June 2009 Archives

Revving up for dueling supertournaments in the coming days, one old and one new. Dortmund kicks off on July 2nd with Kramnik, Leko, Carlsen, Jakovenko, Bacrot, and Naiditsch. Three former winners there -- don't forget Naiditsch's clear first in 2005. He'll need seven more Dortmund titles to catch up with Vladimir Kramnik's collections. Last year, however, Leko took clear first in the second 'sprint' edition of Dortmund, just seven rounds, with +2. Kramnik, meanwhile, lost twice with his Petroff and finished -1.

This year the format is the overused six-player double all-play-all, which limits the influx of new blood but cuts down on hotel and travel costs. The purity of eliminating color imbalance is a nice feature, but I'd be happy to leave this stodgy format to Linares. Instead it's spreading like H1N1. At least we get ten rounds of action instead of the mere seven rounds as in the last few years.

Nice to see Jakovenko here, befitting his new status as world #5 on the new July rating list. The Grand Prix has been keeping him busy enough, but he hasn't had much in the way of invites to traditional events. I guess he's lucky that Kramnik doesn't really count as another Russian in Dortmund since he basically owns the joint. It'll be interesting to see Big Vlad in action since he hasn't played a classical game since his mediocre Olympiad performance last November. He was in devastating form in rapid chess in Baku last month.

Rounds begin at 9am EDT and I'll be kicking things off live on ICC Chess.FM with Larry Christiansen for rounds one and two.

Then on the 7th the inaugural Donostia-San Sebastian chess festival begins in Spain with no fewer than four round-robin events at the same time. Loek van Wely is in the B group! The official site just popped up here. Players in the top group, aka the "Donostia 2016 European Cultural City" tournament are: Karpov, Svidler, Nakamura, Movsesian, Kasimjanov, Ponomariov, Vachier-Lagrave, Vallejo Pons, Granda Zuñiga, San Segundo. (San Sebastian is a candidate city to be the 2016 European capital of culture, one of the reasons they are hosting this chess festival.) Pictures will be at this Flickr account, currently stocked with pics of the locale and older photos of the players. There's even a Twitter account, so add @donostiachess to your Tweetdeck for regular updates if you're into that sort of thing.

The field for the 2009 Nanjing Pearl Spring Grand Slam tournament is now complete. Bu Xiangzhi has been replaced by Wang Yue despite his respectable even score in last year's edition. But barring shocking developments, nobody will be paying much attention to anyone other than world champ Anand, world #1 Topalov, and world #3 wunderkind Magnus Carlsen. The rest of the field will be battling to get a share of the spotlight: Radjabov, Jakovenko, and Wang Yue. Topalov dominated last year's event. Start date is September 27, hard on the heels of the Bilbao Grand Slam final. Official site here.

Update: Hours after I posted this, Anand and Topalov disappeared from the Pearl Spring website and were replaced with "to be determined"! Maybe the organizers' announcements got ahead of their contracts?

I know my brain is decaying in my dotage now that I went and turned 40 earlier this month, but when did Ilyumzhinov's illegitimately inserted candidates event turn into matches? Well, I've been busy. Without any explanation on the page, FIDE has announced the regulations for "Candidates Matches 2010" on its homepage. That is, instead of a tournament, as had been mentioned repeatedly if not actually written down -- and of course instead of the original plan to have a candidates match between the winners of the World Cup and the Grand Prix. I love candidates matches the way the US football team loves choking against Brazil, but this still doesn't change the fact that this additional candidates phase is entirely unnecessary -- especially if sponsorship isn't already lined up.

The event schedule shows that the first two rounds of matches are only four games long, with the final lasting just six games. Tragic. The invitation list of eight remains the same, as discussed here many times. Kamsky (as loser against Topalov in the last candidates match), the loser of the upcoming (inshallah) WCh match between Topalov and Anand, the winner of this year's Nov-Dec World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk, the top two finishers in the Grand Prix, two by rating (avg. Jul 2009 and Jan 2010 lists), and the preposterous "nominated player by the Organizer."

Unless UEP comes back into the organizing picture and makes Kramnik the obvious wildcard selection, it could be interesting if it comes down to the former world champ or the new hotness, Magnus Carlsen. But Carlsen, who dropped out of the Grand Prix, has the inside track as a rating qualifier. He'll be third on the July list behind Topalov and Anand, who don't factor in. Ivanchuk's horrific plunge on the upcoming rating list looks set to make him an unlucky loser again. Radjabov and Grischuk lead the GP standings right now, with two tournaments to play, but Aronian is in excellent position. He's also 4th on the rating list.

Maybe they can include a clause that says if they don't get sponsorship for these matches before a deadline they revert to the original plan and play a match between the GP and WC winners. Some day they will learn that having a predictable and transparent system is worth more in the long run than trying to make a buck on this ad hoc basis. By then we'll be picking feathers out of our bacon.

Speaking of the World Cup, I've been following the Latin American qualifying events over the past few days. So far Morovic of Chile, Rodriguez of Uruguay, Bruzon of Cuba, and Iturrizaga of Venezuela are in. Proud to say I've lost to two of them! (Coincidentally, Rodriguez won his key final game, a lovely one (see below), with 1.d4 d5 2.Bg5, which is what I played against him in my loss in 1994.) Cuba's Dominguez is already in by rating. The Pan American individual championship will send three more in July.

Whew, a crazy month. But Hurricane Garry has left the country and I have a few moments to play chess catch up before getting to all the follow-up to what has been a remarkable past week or so.

Vassily Ivanchuk took clear first in the third edition of this Romanian tournament. His +4 undefeated score put him a full point ahead of Boris Gelfand. A clear victory for the oldest players in the event. Shirov beat Nisipeanu in the final round to move back to +1 and a tie for 3-4 with Radjabov. Kamsky and Nisipeanu both finished with -4. Such a catastrophe might have been predicted for the local hope, who was giving up a lot rating points to the rest of the field. But Kamsky hasn't looked this fragile since the first few years or so of his comeback in 2004.

