Shirov made steady progress in R+B vs R+N and the win required no tragic blunders or mental trips to Pluto by Ivanchuk. The end came quicker than it needed to, perhaps, but despite his tremendous technical skills Ivanchuk has never enjoyed the long defense of a losing cause.

After pressing as hard as he could, Topalov was again in trouble against Carlsen. It was relatively minor, however, and while it looks like Black could have improved a few times to keep the pressure on a bit longer in the endgame, it's not very convincing. Sharp and educational stuff if you have a lecture on the importance of pawn structure in the endgame coming up. "Sleepy Panda" Wang Yue continued to darken the universe with the Petroff. Whatever Petroff-busting powers Peter Leko possessed at the Nalchik Grand Prix have not been proven transmissible yet. The Chinese held Dominguez comfortably. I really wish the King's Gambit would make a comeback.

Fun report on the traditional football (soccer) match for the players. The chess squad won on penalties, woo-hoo! Ivanchuk blocked 6/7 as goalkeeper, apparently displaying the concentration he has lacked entirely at the board. Where were these things when I was covering the circuit? Most of the off-the-board entertainment involving the players usually required several bottles of hard liquor.

Round 7: Topalov-Shirov, Carlsen-Dominguez, Wang Yue-Ivanchuk.

[Posted by 2009 US champion Nakamura in the comments: "Hey everyone, I'll be blogging on my website shortly once I've completely recovered from a very heavy night of partying." Well deserved! His blog is here.]

This is it! Final round, starting at 10am local, 11am EDT. That will leave time for the various rapid playoff possibilities. I'd explain them in detail but I left my abacus in my other pants. They involve armageddon and bidding, sort of like buying Left Behind books on Ebay, but with chess. Nakamura (6) - Friedel (5) and Hess (6) - Akobian (5.5) are the key pairings. Onischuk (5.5) - Robson (4.5) and Ehlvest (4) - Kamsky (5.5) are the others that might decide the top prizes. Robson can get a GM norm with just a draw against his coach Onischuk. Brooks can get one too, but he needs a win with black against Ibragimov. Live here. Updates later.

Lucky for them it often happens that when you win, your opponents lose! Sorry Jen, I know it's been a very long week...

Nakamura 2009 US Champion!

Nakamura crushes Friedel, Hess draws with Akobian. That gave Hikaru Nakamura clear first place, his second US championship title, and a massive $40,000 payday. It didn't take long for him to do his part. Occasional Nakamura nemesis Josh Friedel collapsed like a Dallas Cowboys training facility against Nakamura's 3.Bc4. Black went with the Two Knights, as in "Two knights walk into a bar and get brutally beaten down." It was over in just 22 moves with Black's queen trapped on the unlikely f4 square. Nakamura finished with three straight wins and a tremendous 7/9 score.

Hess declined to repeat the offbeat French Exchange he used to beat Shulman yesterday against Akobian. It quickly ended up in an opposite-colored bishop endgame with no winning prospects for White. Since Nakamura won so quickly Hess knew he needed to win so he played on for a while just in case Akobian's cell phone went off. But Akobian simply tossed another pawn on the barbie to simplify it down to nothing and with the draw agreed, Nakamura became the clear winner. (And we all thank him for letting us avoid the crazy tiebreak process.) A tremendous result for the 17-year-old Hess, the 17th seed. Kamsky just drew with Ehlvest to finish with six points along with Akobian. In the last game of the tournament to conclude, Onischuk is closing in on a win against his student Robson, which would put him up to 6.5 and equal 2-3 with Hess. That will also mean no norms, since Brooks lost to Ibragimov. [Robson just resigned. So Nakamura 7; Hess, Onischuk 6.5; Kamsky, Akobian 6.]

I'm not sure why some reports are talking so much about the pairings when all of the top finishers faced each other, even if it was relatively early on. This is normal in round robins, if not swisses like this one, and as long as players face similarly tough fields you can only complain about the lack of concluding drama. While a 200-point mismatch in the final round is a little off-putting, Friedel is no slouch and he showed it in St. Louis in case there were doubters. He beat Ehlvest, Benjamin, and Kaidanov. Yes, Nakamura outclassed his last two opponents, but before that he beat Hess and then went +1 against the rest of the US Olympiad team to finish the event undefeated and a full point ahead of Kamsky, the top seed and expected main rival. More later...

Topalov finally scored a win at MTel, beating Wang Yue smoothly in the fourth round. Topalov plainly put it to the Bulgarian press that he got a lot of help from his opponent in this one. Hard to disagree, although we did get a trademark exchange sac from Topalov. Wang Yue might have held on for a while had he accepted it and given it back with 26..Nxb6 27.axb6 Rd7 28.Bxc5+ Bxc5 29.Nxc5 Rxd5 30.exd5 Bf5+ 31.Ne4 Rb8.

Ivanchuk might finally be waking up. He played a "spectacular" (Kasparov) game with black against Dominguez, sacrificing his g7 pawn and playing startling moves quickly. But even so Ivanchuk just couldn't find the crusher despite the many on offer. The too-subtle 30..Qa7 lost time when the direct grab of the g-pawn by the knight (or even the bishop) left White with little hope. Still, moves like 32..Be2! you don't get to see every day. 33..Qf7 was another lethal option Ivanchuk missed. By the time move 40 rolled around Dominguez had dodged enough bullets to kill Rasputin and was actually better. Incredible. Ivanchuk managed to hold the draw or they might be fishing him out of the Vladaya by now.

Carlsen-Shirov was a typically wild battle in the Botvinnik Semi-Slav, this one "starting" at move 24. Carlsen had to play carefully not to get into serious trouble. Instead of the immediate reputation Black might have risked and played on with 33..a5 34.Qxf7+ Ka6 with a mad race even the computers don't want to bet on.

Carlsen and Shirov still lead on +1. Round 5: Shirov-Dominguez, Ivanchuk-Topalov, Wang Yue-Carlsen. That last match-up has been an entertaining one.

All the marbles are in play in the penultimate round. Extra pressure on the leaders with the white pieces today to get a win and move to +4. That means Kamsky (5) against Onischuk (5) and Hess (5) against Shulman (4.5). The other leader, Nakamura (5), has black against Brooks (4) and will also be looking to win. On the other hand, all three of Onischuk's wins have come with black. Akobian (4.5), who has only one draw so far, has white against Benjamin (4). Live here at noon EDT. Updates later.

Add: Well, one of the underdogs has already been locked up in the pound. Nakamura just took Brooks apart with black to move to +4. Kamsky and Onischuk are battling in a Berlin (drawn). Shulman looks to have defended against Hess's unusual try against the French. (Now defending a R+N endgame a pawn down.)

Add: It was the day of a favorite and a foal at the top of the standings today. With one round to play in the 2009 US championship, only 2005 champion Hikaru Nakamura and 17-year-old Robert Hess are now tied for the lead with 6/8 after crucial wins in the eight round. The other leaders, Kamsky and Onischuk, battled to a draw. Joining them at 5.5 was Akobian, who beat Benjamin. Nakamura cleanly dismantled underdog Missourian Brooks with the black pieces, looking every bit the FIDE 2700 player he is. Hess impressed again by beating defending champion Yury Shulman.

Due to the vagaries of the swiss system most of the top scorers have already played each other, so the final round pairings are going to look a little odd if you were hoping for head to head drama. Hess will certainly face Akobian, having already lost to Nakamura and drawn with Kamsky and Onischuk. As for Nakamura, he faced his four Olympiad teammates on the trot in rounds 4-7 and will now likely face Josh Friedel, who beat Ehlvest today to move to five points. Friedel beat Nakamura at the Chicago Open last year but still must be considered the underdog. All's fair, I suppose, but it does make you consider Greg Shahade's suggestion to change the rules to allow rematches in the final two rounds to increase the drama. Who wouldn't want Hess-Nakamura tomorrow, winner take all?

