exd5!

08.12.2009
– The tournament, the strongest in London in a quarter century, began with a press conference, the drawing of colours, and a first match – a sharp encounter between Magnus Carlsen and Pat Cash, the 1987 winner of Wimbledon. In tennis. Cash won. The chess games start on Tuesday, with Carlsen playing Kramnik in the first round. Watch it with
audio commentary from London on Playchess.

Adrian Mikhalchishin:
Winning Structures
Great players always had and still have more than just broad theoretical knowledge. Every of them has some favourite methods, which simply help to score more points. The greatest even have favourite pawn structures! And they immediately exploited the knowledge of others - Alekhine invented some interesting structures, which were copied by his opponent in that game (Rubinstein), and later exploited by Botvinnik and then by Kramnik!
More information...

The London Chess Classic 2009 is the highest level tournament in London for
25 years and will be the first in a series of events designed, according to
the organisers, "to increase enthusiasm for chess in the UK and promote
the game and its undoubted educational benefits in schools and communities."
It is also their objective to bring the World Chess Championship to London in
the Olympic year 2012.

The arrival of the players in London worked out fairly smoothly – after
some complicated visa problems had been solved for Vladimir Kramnik. The players
have been put up in a comfortable hotel very close to the playing venue –
five walking minutes from door to door. On the first evening they were treated
to a cosy dinner in a London restaurant.

Henrik and Maguns Carlsen, David Howell, Michael and Tara Adams, Nigel Short,

Vladimir Kramnik, Malcolm Pein enjoy wine, coffee and tea at the end of the
dinner

On Monday the press conference: Malcolm Pein,
standing in the middle explains that
this event is a dry run for bigger things: a World Championship in London in
2012

Tournament arbiter Albert Vasser, Pein, Magnus Carlsen and Vladimir Kramnik

Hikaru Nakamura, USA, Ni Hua, China

The Brits: David Howell, Luke McShane, Michael Adams, Nigel Short

Drawing of colours: top seed Magnus Carlsen picks the c2 pawn...

...and for the third time in consecutive tournaments (Nanjing, Tal Memorial)
gets the 1

Second seed Vladimir Kramnik is next and gets the 8, so the two face each
other in round one

Ni Hua, Nigel Short, Michael Adams, David Howell, Luke McShane

All the player line up for the photographers, sorted by rating, in front
of their portraits

Pairings of the London Chess Classic

Photo shoot

The press and photographers are particularly eager to shoot the top seed
from Norway

What a 19-year-old really enjoys: photographers pressing for one more shot

Like Susanna here, who wanted him from many different angles

An encounter with tennis star Pat Cash

In the evening Magnus Carlsen was invited to Wimbledon to meet the former (1987)
winner Pat Cash, who hails from Australia and now lives in London. Pat has family
connections and friends in Norway. He gave us a "three dollar" tour
of the world famous tennis club.

After showing us the different areas and facilities he took us to the holiest
of holies...

The Centre Court, where the greatest matches in history have been played

Pat Cash tell us about his doubles matches against John McEnroe. He is learning

chess with a Norwegian cut-down version known as Chess Attack

Then it was off to one of the indoor courts for a session of tennis against
Magnus

First Magnus gets a special chess headband for their match

The headband was the trademark of Pat Cash, who then went on to play Magnus
and gave him tips of his technique. Pat was surprised that the young Norwegian
was quite talented and was scoring occasional points against a top professional.

He even subjected Magnus to his famous fast serves...

... and was surprised that Magnus returned a number of them

"I could have gone on for hours," said a happy Magnus at the end
of the session. The encounter gave him a feel for what it feels like for amateur
opponents to play chess against him.

Frederic Friedel in London

Tournament Schedule

The events below will run in conjunction with the London Classic, 7-15 December.
Details of entry fees and prizes are now available on http://www.londonchessclassic.com/festival_events.htm.
Online entries can now be made by clicking
here a form suitable for download will be available soon as well.

Tickets

The London Chess Classic 2009 will offer free admission to children for the
duration of the event which runs from December 8th to 15th. Adult tickets are
just £10 per day or just £50 for all seven rounds. Adult and junior
ticket holders receive admission to the tournament, plus a guaranteed seat in
the auditorium and access to the commentary room where some of the UK’s
leading Grandmasters will give insights into the play and answer questions.
You can buy tickets here or call +44-207-388-2404.