Ivanchuk started off with a win and then reeled of three straight in the middle to put it out of reach. There was only one decisive game in the final three rounds, but not from a lack of fighting spirit. But when you have three undefeated players it's not exactly a bloodbath. Only one loss was notched by someone not named Kamsky or Nisipeanu.

I've been trying to make a little sense of Radjabov's tournament. I've been critical of him in the past for being lackadaisical with the white pieces and occasionally coasting for long periods. Here he was pushing but just didn't get anywhere. He got in most of his sharp black repertoire, the Sveshnikov, Dragon, and King's Indian, but only for draws. He tried some interesting things with white and had his chances, other than a complete whiff against Nisipeanu's Scandinavian. (Nisipeanu lost a remarkable game with it earlier this year in Budva to Stevic.) In the final round Radjabov may have been taken aback by Ivanchuk's 6..Nbd7 in the Najdorf, a rarely-seen bird at these altitudes, and got little to show. Radjabov even added a few rating points.

Dortmund starts on July 2 and San Sebastian (Svidler, Movsesian, Nakamura, Karpov, etc.) a few days after that. I'll be back hosting on ICC Chess.FM for Dortmund, with a leisurely 9am starting time. Players are Kramnik, Leko, Carlsen, Jakovenko, Bacrot, and Naiditsch. It's yet another double round-robin with six players. (Bazna showed one of the weaknesses of this format. When someone's out of form, or two someones, it really distorts the table.) Before that, the World Open begins in Philadelphia on the 29th and should attract the usual strong crowd.

From the man with the best hair in chess journalism, Macauley "Anchorman" Peterson at the ICC Chess.FM blog, the real scoop on Hikaru Nakamura's invite to Corus A 2010. Go there now for all the linkies to work.

American champion Hikaru Nakamura has been invited to the prestigious Corus A tournament in Wijk aan Zee (January 15-31, 2010).

Nakamura (ICC: Smallville) broke the news first in an interview for Chess Talk with John Watson, which will be released for on-demand playback next Tuesday, June 29th on Chess.FM (for ICC members only).

The past six weeks have been tremendous for Nakamura, whose U.S. Championship win in Saint Louis got him back over 2700 FIDE. In fact, with Gata Kamsky struggling in Bazna, Romania, Nakamura looks poised to surpass him as the top rated American in the world.

Macauley phoned Hikaru for a quick chat on Monday night to confirm the news.

For US fans this adds some drama to all the remaining Corus A invite announcements. Will the American champ face the usual rogue's gallery of top-tenners? Will Anand, Topalov, and Kramnik be back this year? Nakamura's inclusion in this traditional event will also test my theory that having someone with his large American online fan base will have a significant impact on coverage traffic. Like any star doing his thing, Nakamura also has his share of vocal detractors. But they'll be watching eagerly, too. And on the internet nobody knows (or cares) whether the unique visitors are there to cheer or jeer. It's about putting butts in the seats, as the saying goes, or in this case, eyeballs on the screen. And I have no doubt that in that category Nakamura plays at the 2800 level.

I hope the USCF site gets out ahead of their champion's second-half star turn with some serious promotion and coverage. This is their chance to run with something big instead of running it over. Contests, fantasy chess, win a trip to Corus to carry Hikaru's luggage, whatever. I'm sure the savvier ICC folks will get into this sort of thing as well. Smallville is as close to a home-grown star as the ICC could have.

Ivanchuk took another big step toward adding another trophy to his creaking shelves in Bazna. He beat Shirov to move to an impressive +4 score and a full-point lead with three rounds to play. In today's 7th round Ivanchuk has black against the only player with a realistic chance of catching him, Boris Gelfand. Radjabov finally notched a win, handing Kamsky's Caro-Kann its second consecutive loss and its hapless operator his third. The American now sits in clear last place on -4.

Shirov played a, well, Shirovian piece sacrifice out of the Grunfeld against Ivanchuk. The fascinating imbalance continued through a rich game of blow and counterblow. It looks like Black was very close to reaching a draw several times, but Ivanchuk managed to keep enough material on the board to keep winning chances. 67..g3!, threatening to take the knight, looks like a forced draw. 68.Kf1 g2+ (or even ..e2+) with ..f3 coming is the trick. Black will take the knight with check or the king gets to the h-pawn. Shirov hesitated one move and was lost.

A side-note to Kamsky's fall is that it now looks certain Hikaru Nakamura will become the top-rated American player on the July FIDE list. (Everyone's favorite rating-porn site, the Live List, confirms this forecast.) After his US championship win and his 7.5/8 in the French League Nakamura will clock in at 2710 in July while Kamsky may drop out of the 2700 club entirely. I'm not sure how surprised to be about his downturn. The mass of preparation he must have done for the Topalov candidates match has to be balanced against the psychological blow of losing it. Mindless mind-reading aside, there's no reason to doubt Kamsky will be back in shape soon enough.

For Nakamura, the biggest challenges are yet to come. In a few weeks he heads to San Sebastian with Movsesian, Svidler, and Ponomariov. At year's end comes a double dip that could really launch the still-young American into the world elite. In December he plays in London with Carlsen and Kramnik. Just a few weeks later (!) he heads to freezing Wijk aan Zee and the illustrious Corus A group, an invite he has coveted and has justly earned. Just surviving that gauntlet with his skin intact will be impressive, but of course Nakamura never plays just to survive, so excitement will come one way or another.

When Ivanchuk scraped bottom with -4 at MTel in May (-5 until a last-round win), there was much talk about how exhausted he was, how he'd been playing too much and needed a break, etc. He certainly had been playing a remarkable amount, but I tried to point out that 1) it wasn't much more than he always seems to be playing these days and 2) his results fluctuate wildly without any apparent correlation to frequency. Now, without a break after MTel, squeezing in two rapid events, Ivanchuk is leading the nearly as strong Bazna tournament, +3 undefeated after six of 10 rounds for a 2900 performance rating. Exhausted!