14-year-old Robson just finished off Sevillano in the last game to finish. Lawton finally got on the board, nicking Shankland for a draw. Eckert also scored an upset, beating Khachiyan. More later after I have a chance to look at the games and consume some pizza. Round 9 pairings now up here.

Add: Norm Watch: (Not as exciting as Bay Watch, but still plenty of boobs.) According to Chris Bird via Macauley Peterson in St. Louis, Ray Robson is still in the running for a GM norm. He can do it with just a draw with black against his own coach, Onischuk! Tough call for Sasha. Shot at a higher prize or job security as a coach? I kid, I kid. ("Here I reveal great training secret, Ray. You always let your coach win, okay?") Brooks has to win with black against Ibragimov to get his GM norm. Nobody else is in the running; Hughes was close for IM norm but his average opposition means he needs 4.5, which he can't reach.

Add: A few quick game thoughts. Onischuk brought out the Berlin Defense against Kamsky, a decision you can interpret in various ways. One, that he's practical and wants to play his game regardless of the standings. Two, that he figured Kamsky would want to push hard for the win with white and the Berlin can be dangerous if White over-presses. You can also put in that Kamsky lost with white against Aronian at Corus this year in a Berlin. Mind-reading aside, there was a goodly amount of line-opening and action for a Berlin as Onischuk got some action going on the queenside. But with no prospects for his bishops a repetition draw was found on move 30. Kamsky (5.5) will now have black against Ehlvest (4) in the final round. Random stat: Kamsky and Ehlvest have both been among the world's top five on the FIDE list. (Gulko might have edged into the top ten in the late 70s or early 80s.)

Hess decided to avoid theory in a big way against Yury Shulman's French Defense. The Exchange isn't a toothless as you might think, but the line with 4.Bf4 really takes things off the maps. Hess has played this a few times before, and perhaps he also had in mind that the higher-rated defending champ might try too hard to win from a simplified position. Hess revealed his ambition by turning the position into what looks quite a bit like a Sicilian, if you put your finger over the black pawn on c6. White castled queenside and went for a blunt pawn storm. Shulman fended that off well enough but Hess kept enough initiative to get an endgame pull. Surprisingly, the veteran Shulman appears to have mangled the defense pretty badly and Hess picked the position clean. Hess has white against Akobian, who has a chance at first place himself if he wins.

Veteran IM Michael Brooks has long been a winner in Midwest events that didn't attract the East Coast heavyweights. In St. Louis they had to come to his turf and he's been playing well enough to still be close to a GM norm despite losing to Nakamura today. That said, it was a one-sided affair that put Nakamura one more win away for at least a playoff for his second US championship title. 22.b3 is a real dud that weakened the knight and suddenly there is no way to save a pawn. Brooks decided to go out in a blaze of desperation instead of suffering. His attempt at a tactical swindle backfired after the nice 27..Bf5! Nakamura does no pardon in such positions and it was over in ten more moves, with a cute finish to boot.

Friedel bounced back again with a wild and woolly Najdorf win over Ehlvest. It won't be enough for a top spot, but it puts him in the role of potential spoiler against Nakamura tomorrow. Robson was on the defensive early against Sevillano but held on and eventually turned things around completely. He gave up the exchange for a trio of passers on the queenside that won easily. (Even if it took another hour or two thanks to Sevillano's standard bitter-endedness.) Krush dueled with Shabalov in a Poisoned Pawn Najdorf and seemed to come out fine. But in such a crazy position it only took a few small slips to come to a nasty end against the four-time champion. 19.Qc4 is a nasty move, threatening Rxf5+. Krush had to play 22..Rgd8 but chose the wrong rook and got whacked with 23.Rb3, hitting the queen and threatening Rg3+.

The home stretch has begun in St. Louis. After two days of draws on the top boards, will someone break from the pack? Akobian and Shulman lead with 4.5/6. Six players are a half-point behind. Top pairings are Shulman-Onischuk, Nakamura-Akobian, Benjamin-Kamsky, and Friedel-Hess. Live here, main page. The pairings Shulman-Onischuk and Benjamin-Kamsky both represent past final matches for the US title, in 2006 and 1991! Updates later.

Add:After several days of draws, the pent-up blood flowed today, spilling out across the entire playing hall. An incredible 11/12 games were decisive, with only former champs Gulko and Shabalov ruining perfection. We all love a good upset, but sometimes you just have to stand back and admire the inevitability of Elo. The favorites won on all three top boards to shake up the standings. Nakamura beat Akobian, Kamsky beat Benjamin, and Onischuk beat Shulman. With two rounds to play, Nakamura, Kamsky, and Onischuk are tied for the lead with 5/7. But wait! Not fitting into the Elo scheme is teenager Robert Hess, who beat Friedel today with black to join the illustrious leading cohort as well. * Friday is a free day. Saturday's 8th round begins an three hours earlier, at 12pm EDT. Sunday's final round begins at 11am EDT *

Akobian fell asleep at the wheel of his French Defense for just a moment and with Nakamura was all over him like Oprah Winfrey on a doughnut. Like Manny Ramirez on a syringe. Like the lipid shell of the H1N1 virus on the cytoplasm of a respiratory cell resulting in the production of proinflammatory cytokines. I'm telling you, it was just like that. Akobian got into time trouble trying to solve his problems and eventually gave up a pawn to try to break the white attack. Nakamura calmly switched phasers from "eradicate" to "hoover" and cleaned up all of Black's queenside pawns. Akobian didn't have time to resign and I'm not sure if he flagged or finally gave up the ghost after 40.Bc6. It looks like Akobian missed the strength of 15.f5! It doesn't look like Black can castle there. Easy for me to say now. Chess.FM commentator Sutovsky had that same position with white 12 years ago; I wonder if he talked about that during the round. He played 14.g4. Nakamura clearly wanted to keep the queens on.

Kamsky won a pawn against Benjamin and slowly ground down his old rival. Back in 1991, in a KO format Championship, the two met in a hotly contested final match. Benjamin had all the chances when it mattered but couldn't seal the deal and Kamsky came through with the win to take his one and only US title. Onischuk surprised -- me at least -- by playing the King's Indian against Shulman. The 2006 champ clearly felt he had to make a move if he was going to have a shot at his second title. The defending champion soaked up a lot of time only to end up in an inferior endgame. He lost a pawn and then couldn't hold a rook endgame that would require a lot more analysis than I have time for.

Hess played a musty old line of the Lopez and turned it into a nice positional plus against Friedel. It looked balanced for a while when Black's sneaky queen infiltration 30..Qa2, threatening ..Nd3+, hastened the collapse of White's position in time trouble. Sevillano scored another win for pinoy pride by beating Kaidanov. His exploits might be getting more coverage in the press in the Philippines than the entire Championship is getting in the US media. Brooks slowly outplayed Robson in an endgame and needs 1.5/2 to get a GM norm.

Another game of note down in the standings was Shankland-Hughes. With Vanessa Hudgens standing by to kiss the victor, you knew it was going to be hard-fought. Shankland apparently went for the win by sacrificing his h-pawn. After mutual inaccuracies it still should have finished drawn, but the endgame of three pawns vs rook was very tricky. White played it very well at first but blew the draw with 66.Re6+ when his rook was already in perfect position. 66.Kc3 and Black must give ground. 66..Kf2 67.Kd4 g2 68.Ke5 f3 69.Kf4! Ke2 70.Rg3=. After the Hall of Fame called and told Larry Christiansen they were going to hang his plaque in the broom closet he finally notched a win, against Eckert.

