28.01.2010– Want to go to Moscow to play in the FIDE World Blitz qualifier in February?
Meet top international players over the board? With all expenses paid? You can
take a crack by participating in the Internet qualifiers on Playchess.com.
Thursday night at 20:00h CET (2 p.m. NY, 22:00h Moscow) is the last of six preliminaries.
What you need and how you can join is described here.
28.01.2010– Ten rounds have been played, three to go, with Thursday the rest day. That
give us a chance to catch up on the somewhat neglected lower groups. After our
recent Group B
pictorial we turn our attention to Group C, where six players are 20 years
old, five younger and three older. Dutch photographer Frits Agterdenbos has
sent us information and pictures for another lovely close-up gallery.
27.01.2010– It was a fateful day in all three groups. Vladimir Kramnik beat Magnus Carlsen after the latter blundered in terrible time trouble. Smeets, van Wely and Karjakin won their games, against Caruana, Leko and Nakamura. In Group B Anish Giri suffered his first loss against Anna Muzychuk, while Ray Robson also dropped the full point against his main rival Li Chao. Big pictorial report.
27.01.2010– In round 7 in Wijk, Nigel Short was within touching distance of a win over Ex-World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. In the position in the diagram he had to
decide whether to exchange queens or to gobble up another pawn with Qxc5. Short chose
50.Qxc5, but after 50...Be6! 51.g4 Bxf5 52.Qxf5 Qb2+ the
activity of the black queen turned out to be the decisive drawing factor, despite Black being two pawns behind. But how should the minor piece ending after
50.Qxf6 gxf6
be evaluated? Can the extra pawn be made to tell in the struggle of knight against bishop? Yes, says GM Karsten Müller in ChessBase Magazine Online.
27.01.2010– We had to wait ten rounds for this: World Champion Vishy Anand won his first game, with a little help from opponent Alexei Shirov. Magnus Carlsen surprised everyone in the world by playing the French Defence for the first time in a tournament game and won it against his permanent rival Sergey Karjakin. Vladimir Kramnik drew and is in the sole lead. Illustrated report.