True, two of his wins have come against the tail-ending local, Nisipeanu, but it's still quite a turnaround. Fellow 40-something Boris Gelfand is in second place a half-point back. Then comes Shirov on +1. This tournament could be part of a senior tour if it weren't for Radjabov, the only player in the field under 30. He's played all draws so far. Kamsky is having a very rough time of it with three losses without a victory to sit in last place with Nisipeanu. He's lost twice to Shirov, though neither was as ugly as his hanging a rook to Ivanchuk in the fifth round. It was an unusual tactic, at least, coming soon to the back-rank section of your next tactics book.

With apologies to the Beastie Boys. FIDE has a knack for press releases that make things less clear. They've really raised it to an art form. The latest is a report on the Presidential Board Meeting (apparently these things are capitalized) held over the last few days in Krakow. There were some important, or at least impactful, items on the agenda but there are many tea leaves to be read to figure out what's actually going on and what was decided.

The recent back-and-forth on changing the K-factor used in calculating the rating list has been booted to some nameless committee to "clarify all aspects and consequences of a possible change." That's what was supposed to happen already. So no change right now, unfortunately. Actually it's only really worth changing the K-factor if you also update the frequency of the list. Quarterly lists will look jarringly random otherwise. (For those who don't want to bother reading up on it, the short version is that K is how many rating points change hands in each game. The higher it is, the more dynamic the list.) The core of this debate is the point of a rating list. Historical strength or recent performance? Of course we can track both trivially enough, and we should. Chessplayers are fascinated by ratings and FIDE's perpetual squandering of the value and interest of the rating lists and data is ridiculous.

Of more pressing interest, but even more cryptic, is the announcement that FIDE has accepted the "new regulations" for the ongoing world championship cycle. By this I assume (and assume is all I can do since they don't actually specify) they mean adding Ilyumzhinov's new candidates tournament to further slow things down and give a few reliable donors a chance to sweeten the coffers.

Speaking of coffers, David Kaplan's name makes another appearance, this time joined to "Chess Lane," the latest imaginary company concocted by Ilyumzhinov and his buddies to facilitate the shell game that has long been the business development [sic] branch of FIDE, going back at least to the Artyom Tarasov days. Chess Lane and Kaplan have eaten most of Global Chess after Bessel Kok came to his senses and bailed out of the sinking Grand Prix ship. Kaplan was named "Development CEO" of FIDE in Nov. 2007 and though we know little about him, to come out of nowhere to take such an obscure position you have to have money, want money, or want to clean money, or all of the above. Or maybe he's just another selfless "industrialist" with a thing for chess. Of the fewer than one dozen mentions of his name on the FIDE site since that time, this nice one from April 08 when Kaplan gave "a presentation on the progress that Chess Lane has been making, which included many original ideas." Period! Is anything actually being developed? What progress?

Yesterday's press release says the PB "acknowledged and discussed the proposal of David Kaplan, FIDE Development CEO, about the establishment of a new Internet portal centered around chess activities and the creation of a Chess News Agency. In relation to these developments, FIDE will enter into negotiation with Chess Lane company."

Gee, a chess web portal and a news agency, how 1994. Sarcasm aside, of course these are things FIDE should have done -- and actually has announced in various forms -- long ago. Professionalizing coverage, first of official FIDE events and then offering coverage packages and establishing minimum standards for elite events. The hodgepodge of coverage, or lack thereof, from event to event is disgraceful. The Grand Prix series coverage has moved in the right direction, although another thing the PB press release hints at is the demise of the GP. Skip the hackneyed "portal" concept though, and explain what this new site will be beyond what FIDE.com already provides, or could provide.

In DC with Garry yesterday for meetings, I hooked my G1 into a wifi network at an office building near Dupont Circle. Among the various networks to appear was one with an amusing SSID. There are several consular offices in the building but I don't think that third one from the top is there anymore. Or is there something we don't know?! Nice to see an admin with a sense of humor. Either that or if you see a black helicopter circling my house, please give me a ring.

Meetings were very interesting, not always the case. In three weeks Obama is headed to Russia for the first time and both what he says and with whom he meets there will be watched very closely. And of course every faction and clique in the US political scene wants a "Russia message" now, so people who would barely return my calls a month ago are now beating down the doors. Good, but silly, since you know we'll be back on the caller ID screen list by August even if we help out.

While I'm off-topic, hello to the several people who came up and said hello to me at the Lincoln Center screening of "Holy Fire" the other day. (Mostly while waiting to get Garry's picture or autograph, but I'll take it.)

Yet more top-level chess coming at us this week in what used to be the long lull between Amber and Dortmund. (Or even Linares and Dortmund if you didn't count rapid.) Nowadays we seem to have hot and cold running top-tenners in action. Well, of late it's been mostly Shirov and Ivanchuk, and they way their last event have gone the term 'top ten" may no longer apply on the next list.

First we have the III King's Tournament in Bazna, Romania. It's yet another six-player double round-robin event and a category 20, no less. Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Radjabov, Shirov, Kamsky, and local star Nisipeanu make up the cast. (In what must surely be an error, Dominguez and Wang Yue aren't participating.) Last year's event, a relatively humble cat. 13, was dominated by top seed Nigel Short. It's a little hard to believe Shirov and Ivanchuk are back in action again. They've both played over 30 classical games in the last few months and both are coming off catastrophic results. Ivanchuk has even shoehorned in two rapid events since going -4 at MTel at the end of May!