Friday is a rest day. Round eight sees the first real side effects of using the swiss sytem with such a small field. Many of the leaders have already met, so Nakamura at five points gets Brooks with four. But the other top boards are naturals and critical: Kamsky-Onischuk and Hess-Shulman. Akobian-Benjamin and Friedel-Ehvest have an outside chance of affecting the podium population.

The latest issue of New In Chess contains Garry Kasparov's latest column. It's mostly on Corus, Linares, and Melody Amber, but it also has a timely clip on our favorite unibrow, juxtaposed with an unexpected Al Pacino reference. This after praising several recent Ivanchuk wins:

Unfortunately for Ivanchuk and the chess world, his angels travel arm-in-arm with demons. Tragic time management, inexplicable blunders, you never know what to expect. I thought of Ivanchuk when I saw the recent Al Pacino film "Righteous Kill," only one of many recent Hollywood movies to showcase chess scenes, by the way. In the opening credits Pacino's character, a hard-nosed cop, is apparently giving an informal simul while reminiscing about Bobby Fischer. "He became world champ, didn't he?" he says, only to make every chess fan cringe when he continues "but then he went bleeping nuts!" The great Vassily's games rarely fail to provide pleasure and inspiration. But occasionally he just goes bleeping nuts!

(The lucky few who saw Garry's keynote presentation in Nashville last month will remember that Pacino clip from the slideshow, along with a few other chess clips from recent films. Of course we cut the "bleeping nuts" part there.)

Ivanchuk lost helplessly with white against Shirov yesterday at the MTel. Today he outdid himself, losing to Wang Yue from the white side of a Petroff endgame in which only he should have had any chances. In what can only be described as an epic fail, he managed to give up his advantage and then stalemate his own king and practically force Wang Yue to mate him. Comedy and tragedy. This is the same Ivanchuk who tied for first undefeated in Linares a few months ago. Or maybe he has an evil twin. He must have completely missed the clever 47..h4+, which flips the result instantly. Nothing like starting out with two whites and losing them both. Last year Ivanchuk started with two blacks here, won them both, won three more in a row after that and finished with an incredible +6 to run away with this tournament. A year later and you're wondering how this person can feed and dress himself before the game.

Meanwhile, over on the boards fielding two sane people, well-played draws were the order of the day. Topalov ended up with a tiny plus with black out of a 4..Bc5 Berlin against Shirov. Topalov and Kamsky have played 7.a4 with white this year. I don't know what's wrong with the old 7.Bg5, but Shirov went for 7.dxe5. It didn't seem like White had anything by the time he allowed his dark-squared bishop to be hunted down.

Dominguez used Carlsen's own preferred 6.h3 against the Norwegian's Najdorf, but maybe it only works well if you're from Scandinavia and rated over 2750. Carlsen, impressed with Hess's success with the Dragnorf against Kamsky yesterday, went for the ..g6 line himself. After 16..Qa5! Dominguez wisely declined to enter the complications of 17.exf6 Qxa2 and Black was fine with his knight in the center. Cute that the d5 pawn is immune to capture, even with check.

After two rounds, Carlsen, Shirov, and Wang Yue lead on +1. Topalov has -1 and Ivanchuk -2. Round 3: Wang Yue-Shirov, Carlsen-Ivanchuk, Topalov-Dominguez. Which Ivanchuk will show up?

UEP announces the same thing that FIDE announced the day before, that negotiations over the next WCh cycle broke down. They add:

Due to different agendas relating to organisational sovereignty and commercial rights, the parties failed to reach an agreement. Aggravating circumstances included FIDE's financial expectations beyond the original tender details.

UEP - the only bidder for the tender - believes that under such circumstances a permanent and successful marketing of the World Chess Championship will be questionable.

Yada yada yada. Let's hear some numbers. FIDE almost tripped up the already much-delayed Kamsky-Topalov match by coming back with demands for an increased prize fund. Would it be too much to ask they run this professionally by just opening bidding and announcing minimums?

A great tale explaining the breakdown of the live coverage at the MTel yesteday from Chessdom. True or not, very funny. And tragic. Why is it so hard to slap up a free java applet viewer and update manually? Takes around five minutes. Anyway, blame it all on Sofia mayor Borisov, who made two honorary first moves with white, confusing the relay software, perhaps. And I thought Ilyumzhinov was the only politician who destroyed chess with a touch!

Apparently the live broadcast was canceled for the first round. Maybe my joke about this being a contagious disease had something to it. What the heck? Three events in a row, from Baku to St. Louis to Sofia, all incapable of putting a live chessgame on the web, a technology that was mastered before Bill Clinton started his second term. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. Official site here. Nice photo gallery here ht thenewone in the comments.

Broadcast woes aside, wow, what a start! Magnus Carlsen dominated the first round battle of top seeds against world #1 Veselin Topalov. In the mandatory Semi-Slav Carlsen kept the initiative through exchanges and eventually crashed through. You don't see Topalov go down this smoothly very often. It was as if he was pushed out to sea on an ice floe. (In the fjords, we can assume.) After 31.Rc7 it's already over; the brain is dead even though the heart is still pumping. Topalov enjoys a good comeback more than anyone, especially at the MTel, but losing to the other favorite right at the start can't be good.

Shirov also got off to a good start, with considerable help from his opponent Ivanchuk. 16.c5 is just plain weird, although Gelfand tried it against Shirov eleven years ago. He also got into trouble early, by the way. Shirov's may have remembered the response 16..Nxd4! from way back then (he played 16..Rde8 against Gelfand), but it's certainly not that hard to find OTB. White can bail out into a worse endgame with 18.fxe4 but Ivanchuk brought an entire suitcase full of mistakes and he was eager to unpack. The d-pawn got rolling and instead of grovelling with 23.Qf2 Ivanchuk pitched a piece to a pin and resigned. One of the worst 2700 games I can remember in that it wasn't just a simple piece of blindness that can happen to anyone on a bad day. Ugly. Kids, don't do drugs. Or whatever Ivanchuk was doing today, don't do it.

The inescapable Red Twins faced each other in the only drawn game. Wang Yue and Leinier Dominguez are the strongest players from East Asia and Latin America, respectively. Such regional considerations have been ignored for quite a while in super-events from what I can remember, but for whatever reason these two have been playing in so many events together lately I expect to find them blitzing in my kitchen. Mostly it's been rough going for the underdogs, with the exception of the Cuban's excellent result at Corus, where he was in with a chance for first going into the last round (along with everybody else, admittedly) before losing to Karjakin. Despite the mediocre results Dominguez has shown some great preparation and the occasional flash. Wang Yue was best known for not losing before he started this supertournament marathon. Now the elite guys seem to have figured him and his narrow repertoire out and his play generally isn't dynamic enough to make fire from damp wood. (His spectacular thrashing of the over-pressing Carlsen in Linares is a counter-example. Obviously he can be dangerous.)

With some time to recharge his batteries and his repertoire, Wang Yue came out hard against Dominguez's Grunfeld. The Chinese got just the sort of position he excels at, a long grind. He had the exchange for a pawn and after 30 moves he was ready to cash in. Black had to give up a bishop for desperation counterplay with three connected passers. Surprisingly, Wang Yue was not up to the task. The simplest win came at the very end when 64.Kd3 stops the pawns and it's hasta la vista, baby. I imagine the lack of increment and third time control was a factor. The fast 40/90' + g/60' is in effect, unfortunately.

Round 2: Shirov-Topalov, Dominguez-Carlsen, Ivanchuk-Wang Yue.