Links Official tournament site Full details in our previous report The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

Monday 7th December 2009

London Chess Classic: Press conference and drawing of lots

Today was the day when the much-anticipated London Chess Classic tournament
opened its doors to the press. The conference kicked off with an upbeat address
from organiser Malcolm Pein. Most of us were already pretty impressed by the
line-up and playing arrangements at the Olympia Conference centre – but
Malcolm tells us that this year’s tournament – the biggest London
has seen for 25 years – is just for starters. He has even bigger and better
plans on the horizon, working towards a possible World Chess Championship match
in 2012 (the World Chess Federation has already given London its option for
the title match, in London’s Olympic year). He also stressed the importance
of the charity that is to emerge from the event: Chess in Schools and Communities
has been set up to get youngsters interested in the game and its first activity
would be to bring lots of schoolchildren to Olympia to soak up the palpable
excitement of a really big chess tournament.

The eight grandmasters themselves played their part in some PR activities staged
around the landmarks of England’s capital city. Nigel Short and Luke McShane
went off to the London Eye to play blindfold chess while Magnus Carlsen stayed
at the plush Hilton Hotel to play a game with Guardian journalist Stephen Moss.
Despite the small matter of 1,100 rating points that separate Magnus and Stephen,
the Guardian man gave the Norwegian wunderkind quite a good pre-tournament work-out.
We’ll return to this in due course.

Back at the press conference: next on the agenda was the drawing of lots. For
this the organisers had provided a beautiful giant wooden chessboard. Underneath
each of the eight white pawns was a hidden number. Each player was asked to
step forward, choose a pawn and hold it up for all to see. The honour of being
the first player to uncover his pairing number went to the man with the highest
rating – at 2801, this was 19-year-old Magnus Carlsen. Magnus didn’t
hesitate – he went straight to the c2 pawn, picked it up and – yes,
it was the number one. The audience laughed but the serene look on Magnus’
face seemed to say “of course!”. Vladimir Kramnik shook his head
and exclaimed “exactly the same as in Moscow!”. He then stepped
forward to choose a pawn – it was the number eight. Knowledgeable members
of the audience knew immediately that it meant he would Black in round one against
Magnus Carlsen.

After the players had all drawn their lots, and arbiter Albert Vasse had read
out the first-round pairings for Tuesday, they proceeded to the photo-call.
As the players lined up in front of their images on the wall, some paparazzi
were perplexed at the large difference in height between the very tall Kramnik
and players flanking him. One even dared suggested Vlad stoop or kneel so that
his head was in line with some of his colleagues. But Vlad is not for bending
and he politely demurred. This recalled to mind a similar occasion in London
more than nine years before, when the newspaper snappers wanted Vlad to smile.
“Russian grandmasters do not smile!,” exclaimed the then world title
challenger. Then, after a pause: “well, perhaps after I win the title!”
Which he did, of course – he is still the only chessplayer in history
to win the world championship title in London (though we must not forget that
Kasparov made a couple of successful defences here).

Once the photographers had their fill of pictures, the players returned for
an open question session. Malcolm Pein pointed out that Vladimir Kramnik’s
recent “double happy event” (birth of a child and victory in Moscow)
bucked the trend. Usually, said Malcolm, paternity led to an inevitable loss
of rating points. Nigel Short felt that evidence that consisted of nothing more
than one newly-born child and one tournament success didn’t really add
up to much. The look he gave Vlad seemed to say “wait till you have two
children!”. Magnus Carlsen, not much older than Nigel Short’s eldest
child, looked off into space whilst this fatherly badinage was being exchanged
but, when called upon to answer a few questions which came his way, he did so
poise and confidence.

For the record, the draw was as follows: 1 Carlsen, 2 McShane, 3 David Howell,
4 Hikaru Nakamura, 5 Ni Hua, 6 Michael Adams, 7 Nigel Short, 8 Vladimir Kramnik.
The first four named get an extra white, of course; quite an advantage in such
a short tournament. Magnus Carlsen, as number one, starts with two whites, which
means that if he exploits his first-move advantage twice he has already taken
a big step towards winning the tournament. But Vladimir Kramnik is a very large
obstacle. One of the photographers had earlier tried to get Vlad to move to
one side when composing his shot because “you are blocking your own picture”.
Vlad retorted: “wherever I go, I will be blocking!”. And, he might
have added, this is especially true in London, as Garry Kasparov will know only
too well.

John Saunders
Chess Press Chief, London Chess Classic

Read Full Post »

08.12.2009
– He was unstoppable: Israeli GM Boris Gelfand, who needed just a draw after yesterday black-piece win, went ahead and beat the elegantly posing Ukainian GM Sergey Karjakin to go through on a 2-0 score. Meanwhile Vladimir Malakhov, Russia, and Ruslan Ponomariov played a second draw and have tiebreak games on Tuesday.