But you can always put the predictable on hold with both of these stars. In the first round in Barza they won with black to take the very early lead. Shirov beat Kamsky and Ivanchuk beat Nisipeanu. Radjabov-Gelfand was drawn. In an example of predestination, Shirov started pushing his a-pawn on move 10 and it eventually turned into a winner. I'm not convinced the rook endgame should be lost for White, but how Shirov won it is instructive. Ivanchuk defended with black a Lopez line he used to beat Morozevich a few months ago with white at Amber. Nisipeanu was getting pushed back by Black's central pawns and then cracked under the pressure with 32.Kg2, the right idea (getting the king off the back rank) but too early. The power of the bishop pair could have given him chances to fight back with 32.f4 instead. Then if 32..Rb2?! 33.fxe5! Rxd2 34.Qf3! and suddenly Black is fighting for survival. Against Gelfand, Radjabov followed 22 moves of Leko's nice win over Gelfand's Petroff at Nalchik a few months ago. The Azerbaijani varied with 23.Ne7+ and Gelfand showed some cute tactics to hold the balance.

Another event in its third edition is the III Ruy Lopez International Chess Festival. Mickey Adams is the top seed and last year's winner. (Sargissian won the first in 2007 with a sensational 6.5/7.) He started this year off with a bang by losing to young Spanish IM Larino Nieto. Adams bounced back in the second round with a win over Caruana in a classic Adams "The Spider" grind. Caruana is 0/2 with a loss in the first round to Cheparinov. The Bulgarian, still best known for his work with world #1 Topalov, shares the lead with the two women in the field, Humpy Koneru and veteran Swedish GM Pia Cramling.

It's not exactly the Hollywood red carpet, but it's not bad. The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival gets underway tomorrow at famous Lincoln Center in New York. One of the opening night attractions is "In The Holy Fire of the Revolution," a documentary by Masha Novikova that follows the travails of Garry Kasparov and other Russian opposition leaders as they travel through the country while being sabotaged at every step by the powers that be. There will be a Q&A with Garry after the film screens. It begins at 6:30pm.

Don't you just love it when the leaders play a decisive game for the title near the end of an event? This really doesn't happen all that often, but it feels like we've had quite a few of these decisive showdowns lately. Aronian beat Leko in the final round of the Nalchik Grand Prix. Shirov beat Carlsen in the final round of MTel. Ding Liren beat Wang Hao in the penultimate round of the Chinese Ch. Short and Sokolov met in the final round of Sigeman, and though Short only needed a draw there he got the full point.

With two rounds to play in the 10th Poikovsky Karpov tournament, former Russian champion Motylev was tied for first with Gashimov, who has escaped the shadows of his compatriots Radjabov and Mamedyarov thanks largely to several excellent Grand Prix performances. Motylev, with white, fearlessly went for the win throughout the game instead of chickening out when it was clear a pawn race was the only path with winning chances. His king went on an impressive jaunt from g1 to a5 to tip the balance. The Russian calculated the finale very well, as at first glance the black g-pawn looks very fast. Great two-fisted chess.

The victory left Motylev with a full-point lead heading into the final round, and perhaps that knowledge distracted him a bit in his last-round game against Bologan. Not to take anything away from Bologan, who played a nice game against Motylev's safety-first Petroff, which he played instead of his usual Caro-Kann or Dragon. Motylev must have been busted but managed to bamboozle Bologan in a bi-directional pawn stampede in time trouble to reach a repetition draw. Great to have fighting chess in the final rounds. Even a loss wouldn't have mattered though, since Efimenko reached a pawn-down rook endgame out of his Berlin against Gashimov to hold.

Naiditsch lost his last four games in a row after a good start. The usually-solid German had a single draw in the nine-round event. Shirov stabilized a bit after losing his first four games, but failed to win a game and looked happy just to get the heck out of town and start forgetting as soon as possible. 1.e4 dominated the event, which was full of fight despite nine Petroffs and seven Berlins versus just seven Sicilians.

In a final pair of game notes, check out Inarkiev-Rublevsky after the nice 37..d3! and try to figure out why White can't take the pawn with 38.cxd3. I spent some time looking at and couldn't see anything great for Black after 38..Rc1+ 39.Kh2 Qc7 40.Qf4. I looked at 41..Rf1 but 42.Qg3 looked fine. It's not! Inarkiev avoided the trap but couldn't hold the position in the end. Also worth a look for endgame fans is Naiditsch's failure to hold R+2 vs R against Bologan in round eight. He believed keeping the black king cut off was more important than keeping the black pawn under fire. The tablebase draws, often obscure and useless to study for humans, are actually of practical value in these positions. White plays 94.Rg5= (or Rd5 or Rh5), as long as he can get to d5 to check the black king from d2 and block the pawn. From e4 that's not possible since d4 is covered and so Black got a crucial tempo to protect the c-pawn from the flank and shield his king at the same time. Bologan, a player of classical nature and knowledge, then brought home the win in instructive style.

The auction of many of Bobby Fischer's personal effects and chess items took place yesterday. You can see the auction listing here. It's worth going to the Flash version of the image, which lets you pan around and zoom in on the items in the photo. As I was about to post this I got a tip and an early copy of the following press release. The big new presence on the US chess scene, St. Louis Chess Club founder and 2009 US Championship sponsor, Rex Sinquefield, was the winning bidder. That's great news since this amazing collection will be kept together, publicly displayed, and made available for research. The winning bid was $61,000 ($50K + fees).

SINQUEFIELDS PURCHASE BOBBY FISCHER'S CHESS COLLECTION

St. Louis, June 11 -- Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield have purchased the chess library of the legendary Bobby Fischer, including notebooks he prepared for his 1972 World Championship match with Boris Spassky. The Sinquefields acquired the collection through San Francisco-based auction house, Bonhams and Butterfields.

"I am thrilled to have this collection from arguably the greatest chess player in history," said Rex Sinquefield, founder and board president of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. "I have been a lifelong fan of Bobby Fischer."