Underway in St. Louis. Live here. Akobian-Shulman could give us a clear leader. Hmm, I thought these ..g6, ..a6 "Dragdorf" lines were supposed to be bad for black. Apparently Hess doesn't think so as he's played it against Kamsky.

Add: Well, good or bad, the Dragdorf was good enough to draw against America's #1, no small feat for young Robert Hess. He even made it look pretty easy, which is certainly was not. That was one of three draws on the top boards, leaving Akobian and Shulman still tied for first on +3 with three rounds to play. Those two played to a draw in another solid Semi-Slav. It looked for a while like Akobian might be able to make something of his passed d-pawn but nobody could make any progress in the final position. Onischuk-Nakamura had more life to it. White kept a small plus for a long time but in the end his buried bishop gave Black more than enough compensation and Onischuk forced a repetition. The same top seeds play musical chairs for tomorrows 7th round. Shulman-Onischuk, Nakamura-Akobian.

With all the draws at the top, a few new names have joined the chasing pack with four points. Friedel bounced back with a win over Brooks in an instructive endgame race. Three-time champ Joel Benjamin came into view of the leaders with a spicy win with black over Khachiyan. I always love it when the theory in a game takes you directly to Albin and Tartakower games. Love the quirky 10..Ne8 idea to meet the Bg5 threat instead of playing the routine ..h6. My ICC Chess.FM comrade grabbed the exchange with the cute 19..Nf3! and eventually ground Khachiyan down. I admit I know very little about Khachiyan, who is based near LA along with half of the world's Armenians, it seems. According to his charmingly hideous personal website he grew up in Baku and once trained Levon Aronian.

I think Larry Christiansen is the only player to have faced all three of the tournament's star teenagers already and has a 0.5/3 score to show for it. Today he got totally dumptrucked by Robson in a crazy game to go with his earlier loss to Hess and draw with Shankland. He narrowly missed being paired with the last teen in round 7, Hughes. Tell the rugrats to get off your lawn, Larry! Sevillano again played the longest game of the round, a real slugfest against Ehlvest that eventually boiled off into a draw. White missed several good knockout chances early on against the unusually unstable Ehlvest. 28.Qd3 and the black queen says goodbye.

US junior champ Hughes got knocked around like a beachball again today, this time with Ibragimov doing the knocking. Great experience or no, it's got to be a rough to face this brutal lineup giving up a few hundred points every day. Hughes played all the way to a knight mate, which the spectators always appreciate. Brooklyn was fully in the house as Irina Krush kicked Becerra around in the ultra-sharp Botvinnik Semi-Slav. As usual in this line the first move came on move 25, though you never know how much who knew when, if you know what I mean. Akobian lost to Robson in this line up to move 24 in Moscow this year. Lawton and Eckert were duly executed by Gulko and Shabalov. Like I said, rough.

It would be nice to see more comments from the players on their games on the official site. ICC Chess.FM has had plenty of talk with the players after their games live, but very little is getting out in press releases and reports from people on the scene. It would also be nice to see more linking going on. I'm sure there are other blogs and sites reporting on the Championship, but the official site and the semi-official CLO reports give no linking love. The web works best when it's, you know, a web. I haven't had time to see it all myself, but certainly part of the pro team in St. Louis could provide some aggregation and outreach. It would make the site much richer and build goodwill as well. Just glancing around, D-Mon has updates and occasional notes, Daaim is twittering, and there must be more. Whatcha got, people?

The annual supertournament in Sofia, Bulgaria, starts today. Play begins at 1600 local time, 9am EDT, final round an hour earlier. Only rest day is May 18. Live games on the official site and the usual relays. Double round-robin. The field: Topalov, Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Shirov, Wang Yue, Dominguez. Ivanchuk crushed the field last year, the first time Topalov failed to win this event on his home turf. Ivanchuk has been playing horribly lately, but you never know with him. Although Shirov has played in some strong team and rapid events, this is his first supertournament since his debacle at the Tal Memorial last August. He can really brighten up a tournament when he's on, so let's cross our fingers for him.

Topalov and Carlsen are the prohibitive favorites by rating and by recent results. No one else was picked for first by the crowd in the MTel prediction thread in the Ninja Boards, with Topalov garnering the most votes.

The event gets off to a running start with Carlsen-Topalov in the first round. Ivanchuk-Shirov, Wang Yue-Dominguez are the other pairings.

UEP, the Dortmund-based chess promotion group that put together Kramnik's matches against Fritz and Anand, has apparently failed to come to an agreement with FIDE over the 2009-11 cycle and world championship final. Maybe FIDE balked at their suggestion of just giving Kramnik the title back? I kid, I kid. They did an excellent job in Bonn. Still, it would be nice to see all the top players actually participating in qualifiers instead of waiting around for Ilyumzhinov's latest magic ticket. From FIDE:

FIDE announces that the negotiations with Universal Event Promotion (UEP), the original bidder for organising the final stages of the World Championship cycle 2009-2011 (Candidates Tournament and Final Match), did not reach a final agreement. FIDE is already in contact with other organisers and sponsors interested in holding these events.

Whatever. It was just a bid and they could come back with another one. There's still the Anand-Topalov match to worry about first, right? I'd love to know who FIDE is "in contact" with considering their track record. North Korea? Burma?

This is the big one, Nakamura-Kamsky in their first classical match-up! Live here, or on the ICC.

We've been talking format in a few of the comment threads and it's as tough a nut as always. I see no reason to be a purist with the US Ch the way I am with the world championship. Finding something that draws attention and sponsorship is more of a priority for a pro-chess-challenged country like the US than guaranteeing the best technical level of chess and the most rigorous process. That is, unlike the WCh, it's not going to be a big deal if the US champ isn't considered the best player in the country every year. The main thing is to get the best players to the board in the first place, which they have done admirably in St. Louis. Yes, it might look a little strange in the final two rounds when none of the contenders for first are facing each other, which is likely to be the case. But that's what usually happens in round-robins, too, and the final rounds of Corus and Linares can be quite dramatic anyway. Money is always going to be the major issue. Expanding the field to 64 or whatever, as was done a few times by the AF4C, is good fun, but very expensive. I would love to see the drama of a final match for the title, but match play is slow and therefore expensive. (Unless you use rapid games, which also freaks many people out, as we saw in 2006.)

Round report here later. Let's get it on!

Add: Nakamura-Kamsky was a red-blooded draw in Kamsky's now-standard Grunfeld. It was a line of the Russian System that Kamsky defended back in 1991 against Timman and has been used off and on in the shadow of the far more popular 4.cxd4 that Kramnik has several patents on. Kamsky has defended this line several times in the past year, including against Leko in Nalchik a few weeks ago. There he played the sharp 6..Bg7 7.e4 0-0 8.e4 Ng4 9.d4 line. At the 2008 Aeroflot Onischuk played 14.Rd1 against Svidler and was quickly in trouble. Nakamura's 14.c6 has been tried a couple of times in the past year but doesn't seem terribly promising either. He tried 16.Rd1 instead of the immediate Nxe6 that was seen before. As is so often the case in the Grunfeld, Black has sharp tactical resources aplenty. By move 25 Kamsky had a little plus even without his dark-squared bishop and the corresponding theoretical weakness around his king. Kamsky decided to continue solidly, however, and acquiesced to Nakamura's threat of a sac and perpetual check. Playing more acquisitively with 26..Na3 is worth a look. Not a thriller, but an honest and worthy clash.

With the top seeds blunting sword on shield, the path was open for someone else to grab the lead, or someones. Akobian moved up to +3 by fending off a wild queen sacrifice by Ehlvest, who might have gotten his hands on a bad bottle of brandy last night. It was a beautiful idea, but much like the remake of "The Wicker Man" it just didn't work in practice. White got two pieces and some shots at the black king for the queen, and it was fun to examine all the ways Black could go wrong. The tightrope would have been very tight indeed had Ehlvest played 23.Bb4, with nasty threats. But as is common after such speculative sacs, the defender has ways of giving back material to keep a superior position. Akobian calmly offered to return the queen after 24.Bg5+, but of course he would have two extra pawns and an easy win. So many of Black's defensive moves are obvious or forced it's hard to say what Ehlvest missed; or maybe he was just visited by the spirit of Tal at the wrong moment. (Tal's ghost has a cruel streak.)

Akobian was soon joined in the lead by defending champion Shulman, who also won with black. He counterattacked effectively against Friedel out of the French and finished with a cute time trouble tactic. Akobian-Shulman is the key matchup tomorrow. The two recently concluded a rapid and blitz challenge match in California won by Akobian. 2006 champ Onischuk moved up to the chasing back by dispatching Shankland in the first game to finish. Going over the game I got the feeling that if White's idea of Bd2 and c5 worked it would have been tried before in this deeply analyzed Scotch position. Maybe not, but it certainly didn't work out here for the teenager. White was still holding a tenuous balance until he dislocated his queen, or at least sprained it badly, with 19.Qa4. The house came tumbling down a few moves later.

The other 17-year-old in the field fared better. Robert Hess demolished Khachiyan with a thematic Nd5 sac in the Sicilian against a king on e8. Movsesian has been impressing the pundits by offering to defend against the supposedly dreaded Keres Attack in the Scheveningen lately, although almost all of his 2700+ peers have declined to take him up on the offer. Hess showed no such chickentude. His aggression paid off when Khachiyan blundered with 17..Nf4, allowing White to load up for a big knight sac in the middle of the board. Black decided to pitch his queen and pray for a blockade instead of suffering after 21..Be6. Hess faces Kamsky tomorrow. Onischuk-Nakamura is the other big clash.

If you're up for a little eye candy, Benjamin duly destroyed Hughes with a knight sac leading to a fun (for Benjamin) king chase. Games like this make you both wonder why such low-rated players are in the event and feel somehow glad that they are. Sure there are plenty of much stronger players who aren't in the field, but would Stripunsky, Lendermann, or Goldin lose as entertainingly as the US junior champ? I think not. Wildcards for local players and young hopes are one of the plusses these large fields have over exclusive round-robins. Speaking of Goldin, where is he these days? He doesn't seem to play much anymore.

Krush was close to putting the kibosh on Christiansen with an extra pawn and the bishop pair, but blundered it away with 27.Bd4, after which White is hoping for the draw. 27.Bxb6 seems to force a much better endgame. As if further confirmation were necessary, Shabalov showed again this is not his tournament. He built up a great position against Brooks Sevillano only to throw himself a curveball with 19.exf6, stranding his Nd6. Brooks Sevillano finished up cleanly to give Shaba, a four-time US champion, his third loss in five rounds. Poor Lawton upgraded his Audi to an Olympic against Eckert and his opponents are only going to get stronger from here on out. I expect there will be at least one GM who won't be against giving up a short draw in a miserable tournament.

For those of you who are into such things -- and it's my impression that fewer and fewer people are -- the 17th World Computer Chess Championship is underway in Pamplona, Spain. Just ten competitors, including defending champ Rybka, which has dominated the computer chess world for what seems like forever. Perhaps that dominance is one reason there's less interest in these events these days, hard to say. Or maybe it's just the continuation of the decline that set in once computers became so dominant over humans. Other perennial contenders Shredder, Junior, and Hiarcs are also there.

One thing I'm happy to see is a limitation on the number of cores the competitors can use this year (to eight). Turning a programming competition into a race to see who could acquire the most outlandish hardware never made any sense to me. (Various rants via the computer tag.) Nor did the argument "but you want to see the best possible chess," since you can just play longer games if that's what matters to you. Anyone who lets his quad-core home machine think an hour per move overnight will produce better chess than just about anything running at tournament controls.

The inevitable Kamsky-Nakamura clash is postponed again as Kamsky-Friedel and Shulman-Nakamura are the top pairings today. All four have 2.5/3. Live here. Official site. FM Doug Eckert makes his debut, replacing the ill Anna Zatonskih. Get well soon, Anna. Thanks to Eckert for saving the day and kudos to arbiter Jarecki for having a backup plan. Also back-pats and brownie points to Chris Bird, who has resuscitated the live broadcast and website. Sponsor Rex Sinquefield has graciously promised that both Eckert and Zatonskih will qualify for prizes. He'd better watch out or he's going to get a reputation as a compassionate conservative!

Whew, after saying all those nice things I feel kind of sticky. I hope somebody does something for me to rant about today, and quick. Updates here later, post'em if you've got'em. What's your opinion on all the video work, by the way? Hope to have more time to check it out this week.

Add: Not much in the way of off the board drama today, I'm happy to report. The live broadcast seems to have gone well, too. That's not necessarily good news for everyone though. For example, Doug Eckert might have preferred his 21-move Championship debut loss to Boris Gulko to pass unnoticed thanks to a technical snafu. Sorry Doug, you should have been here in the first round when the scores were tweaked.

At the other end of the standings, none of the four leaders could break away. It looked like Kamsky got everything he wanted against Friedel to then swap down into a winning endgame. But Friedel put up good defense and somehow Kamsky's passed pawns weren't enough for a win. He could have won a piece only to be left with an extra bishop and the wrong rook pawn. 48.Rh7, keeping an eye on the b-pawn and threatening to take on h6 with check, looks like a winner for White. The rook endgame after 48..Nxb7 49.Rxh6+ Kc5 50.Bxb7 Rxb7 51.Rh8 is winning since the black king is too far away.

Nakamura won a pawn with black against Shulman but 84 moves showed he couldn't make any progress in the bishops of opposite color endgame with queens. Akobian grabbed a share of the lead on 3/4 with an energetic win over Becerra. Ehlvest had Kaidanov pinned down but managed to get lost on the way to administer the knockout blow. Kaidanov scammed a perpetual with his last breath. The expected 47.Qxe1 loses to 47..Qe4. Miracle save. Avoiding the perp and keeping the pressure with 46..Ng6 looks tough to deal with.

Shankland got a dream knight vs bishop and eventually squeezed out the win over Sevillano, who should ask to be paid per move. Christiansen-Shabalov saw a janky sideline of the Four Pawns Attack KID. Like so many high-level KID games, this one had White go from dominating to crushing to aww crap to draw. Shabalov was simply getting obliterated for hours. But on his 44th move LarryC put his queen on one of the few squares that gave Black enough counterplay to hold. Miracle Save II, Wrath of Larry. Ray "Real Deal" Robson already has plenty of cred, but it was still impressive to watch the 14-year-old fend off Ibragimov's piece sac and collect the full point. The computer finds very little to disagree with in White's play in the razor-sharp position. 19.Rf3! is probably what Ibragimov missed, causing x-Ray problems against the queen. Tyler won the just-happy-to-be-here battle against Lawton to drop the local hope to the only 0/4 score. (Technically, Zatonskih's replacement Eckert is also 0/4.)

Glad to see arbiter Jarecki given the opportunity to clear up the Sevillano-Lawton incident in round two. As I surmised in the comments, it wasn't about needing to keep score but about not having kept score. Ceasing to keep score when you get under five minutes is fine. But continuing to play when you have an incomplete scoresheet is illegal unless you're already under five minutes. Waiting until you're under five to continue with a still-incomplete sheet doesn't cut it either. It was unfortunate, but the bottom line is that he shouldn't have stopped keeping score. The only intervention required in round four was when Benjamin and Brooks repeated moves a few extra times and Benjamin asked permission to draw before the 30-move minimum.