The reclusive Fischer died in January 2008 at age 64. The collection purchased by the Sinquefields includes 320 books on chess; about 400 issues of chess-related periodicals; three sets of proofs for Fischer's 1969 book, "My 60 Memorable Games"; and a number of bound volumes detailing the match histories of several chess masters, including Spassky.

The Spassky-related works centers on Fischer's preparation for his historic 1972 match, won by Fischer. The victory ended 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Championship.

The collection also includes a copy of "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess," with a note indicating that Fischer planned on suing the publishers.

Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield, who are retired investment company executives, said they weren't sure of their plans with the Fischer collection. "I am thinking right now about how to display it and to make it available to scholars," Rex said.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center was founded in 2007 with funding from the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. It recently hosted the 2009 U.S. Chess Championship, which was won by Hikaru Nakamura. The center also will host the 2009 U.S. Women's Chess Championship from Oct. 2 to Oct. 12.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis is a not-for-profit, 501(c)3 organization. For more information, please visit www.saintlouischessclub.org.

The Chess.FM blog will have shortly exclusive video footage from the auction by Macauley Peterson. [Now up here.]

I have a couple of items I got Fischer to sign when I met him and did some work during his appearance and press conferences in Buenos Aires in 1996. And a few pages of the Fischerandom rules I translated with his barely comprehensible notes scribbled on them. Judging by the photos of his 1972 materials at the auction, his handwriting deteriorated even faster than the rest of him. (Though most of the writing you can see in that photo is by the editors, surely. Fischer wasn't writing "stet" on the title page!) I hope that at least the most important items in the new Sinquefield collection will be scanned/photographed and put online.

The 10th Karpov tournament in Poikovsky has been a proudly second-string event since its inception ten years ago. Only rarely has a member of the top ten appeared. They prefer to go with friends and comrades full of fight, with many of the same players returning year after year. However, it's worth pointing out that the Poikovsky event was the strongest round-robin in mighty Russia for a few years. And while it may not have the biggest names, it's usually a very entertaining event (though last year's was largely an exception).

Two of this year's participants were at the first Poikovsky event in 2000, an ad hoc affair dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Karpov's ascendancy to the throne. Oddly, that inaugural event seems to have vanished from the map, with no mention of it in the TWIC archives I can find and no games in the ChessBase MegaBase. Quite unusual for a category 14 with names like Bologan (the winner), Onischuk, Ehlvest, Bu Xiangzhi, and Sveshnikov. I only know the names because, remarkably, an ancient official site from the 2003 edition is still hanging on in cyberspace.

In early March the year 2000 the head of the Nefteyugansk region Administration Alexander Valentinovich Klepikov, stressed the importance of holding a tournament dedicated to Anatoly Yevgenievich Karpov in the area.

Quite naturally, the head of the local administration shared his idea with the twelfth World Champion, who not only endorsed the idea, but also gave his support. Also support to the tournament was privided my Major of Poikovsky and numerous sponsors, mostly representing the oil-producing sector of the economy.

And in August 2000 nine GMs and one IM from 7 countries - V.Bologan (MDA), A.Onischuk (UKR), E.Sveshnikov (RUS), G.Veskovi (BRA), U.Adianto (INA), A.Galkin (RUS), J.Ehlvest (EST), Bu (CHN), S.Dvoirys (RUS) and S.Pozin (RUS) came to Poikovsky. The tournament was dedicated to the 25th anniversary of attainment the World Champion title by Anatoly Karpov.

The first place with a perfect score 7/9 took GM Bologan from Moldova.

The dates given are 24/08 - 04/09. No games? No TWIC mention? Nothing in my KasparovChess archives? A mystery? Anyone? Maybe Sveshnikov was going through one of his "the scores belong to the players" moments and got everyone else to go along?

Back in 2009, where I'm older but no wiser, and back to Siberia. Former Poikovsky winners Bologan and Onischuk are watching from the middle depths of the crosstable. With two rounds to go, Gashimov and Motylev are leading with impressive +4, 5.5/7 scores. Both are undefeated and, best of all, they are yet to meet. Inarkiev is on +2 and Sutovsky on +1. It's been a violent event throughout, but the leaders' powerful play has been overshadowed by the dismal performance of the top seed.

Shirov just notched his fifth loss in seven rounds, this one to Onischuk. Shirov's piece sac today had the desperation of the damned. Onischuk calmly swapped down to two bishops vs a rook and later gave up a piece to run a pawn to victory. Only Shirov can say what can take you from +3 and clear first in a category 21 to -5 a few weeks later in a category 18. More likely, if he could say, he could prevent it.

But let's try to get back to the bright side. Don't miss the wonderful tactical sequence in Naiditsch-Motylev in round six. Onischuk's win over Efimenko in the same round was also full of sharp and witty play. The other good news is the Berlin Defense has come in from some whacking. The 15.e6! sac in Gashimov-Naiditsch worked as well as a similar sac by Kasparov when he finally beat (too late!) Kramnik's Berlin in Astana 2001. The Petroff has been unusually lively as well, though it has two wins to go with two losses and two draws. Sutovsky's 7.h3 8.gxf3 idea is unlikely to find many imitators. Isn't White just worse? In eight moves of a Petroff?! Bad day. By now everyone has seen Motylev's sweet combo against Shirov in the third. When you're as punch-drunk as Shirov you just keep walking into haymakers.

Something like that is expected later this evening. Thanks to everyone who sent b-day wishes. At times like this it's good to peruse the list of all the famous and accomplished people who never even lived to see 40. Consider all they achieved so early and then think, "suckers, I'm still alive!" Living is the best revenge. Best put by Woody Allen, like so many things. "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."

Meanwhile, the even older than me Nigel Short on why he did so well at the Sigeman tournament (4.5/5 and a 2974 TPR). "The problem was that I had a few too many glasses of red wine at the opening ceremony and I promised Johan Sigeman that he could have his money back if I didn't fight."