The big showdown between Nakamura and Kamsky finally arrives Tuesday. Pairings. I couldn't remember their personal score and looking it up it's easy to see why. Remarkably, the two top US players have only faced each other once, a NY Masters rapid game in 2004 when Kamsky was just coming out of retirement (drawn). That's sort of sad, but it adds additional spice to tomorrow's main course. (Then there were all the games of 1 and 2-minute chess Nakamura and Kamsky played against each other at the US Ch in San Diego in 2004, to the great entertainment of the spectators and the other players. I wonder if my ex-girlfriend still has the video footage she took of that.)

Official site working and live broadcast started on time and functioning. Woo-hoo! Also on the ICC with audio commentary live from St. Louis with Jen Shahade and Emil Sutovsky. It's open to all, not just ICC members. You can check it out here or from the live page.

Obviously the big matchup today is Shulman-Kamsky, defending champ vs top seed. Nakamura-Hess is the other headliner.

Add: From official site round 3 page: "Unfortunately, IM Anna Zatonskih has been taken ill. Her game against GM Gregory Kaidanov has been postponed until further notice." Bummer. What's the rule on this sort of thing? Opponent's goodwill? There's only one rest day and it's after seven rounds. If a favorite is getting paired as if he/she has less points, that would skew things, right? Meanwhile, full-bodied fights on the top boards. More later. Now go call your mother!

Add: Anna Zatonskih has gall stones, is overnight in the hospital in St. Louis, will probably have surgery tomorrow [actually going to Germany?! according to Polgar], and will obviously drop out of the tournament. The score will be forfeit win for Kaidanov in today's not-played game. There has been a backup replacement on hold and he will join the remaining 23 players for the rest of the event. Doug Eckert from IL. Polgar's site has a little info on him.

Add: The rather undramatic drama around the $64,000 Fischer jackpot prize for a clean score ended today as all three players with 2/2 were besmirched. Kamsky and Shulman played a 30 move draw as Kamsky's Grunfeld again held up well. Hess, the other 2/2, got squeezed like a lemon by Nakamura, who joined the aforementioned and Friedel in the lead on 2.5/3. Friedel beat Benjamin with black. Hess suddenly looked outclassed today, although as I mentioned yesterday he won a nice game with black against his 2700 opponent just a month ago at Foxwoods. Either his novelty 13..Qc7 was a bad blunder or he really misevaluated the resulting position. The extra doubled pawn turns out to be a nice outpost and Black's king is in traffic for the entire game. Very well prosecuted by Nakamura.

14-year-old Robson went for a pawn-down opposite-colored bishop endgame against Akobian but his technique wasn't up to holding it. Shankland somewhat surprisingly decided his bishop pair wasn't worth anything in an endgame against Khachiyan and he took the draw as soon as they hit the 30-move minimum. Krush-Gulko was an early fatality of a glitch in the online viewer, though after the serious problems on the first two days it seems a little abusive to complain about one game not working. Unfortunately, Krush's many fans missed watching her hand the once-mighty Gulko his third bagel in a row. 37.f5! is a star move, good stuff. Brooklyn! Shabalov avoided Gulko's fate by giving Lawton his third loss.

The four leaders meet in tomorrow's fourth round with Kamsky-Friedel and Shulman-Nakamura. Eckert parachutes in to replace Zatonskih and gets Gulko. I'm curious about the whole replacement thing. You don't want someone having a bye every round, I suppose. The official site is also starting to get its content together, if not much in the way of analysis. Don't miss the cool time-lapse vid of Kamsky-Akobian. Love it!

Sevillano was again involved in the longest game of the day, but this time was unable to bamboozle his opponent, Brooks. Sevillano took some commentariat flak for playing on against Lawton in round two in what some players on site described as a trivially drawn position. That might have been it, since they're on a five-second increment, when arbiter Carol Jarecki told Lawton he had to keep his scoresheet up to date. According to a few (anonymous so far) observers, he took most of his remaining time to try to do this and was then told it still wasn't complete/legible. At this point he let his remaining time expire, apparently in protest. It's the arbiter's job to enforce the rules, so let's not chase the "interference" red herring. The main issue seems to be whether or not Lawton should have been exempted from keeping score once his clock got down below five minutes. That's the rule, but what if you have more than five when the arbiter charges you and it goes under five while you're updating your sheet? I don't know if that exact case is covered in the rules, but it seems pretty natural that you have to have a correct scoresheet before continuing. Otherwise, if it were close you could just wait until you got under five and ignore the arbiter.

Scoresheets in top events should be obsolete by now thanks to digital recording technologies, but as we saw in this same event in the first two rounds, those technologies can be as reliable as a sub-prime borrower. Personal scoresheets are also for the players' protection and they both need to be up-to-date to avoid, or to help resolve, disputes. On a related matter, what's up with the 5" increment? That's for rapid, at best. I don't like increments until the final control anyway, at which point I do like them, but five seconds isn't really enough to avoid what increments are supposed to help avoid, mindless blitzing. I don't fault Sevillano for playing on, that's what he's there to do. But a 5" increment isn't mercy, it's torture (or "enhanced interrogation technique" if you prefer). I.e., with a 30" or even a 15" increment in that position you give up trying to win pretty quickly. But with 5" you have an incentive to play on forever since a blunder or time forfeit could easily occur. That said, both players apparently missed a strong move right before the bizarre conclusion. Assuming the score is correct, 88.Rc7 picks up the last black pawn. Probably still drawn, but no longer trivial. Ironically, Black could have won instantly five hours earlier with 20..Nxd4!

Ah, this appeared this evening in the round two release on the official site by the ICC's John Henderson:

"In a footnote to yesterday's round two, local player Charles Lawton discovered the hard way the difference between the standard of play at the U.S. Championship and local tournaments he's more used to ruling the roost in. In a time scramble when he was down to his last 5 minutes, he opted to save valuable seconds by stopping to score his game, only to flagged for an infringement of the rules by chief arbiter Carol Jarecki as she warned him he had to continue to keep a score of the game.

But Lawton lost on time in the ensuing dispute with the arbiter as he tried to keep his score up to date as he fell foul of International FIDE rules (which govern all national championships) and local USCF rules. With FIDE (the French acronym of the governing body of world chess), if you have 5 minutes or less on your clock you still have to keep a score of the game, with USCF rules you do not have to do so."

I believe FIDE also exempts you from keeping score when under five minutes if the increment is less than 30 seconds. (Rule 8.4) But as I said above, if he had more than five minutes when Jarecki intervened, he has only himself to blame. There should be a statement from the arbiter and, if they want, both players, when a dispute like this happens. On the other hand, if nobody files a formal protest it's not up to the organizers or arbiters to martyr themselves for kicks. It would just be nice to have all the information out there from official sites, which too often feel they should sweep disputes under the rug.

I didn't have much time to look at the round one games after they finally came out, unfortunately. Round two, will, one hopes, be live here on the official site at 3pm EDT, where they appear to have bailed out on the DGT software that caused them so many headaches yesterday in favor of Canadian elfware. Favorites Kamsky and Nakamura both won yesterday, as did defending champ Shulman. Untitled Tyler Hughes beat Boris Gulko with black. Today Kamsky faces Olympiad teammate Akobian while Nakamura has black against Ehlvest. Christiansen lost to Hess yesterday and gets another teenager today in Shankland. All pairings here. Live (and free, I believe) audio coverage on ICC Chess.FM with Jen Shahade and Sutovsky. Updates here later, post'em as you see'em.

Add: Hmm, at 3:05 I'm getting "This Tournament.Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (11)" from the live page.

Add: 3:20: Progress! Now it's "This Tournament.Access denied for user 'apache'@'localhost' (using password: NO)" Ah, there's no place like 127.0.0.1. The ICC has games; perhaps someone figured out they could walk over and look.

Add: 3:26: Hey, chessboards with pieces and everything! Some don't have clocks, hard to say why. Beggars and choosers and all that. It works!

Add: Broadcast when fine for me after that, though I'm not a huge fan of that fancy interface. Lots of clicking. But at least I could watch the games. Others reported some problems in the comments. But right before the last games finished, the entire St. Louis site appears to have gone down hard. It's been offline for at least two hours now. So once again, no PGN! The curse of St. Louis?

Kamsky, Hess, and Shulman won again to move to 2/2. Kamsky completely destroyed Akobian, wow. Nakamura played some spectacular prep against Ehlvest, sacrificing his queen for two pieces to gain a solid position and eventually draw. Cool. (In the comments, acirce points out Varnusz-Kluger, Hungary, 1966, with the same queen sac, only with 12..Rfd8 instead of 12..Rad8. Today's game could have transposed, but Ehlvest played 19.Rc4 instead of 19.Rfd1. Nice find. That game also ended in a draw.) Gulko and Shabalov are both 0/2 after losses to Robson and Brooks, respectively. It's Shulman-Kamsky and Hess-Nakamura in round three. Hess just beat Nakamura at Foxwoods. Pairings are here when the site is up. (Also in full below.)

Okay, okay, I pasted all the PGN together from the ICC and fixed the names. Download round 2 here, replay here. Official site seems back up now at 10:30pm. (Spoke too soon, down again 10 min. later.) The St. Louis club has a handy Twitter feed here, if you're into that sort of thing.

As a great philosopher once asked, "If a chess game is played in Azerbaijan and nobody in the world can see it, does it piss you off?" The President should move decisively to distance himself from this President's Cup and not just because the home team is getting beaten like Ricky Hatton on a rented mule. For the second day in a row the live broadcast -- and the world champion is playing here, mind you, quickly became a mess. The games from yesterday don't even seem complete yet. It's as if nobody has ever broadcast chess on the internet before. I was complaining about the US Ch being unable to manually relay a dozen games, but in Baku it was just two or three at the most! Maybe the hosts are so embarrassed by the lopsided score they've decided to emulate the general freedom of the press standards there and black out the coverage. (Perhaps coincidentally, the Azerisport site has now dropped the prominent placement of the event on its homepage.) That would be a shame, because the few scores that have emerged intact contained some real gems.

So, chess was played, I guess. ChessBase pieces together some scores and has pictures. Can't someone just film the games and we can watch them in slow-mo? Take a photo after every few moves? Take a picture of a player's scoresheet? That last is my trick for collecting simul gamescores. Chessdom liveblogged the second round and write as though they could follow the games. How? Maybe the live broadcast was working for some people sometimes. They also mention Ilyumzhinov said Baku might sponsor the Anand-Topalov WCh match, which needs to happen in the next year. Good thinking, after they've done such a bang-up job of bringing this little rapid event to the world. If they set a couple of the players on fire they'll have the bid locked up.

The World team dominated the day thanks to Karjakin and Kramnik, who won all three of his games and reminds us that he's not exactly old news just yet. Unfortunately, only his win over Guseinov is available. The score is now 13-7 for the World. (Or "FIDE World" as is apparently the official team appellation. I always thought that was the magical place where nothing went right.) Only Mamedyarov has won a game for the Azerbaijan side. Kramnik has 4/5 to lead the field. Final three rounds Saturday, I hope.

Round one is Friday at 3pm EDT. Live link. The official site hasn't been updated since the Pleistocene, so I don't know if the pairings have already been done. [They are now up here.] I hope we don't have to fish around for basic info on the ICC, Chess Life, and official sites. I hope someone can do some outreach to the hardcore sites where all details are welcome. An organizer, an arbiter?

A FIFO/blogging format is great for many things, but isn't always best for event coverage. A few static pages for results, pairings, and rules need to be there. With so much going on during the rounds for live coverage, the basics can fall through the cracks. (I clicked on "Tournament Results" and found out Nick Karlow won last Friday's Action Quad. Great job, Nick! Now get the heck off the US Championship page! Yes, I know that menu item isn't directly below the US Ch menu, but still.) With so many people surfing on mobile devices these days, a results page in plain HTML, updated during the round, is essential. A javascript replay is also nice, since most mobile toys can't play Flash or run applets.

Speaking of regulations, can anyone let us know if there are anti-short-draw rules in effect?

[The first round pairings appeared a few hours later here. Yay. Highlights: Ibragimov-Kamsky, Nakamura-Shabalov (! Crazy but true, Shabalov is the 14th seed.), Friedel-Onischuk. My Brooklyn homegirl Irina Krush has black against Kaidanov. Last call to pick your winners. Who will be on the podium? Can anyone crack through the Kamsky-Nakamura-Onischuk power trio over nine rounds? Odds are they won't all three finish with medals, but I find it very hard to pick against them.

Add: After the usual first-round delay, a relay snafu put the wrong names on the boards for a while, but that seems to be fixed. Jennifer Shahade and Emil Sutovsky are on the mic live for ICC Chess.FM. Susan Polgar has posted a big gallery of pics here.

Add: Holy hell, what a mess. The scores were so bad that the official site shut down the live broadcast during the round. And hours after the round finished (it's midnight in NY) the official site still says to check back tonight for PGN. 12 games!! This isn't the frigging Olympiad, people! Don't they still keep scoresheets? It also says the "PNG boards malfunctioned." Eh? DGT? PGN? Sounds more like a PEBKAC problem to me. Apparently nobody was on hand during the round to slap up a free java viewer and manually update and upload a PGN file every few minutes. That's not brain surgery and I'm sure they have enough chess people floating around to relay at least the top few boards.

All the tech experts and bandwidth in the world don't help much if you don't know anything about chess and chess on the web, I guess. I'd like to be charitable, and in fact this is me being charitable, but this is unacceptable. If you don't know how to use the tech, make sure you do a few trial runs, or a few dozen. And have a backup plan. I mean, not that this is an important or prestigious event or anything. The DGT software can be a real pain, I know from experience (and why I let Dutch studs handle it and send me the URLs). But this isn't the Friday Action Quad! We're supposed to be talking about all the great players and the great games, and we can't even see them. The few scores circulating are garbage. About the only one I've seen that looks real is Hess's win over Christiansen. Brilliant stuff from LarryC only to miss a nice counter-shot and go down in flames. PNG PGN after the jump.

[There are some games in Shahade's CLO report. Hey, PGN now up here. Can you please drop the titles in the players' name fields? Hmm, at least one of the scores still has garbage. Ibragimov-Kamsky. 25.Bb4??? is even given in Shahade's report! Come on, people! I know it's late and you're all in a hurry and doing your best, but you're killing us here. America's top-rated player and the game has this gobbledygook.]

Let's really hope we can chalk this up to bad luck and that everything goes smoothly tomorrow, or at least that it survives. The organizers from St. Louis that I had the pleasure to meet in Nashville last month had enough goodwill for a dozen tournaments, so they deserve a mulligan. I'm sure they are trying hard and I don't want to hurt any feelings. But if this happens again the webosphere is going to go from annoyance to laughter, and that ain't pretty. (Just ask Braingames.) Maybe it's something going around the intertubes, since the Azerbaijan vs the World site is five kinds of crappy. The H1Nternet Virus?