Competition is indeed the art of self-motivation. There should be a motivational poster with open bottles of alcohol and below it saying, "Booze: Helping you make promises you have to keep when you're sober."

Nigel Short made it look easy from the start and Magnus Carlsen needed every single second to do the job. In the five-round Sigeman sprint, Short started with three wins, took a rest day draw, and finished in style by beating second seed Sokolov with black in the final round for a sweet 4.5/5 score. In the León Magistral Rapid final match, Ivanchuk and Carlsen exhausted the four rapid games and the two blitz tiebreakers. Carlsen had white in the 6"-5" armaggedon blitz game and won to take away the title Ivanchuk won beating Anand last year.

Carlsen would have finished things a little earlier had he found the cute 38..Ra5! winner in the second blitz tiebreak game. It was notable he switched away from his Dragon to a Sveshnikov after getting tagged for a loss the second time around in the match. Ivanchuk, who plays anything and everything, got his rapid loss in a badly played Dutch in game four when he only needed a draw to clinch the match. 11..e5 is one of those moves that you're taught you should play as soon as you can manage it, but Carlsen correctly surmised his kingside action was faster than Black's queenside play. Ivanchuk did get his share of the play, however, at least briefly. I'm not sure why Carlsen didn't go for the typical clamp with Na4 on move 13 or 14, must be some reason. Nice clutch win regardless, and good sharp chess all round.

Youth was served in León, but in Malmö a finer vintage was uncorked. Short really plays some good chess when he's relaxed these days. As long ago as 2000 he told me he much preferred playing in nice conditions and having fun on and off the board instead of bashing and being bashed in elite events. It does sort of make you wonder how well the former world championship challenger might do were he to get back to the grind. Gelfand is just a few years younger than Short's recently turned 44 years and the Israeli looks headed back to the top ten on the next list. On the other hand, the grind isn't really a grind for some people and I don't think Gelfand is ever happier than when he's working on chess.

With four significant events going on simultaneously it's a little hard to keep track. To sum up: Wang Hao stopped winning, Shirov can't stop losing, Short finally drew, Carlsen and Ivanchuk squeaked by, and Anand is making it look easy against Leko.

If you still want more, we've already covered the shocking conclusion of the Chinese championship, including two players losing by forfeit because they weren't at their boards when the clocks were started. Even when FIDE gets the right idea (players should be at their boards, after all. It's only professional.) they implement it in such a boneheaded and extreme way as to infuriate everyone. Zero tolerance? Forfeit? Why not kick offenders out of the tournament or burn them at the stake? How about a fine, or anything else that doesn't also punish the spectators, the organizers, the other players, and potentially upset the competitive balance of an entire event? Horrible. Anyway, congrats to 16-year-old winner Ding Liren, who may now be allowed to leave chess camp and visit his family.

Fresh from winning the MTel supertournament and the big invite to the Bilbao Masters Grand Slam Final, Alexei Shirov is again making news at the board. This time it's at the relatively humble Elo altitude of the Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, where he's the top seed. If you can name another top seed to start an event this strong with an Audi -- other than Ivanchuk or Shirov himself of course -- I'd love to see it. Four consecutive losses to start out the nine-round event and a few of the games make you wonder if Shirov partied just a little too hard after winning in Sofia. (Vodka on Board?) Tragic. On the sunnier side of the crosstable, Gashimov and Motylev are leading with impressive 3.5/4 scores, followed by the exciting Inarkiev with three wins and a loss. Onischuk has two defeats and has Shirov to thank for keeping him out of the cellar.

Leko is once again appearing overmatched on his home turf in the Miskolc rapid match. After losing the last two editions to Kramnik and Carlsen, the Hungarian is having his milkshake drunk by world champ Vishy Anand this year. It's 4-2 with two final games to play on Sunday. I'm a little surprised since Leko looked so sharp at the Nalchik Grand Prix, but Anand is just too much to handle. He's lost just one rapid game in the past year (!), to none other than Peter Leko at Amber.

A year ago Anand lost several rapid games, and a match, to Ivanchuk in the final of the León Magistral event. This final of this year's edition is about to begin between Ivanchuk and Carlsen, who disposed of Morozevich and Wang Yue in the semifinals, respectively. Ivanchuk won the first of his four game set and then drew his way home. In game two, Moro's zippy 7.c6, which he introduced against Ponomariov last year, was met by the "oh yeah?" response 7..d5 by Ivanchuk instead of taking the pawn. Interesting, at least until you notice Morozevich could have transposed into one of those earlier games with 11.b4. Oh well. Chucky should have wrapped things up in game three with five pawns for a piece but let it get away.

Carlsen needed blitz tiebreak games to eliminate Wang Yue, although he gave the Chinese player a little help to get there. It's hard to believe White couldn't win game one with a rook for knight and pawn in an endgame, but it happened. Wang Yue drew first blood in the second game, smoothly demolishing Carlsen's Grunfeld. In game three Wang Yue horribly misplayed a sharp Nimzo line (seen in the aforementioned Ivanchuk-Anand León match last year), apparently missing 15.Nxd5 and Black's position is a wreck. Carlsen couldn't do anything with the bishop pair in the first blitz tiebreak game. In the second, again against Wang Yue's Catalan, Carlsen outplayed his opponent steadily to head into tomorrow's final.

Top seed Nigel Short began this year's Sigeman sprint event with three straight wins. That should be more than enough to take first in this five-round miniature tournament, although after his 4th round draw with Hillarp-Persson today he can be caught if he loses in the final round to second seed Ivan Sokolov on Sunday. I wonder if Sokolov owns a Caruana mask.

Wang Hao was running away with the powerful Chinese Championship, racking up win after win. The only competitor to even keep him in view was teenager Ding Liren, but even he was 1.5 points behind with two rounds to play. Then something interesting happened on the way to the celestial city. Ding Liren beat Wang Hao in their 10th-round game, which had the additional plus of giving him better tiebreaks, if my interpretation of the google translation of the official site is to be trusted. So a Wang Hao loss or draw and Ding Liren win (or WH loss and DL draw) in the final round would give the title to the 16-year-old.

As it turned out, tiebreaks weren't necessary. Ding Liren's final-round opponent, Zhou Jianchao, became the second player of the event to be forfeited under the new FIDE "zero tolerance" rule because he wasn't at his board when the games began. Supposedly he overslept. (A few days earlier Hou Yifan was forfeited even though she was apparently in the room at the time and headed to her board.) What a joke to have this happen in the final round of a national championship. Then something almost as odd happened. Wang Hao lost with white to the tournament tailender Liang Chong (who was the recipient of the free point against Hou Yifan). The leader missed a trivial draw in a knight endgame with 59.Nxa5, though to be fair, and again assuming my understanding of the tiebreaks is correct, he knew from the start that he needed to win to take the title because Ding Liren reached 8.5/11 without a fight.

An incredible turnaround for Wang Hao, losing his last two games and the tournament after completely dominating the event for nine rounds. And despite the ridiculous nature of his last-round win, an impressive accomplishment by the young Ding Liren, who doesn't even have a title to go with this nearly 2800 performance rating. Yikes. Not counting the forfeit, +5 undefeated in this field is very impressive. He also got three of his wins against three of the top four rated players.

In an interview with the local León paper, event organizer (since 1997) Marcelino Sión relates a conversation with Leontxo Garcia about chess as a means of combating Alzheimer's Disease. (Garcia has long promoted the benefits of chess in this area.) There are various studies about the effects of various cognitive pastimes -- crossword puzzles, sudoku, etc -- delaying the onset of Alzheimer's and other types of aphasia and deterioration of mental faculties. Sión relates Leontxo's question and I'll pass it on to you: Have you ever known of a strong chessplayer with Alzheimer's?

I haven't, and I would extend that not only to strong players but also to weak-but-dedicated amateurs who continued playing regularly deeply into their senior years. Surely that's a better test of the theory anyway. On the other hand, Miguel Najdorf, who was very strong well into his 70s, and quite clear-headed if rather cantankerous, was told by his doctors to stop playing speed chess because it was rough on his weak heart. Another plus for classical chess!

David Shenk's book "The Immortal Game" discussed this topic and he was interviewed about it on ABC News a few years ago. Video here, ChessBase article on it here. You can get more googling.

The semifinals of this year's 22nd Leon Magistral rapid tournament in Spain are set. It's Morozevich-Ivanchuk (Friday) and Carlsen-Wang Yue (Saturday) with the final match on Sunday. The format is a KO of four rapid games (20'+10") with blitz tiebreaks (5') if necessary. Last year (when it was an all-play-all group phase before a final match) Ivanchuk beat Anand in the final.

Games begin at 16:30 local, 10:30am EDT. Official site has an optimist "partidas directo" link for live games. Usually the moves have trouble getting out from under the nine tons of Flash and Java crap on the site, but we can dream. From the press release by my main man Leontxo Garcia (the usual León press pro, another old comrade, GM Zenón Franco, was apparently busy with other projects this year):

The four players attended a press conference after the drawing of lots. Some excerpts:

-Morozevich: "Rapid chess should have a separate ranking, and the same applies to blitz and blindfold. I also think team championships games should not count for the Elo rating". The other three participants agreed with him on that.

-Carlsen: "I don't have a clear opinion on chess and doping. But I do think something must be urgently done to avoid the help of computers during the games".

-Wang Yue on his good results: "I knew all my opponents well because I had studied their games carefully. But, as I was new on the top, they knew much less about me".

-Ivanchuk: "I think it will be an interesting four-game match between two very creative players. My crisis is now gone, after my good play last week against Navara". On how he learned Spanish: "A bit of everything. Books, tapes, TV programs, my second and Mexican friend Manuel Leon Hoyos and, of course, the Mexican girls, who helped me a lot".

See? All Ivanchuk needed to recuperate from his exhaustion was to, um, play more chess. Or maybe he had some Mexican girls with him in Prague? His match with Moro should be a good one between two consummate chess artists. Wang Yue beat Carlsen twice this year, at Corus and Linares, but the Norwegian has had the Chinese player's number since then, including two wins at the Amber tournament and a crushing win at MTel a few weeks ago. Ivanchuk has been stomping Morozevich like a Burgundy grape over the past year in speed play despite losing a classical encounter to the Russian at Corus. That, by the way, was the last time Moro played a classical tournament and has only played Amber since then. Sad. But he will be back in Biel in a few weeks. With Ivanchuk, of course!

[An unofficial guest blog post from frogbert in the comments (who can have his real name used if he so requests).]

Regarding the "candidate event" to decide the challenger to the winner of the Anand-Topalov world championship match, there has been one important piece of information missing so far.

We know that Kamsky is in
We know that one of Anand/Topalov is in
We know the WCC 2009 winner is in
We know the top 2 from the Grand Prix are in
We know that an organizer nominee is in
We know that the nominee must be 2700+
We know 2700+ here refers to the January 2010 list
We know 2 players qualify based on rating

But we DON'T KNOW which rating list(s) will be used to decide which players qualify based on rating.

From a reliable and trustworthy source, I've learnt that one of the (many) FIDE Presidents [i.e. not the president of FIDE but another title holder] has communicated to a limited audience that the two lists in question are _the July 2009 and the January 2010 lists_.

I don't know any specifics about how things will be weighted, if there will be any activity demands (say, what if you stay inactive from July 2009 to January 2010?), how potential ties will be broken, and so on. However, IF this indeed will be the outcome of the rating qualification criteria, then I strongly believe that ALL potentially affected players should be officially informed by FIDE.