A link from my friend Kat Kinsman of Slashfood fame. From the artist's site:

I'm exploring the ideas of food and play. Playing with your food should be encouraged. Here, I replaced the plastic checkers pieces with cream filled ginger cookies and chocolate cookies, and used custom-made cookie cutters to produce an edible chess set. When a player takes the opponent's piece, or cookie in this case, it can be eaten. There is an accompanying glass of milk on the side. The checkerboard pattern is silkscreened on the table cloth.

Site has pics of people playing and recipes! Just what I need. I suppose this might be slightly less unhealthy than the sets with all the pieces full of alcohol, if less fun.

These "vs the World" things are starting to get out of hand. It was one thing when it was done a couple of times by the USSR, which could legitimately claim to possess a plurality, if not a majority, of the world's best players across ten boards. The Soviet machine eked out narrow victories in the original 1970 match, 20.5-19.5 and duplicated the feat -- with a surprising number of players returning for the USSR -- 21-19 in 1984.

The "lite" edition came in 2002, long after the USSR ceased to exist. Russia vs the World was a rapid event, putting serious questions to its place in the legacy of the first two. It was also a Scheveningen format instead of straight-up match play. Karpov and Kasparov, who led the USSR team in 1984, were back, and surprisingly it was Kasparov who was the weak link, playing the worst tournament of his career and finishing on -2. That was more than enough for the World team, led by Anand and by Shirov's 7/10, to win 52-48.

In 1999 Kasparov and Microsoft made "the World" a more literal thing in the first big online "mass mind vs GM" contest, another category that has been exhausted. I'm not counting the 2004 "Team Petrosian" event that was a quasi-Armenia vs the World. (And you can tell I'm not a fan of the redundant "Rest of the World" title. I mean, 2Pac didn't call his album, "Me Against the Rest of the World" or "Me Against the World Not Including Me.")

Azerbaijan has one of the youngest and strongest teams in the world, led by Radjabov and Mamedyarov, who have both spent more time than not in the top ten over the past few years. Gashimov has been the surprise of the Grand Prix and is currently rated a little higher than Mamedyarov, who recently took some time off from elite chess to become a psychic detective. Capable mid-2600 pros Guseinov and Mamedov round out the team, one as backup. None of them were born before 1985. This event is much like the 2002 Russia event, a double all-play-all and rapid. The entire thing is over in three days. (2+3+3.) The World team is represented by Anand, Kramnik, Shirov, and Karjakin. Official site.

That looks like a mismatch in favor of the non-Azerbaijanis and it was going the World's way on day one as well. At least, that's how it seemed until the .az official website performed a face-saving suicide plunge. All I'm seeing now are lots of errors. I think it was +1 Azerbaijan after the first round, with Mamedyarov beating Shirov. Then Shirov and Anand scored in round two. Maybe. (I now see Chessdom wins for quickest coverage. If you know your Ананд from your Широв, the Azerisport site is on the scene.) The official live page is kaput at the moment. The results page offers an admin login. It's a close call, but I think the 1970 match had better official web coverage.

Brace yourself for all the Judy Garland references because everybody is headed to St. Louis, Missouri for a new chapter in the long history of the US chess championship. Round one is Friday the 8th at 2pm local time (CDT), 3pm EDT. Official site's live link. The only rest day is May 15.

Meet me in St. Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair,
Don't tell me the lights are shining
any place but there;
We will dance the Hoochee Koochee,
I will be your tootsie wootsie,
If you will meet in St. Louis, Louis,
Meet me at the fair.

I've been deluged with materials from at least four sources and haven't had time to take more than a glance at any of them, I'm afraid. I guess I won't be anyone's tootsie wootsie. It's been that sort of week, with La Miglette's virus of the month added on top. (Not of the H1N1, or even the 1e4, variety.) It should be a great event. The new organizers at the fabulous St. Louis Chess Club have pulled out all the stops. Big prize fund, all the top players, beautiful venue -- it's enough to bring back pleasant memories of the AF$C days, when crazy rich people enlightened paragons of industry sunk millions into elite American chess.

The entire US Olympiad team is there: Kamsky, Nakamura, Onischuk, reigning champ Shulman, and Akobian, who just beat Shulman in a rapid/blitz match. Shabalov must also be mentioned among the favorites. The format is a bit weird, a nine-round swiss with just 24 players. Here's a list of them all, on a map of the US. Or a tidier list with how each player qualified. But first, a word from the sponsor...

*Chess Talk with IM John Watson*

That's the latest edition of the ICC Chess.FM show Chess Talk with IM John Watson. In it, he talks with Rex Sinquefield & Tony Rich, the aforementioned enlightened paragon -- and founder and president of the St. Louis Club -- and the Club's executive director. The ICC has oodles of other stuff going on during the championship, from video coverage by Mac Daddy P to radio broadcasts with Jennifer Shahade and Emil Sutovsky. There are also trivia competitions and more. Chess Life Online is hosting a fantasy chess competition, which has nothing to do with pictures of your favorite participants naked.

The prize fund is $130,000, though I can't find the complete distribution. If there are details like that, time control, and other chessy things on the official site I can't find them. The media kit (PDF) comes closest, saying the first prize is $35,000 (plus a bonus of $5000 for the champion that isn't split if there's a playoff) and $2000 for last place. Time control is 40/2+5", g/1+5". There is a $64,000 jackpot for anyone who can duplicate Bobby Fischer's famous clean score (11/11, 1964) by running the table with 9/9. Of course even 4/4 is pretty unlikely in this tough field, but it's a fun thing to have out there. The tiebreak is a playoff of armageddon rapid on the 17th.

Apart from the favorites and recent champions, there is also a Hall of Fame contingent with my ICC Chess.FM compadres Joel Benjamin and aforementioned aquatic enthusiast Larry Christiansen returning to the field after skipping Oklahoma. Then there are the juniors, Shankland and Hess at 17 and Robson at 14. Scalps will be taken! Local hero Charles Lawton is four times older than Robson, the only African-American participant, and the only competitor to have played Captain Bligh opposite Clark Gable. The top two female players in the US, Zatonskih and Krush, are also there. They get to double dip since I assume they will both be back in St. Louis for the women's championship in October.

Please post more coverage links and info below since I'm sure I've skipped a ton. I'll try to bail out my inbox tonight.

Back in action after a very busy past few days on the Russian and Brooklyn fronts. But it's across the Maginot line we go for a moment, where I was happy to find some really great chess in the French Team Championship group stage. The heavyweight Evry Grand Roque squad (I mean they are highly rated; I'm certainly in no position to make waistline jokes) was led by dominating performances from their stars Svidler and Nakamura. Both scored 3.5/4 to lead their team to the top of Group A. Vachier-Lagrave on board three was also a hero, scoring 5.5/6 with wins over Naiditsch and Bacrot. French teen GM Sebastian Feller equaled that score and Fedorchuk made 4.5/5. Basically everybody on Evry Grand Roque was in le groove.

Nakamura continues to have success with his "Canadian" repertoire of flank openings with both colors. Despite his 1.e4 2.Qh5 dalliances, I doubt many suspected the young American would be the one to plant the dusty flag of Duncan Suttles on a high peak in the 21st century, but plant it he has. He won some wild games in Mulhouse. I would love to have seen Delchev's face as he realized that despite his doubled rooks on the 7th, protected pawn on b7, and bishop on a7 he was busted. (Games after the jump.) Svidler's wins included two against countrymen Dreev and Jakovenko and the five-time Russian champion continues his return up the rating list. And don't miss the tactical flurry of Bacrot-Vachier Lagrave.