Both which list(s) and other specifics about the criteria should be decided well in advance, _documented_ and made public, so that no foul play around this would be possible. In case FIDE wants to keep which list(s) and detailed rules a secret, then it still should be _decided_ and documented well _in advance_ of any relevant list publication, to reduce the possibility for fitting rules to a certain reality. And obviously: no player(s) should be given information that are unavailable to others.

In fact, even communicating such information to a limited number of players is wrong regardless, whether the info is correct or not. Giving incorrect info to someone is also a way of influencing matters in an undesirable and questionable way.

I wonder when we will hear any "official news" from FIDE about this.

Of course FIDE is against transparency and predictability! Aside from their genetic desire to keep secrets, because knowledge is power, there is always a practical side to keeping people guessing. It's more difficult to work the levers of favoritism and corruption if there are open standards. Or at least it's more embarrassing. FIDE has shown no qualms about making sudden and bizarre changes to the rules, mind you. This candidates event is itself a fine example, coming out of nowhere in violation of the written rules of qualification and justified with little more than a Kalmykian middle finger.

And just as of course, they should have open and fixed rules to prevent shenanigans. Since they already have a wildcard, which is horrible, they shouldn't need to jigger the rating list qualifications to make sure they get who they want and/or who pays the most. But the motto of FIDE and most of their ilk is to do whatever it takes to maintain the most influence over any given income. I mean, outcome. I still hope the entire thing disappears.

And go cat, go. Three events start tomorrow, something for every taste. Elite rapids in Miskolc, Hungary, where Peter Leko plays his annual match. This year he faces none other than world champ Vishy Anand. A pretty brave pick by Leko, who has lost the last two editions of this match -- 4.5-3.5 to Kramnik in 2007 and 5-3 to Carlsen last year, when the Hungarian failed to win a game. But Leko has been playing well of late and is hardly a pushover. He has beaten Anand in the last two Amber rapid sections, for example. And despite continuing his tradition of final-round catastrophes by losing to Aronian at the Nalchik Grand Prix last April, Leko had a fine result and showed great preparation. One of the reasons for that, new second Jan Gustafsson, is with him again in Miskolc. A good pic of Gusti in action in this ChessBase photo report.

The 10th Karpov tournament in Poikovsky, Russia, kicks off tomorrow as well. This event depends largely on the same players year after year, which is sort of fun as long as they have some fresh blood coming in. Rublevsky, Shirov, Gashimov, and Jakovenko all shared first on +2 last year and the first three are back this time. Sutovsky, Onischuk, Inarkiev, and Bologan also return. The three "outsiders" are Efimenko, Motylev, and Naiditsch, for an impressive average strength of nearly 2700. Not sure about the live link yet.

Wang Hao isn't back in Poikovsky this year because he's busy demolishing the Chinese championship in a blinding show of form. 6.5/7 so far! He's young and rather inconsistent, but can't we swap him for Wang Yue in some of these elite events? Exciting stuff. And who the heck is Ding Liren? The untitled player is in clear second place on +4. The next Chinese star? He looks very young in the photos here. Info anyone?

Of lower wattage is the 17th annual Sigeman & Co event in Sweden. The peripatetic Nigel Short, fresh from the wilds of Central America, is the top seed, followed by his fellow journeyman veteran Ivan Sokolov. Endurance certainly won't be a factor with the new format. It's just six players and five rounds, so don't blink.

This isn't a still from a Jean-Luc Godard film; it's a photo from French GM Jean-Luc Chabanon's Facebook gallery. (Chabanon must be the only player wearing boxing gloves in his FIDE profile photo.) Looks like a victory dinner for Evry Grand Roque, the team that finished atop their French League group stage thanks largely to the pictured dynamic duo of national champions on the top boards, USA's Hikaru Nakamura and Russia's Peter Svidler. As covered here, the rest of the team put up very impressive scores as well. Nothing like some Bordeaux hooch to wash down a team success.

Open thread, topic suggestions, bonus points for gratuitous French references.

When people ask me the optimal level competition they should face, human or silicon, I always say, "as strong as your ego can take." Apart from that, getting beaten to a pulp every time out doesn't give you much of a chance to develop your skills, sort of like jumping in the deep end of the pool when you can't swim. If you can stomach a 25-35% scoring rate without crying in your pillow every night that would seem like the right amount of challenge. With that in mind, David Navara's 2.5/8 against Ivanchuk in the CEZ Trophy match seems about right. It's also the exact same score he managed against Kramnik in last year's edition. In both matches Navara lost four and scored what might be called a courtesy win for the hosts in Prague. The games were consistently entertaining, if perhaps not for Czech fans.

Ivanchuk has a well-deserved reputation as a spectacular blitz and rapid player. This is not as self-evident as it might seem considering his lofty status in classical events and the rating list over the past 20 years. Anand and Kramnik also excel at every control, but this isn't universal. It's a pity FIDE has failed to maintain the rapid rating list (RIP 2002) and even more of a shame no projects to provide a hybrid list with weighted rapid scoring have made it past infancy. For a flashback, here's the September 2002 rapid list along with the letter from Shirov that briefly revived it and the response from Krasenkow fretting about how taking rapid chess too seriously risks cheapening the game. I'm not worried about rapid events as much as the degradation of classical controls.

Of course nobody who hits the top ten on the classical list is going to suck eggs as a rapid player. I'd be interested to see some performance comparisons though. Topalov's performances certainly aren't bad, and not to pick on him with an arbitrary stat, but I don't think he's ever won the rapid section at Amber in a dozen tries. Leko's rapid performances there are sub-par. Morozevich is a blitz legend in Russia but has had a lot more success in Melody Amber blindfold than rapid. Anand, the undisputed rapid king, as if being the undisputed world champion needed more luster, has a strong 66% score with white in Amber rapids, but his 62% with black is stunning. To compare, Topalov has 72% with white but a relatively normal 40% with black. Discuss.