Illustrated report.

Sam Collins:
1.e4 Repertoire
Grandmaster lines explained for club players – Constructing an opening repertoire is one of the chess player’s most difficult and time-consuming tasks. Turned off by masses of theory, many players shy away from critical lines and concentrate on trappy lines, ‘universal’ systems, or variations which concede the advantage of the first move in order to get a playable position.
More information...

The FIDE World Chess Cup is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk from November 20th
to December 15th 2009. It is a seven-round knockout event with six rounds of
matches comprising two games per round, with the winners progressing to the
next round. The final seventh round consists of four games. The time control
is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of
the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move from move one. Games start
at 15:00h local time, which is GMT +5 hours = 11:00 a.m. European time = 5 a.m.
New York. The World Chess Cup is an integral part of the World Championship
Cycle 2009-2011.

Semifinals: game two

Boris Gelfand arrives with The Legendary Hat

Group photo – without Karjakin...

... who strikes an elegant pose on the side

Not bad, but learn from Sergey – Vladimir Malakhov

Third place goes to chief arbiter Ashot Vardapetian

Deadly dangerous when he is in this form: Boris Gelfand of Israel

Ruslan Ponomariov, draw against Vladimir Malakhov,

A reminder: all photos from Khanty-Mansiysk are by Galina Popova for FIDE

Results of round six

• Click to replay the
  semifinal games

Schedule of the World Cup 2009

Links Official tournament site – All ChessBase reports All games in zipped PGN Games in PGN: Rnd 1 – Rnd 2 – Rnd 3 – Rnd 4 – Rnd 5 – Semifinal The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

Chessbase.com

Read Full Post »

07.12.2009
– The Tal Memorial this year in Moscow? It has been billed as such, but it all depends on how you evaluate such events. If you correct for rating inflation, and especially if you consider the world ranking of the participants, other tournaments easily outstrip this one. Very plausibly AVRO 1938 was the strongest – or at least the most elite, since players #1-8 were present. Jeff Sonas explains.

Adrian Mikhalchishin:
Winning Structures
Great players always had and still have more than just broad theoretical knowledge. Every of them has some favourite methods, which simply help to score more points. The greatest even have favourite pawn structures! And they immediately exploited the knowledge of others - Alekhine invented some interesting structures, which were copied by his opponent in that game (Rubinstein), and later exploited by Botvinnik and then by Kramnik!
More information...

What was the strongest tournament of all time?

By Jeff Sonas

As with most of the "greatest-ever" debates, there are many ways
to answer this question. The simplest answer is to compare the average FIDE
rating of the participants in each tournament. That is how a tournament's "Category"
is calculated, with 25-point intervals. Thus if the average rating is 2751-2775
it's a "Category 21" tournament; if the average rating is 2726-2750,
it's a "Category 20" tournament, and so on.

The 2009 Tal Memorial in Moscow, recently won by Vladimir Kramnik, was a Category
21 tournament, and I don't believe there has ever been a Category 22 tournament.
Thus by this approach, the 2009 Tal Memorial would be in a tie for the strongest
tournament of all time. However, I do not place much emphasis on "Category"
as a measure of tournament strength, mostly because of the large amount of rating
inflation that has taken place in the past 25 years. Recent tournaments will
look unusually strong by this measure. There must be a more sophisticated way
to measure tournament strength.

There is also the problem that official FIDE ratings have only been around
since about 1970, yet there were important chess tournaments going back more
than a century before then. You can't calculate the strength of a tournament
if there are no ratings available! But fortunately we do have the Chessmetrics
historical ratings that provide month-by-month ratings from January 2005 all
the way back to January of 1843. I haven't calculated new Chessmetrics ratings
since January 2005, so for this current analysis, I just used FIDE ratings for
the period from January 2005 to the present.

Nevertheless, in order to really assess which were the "strongest"
tournaments of all time, you need a method that is completely immune to the
effects of rating inflation. Thus I have decided to avoid using ratings directly,
and instead to use players' world rankings (e.g. #1 in the world, #7 in the
world, etc.) at the time they played in the tournament. This should hopefully
eliminate any problems caused by rating inflation.

Ten years ago I developed a simple trick for calculating
a Category-like number, using just the world rankings (not ratings) of top ten
players in a tournament. I called this alternate number the tournament's "Class",
and it was designed to be in the same magnitude as Category (at least for what
Category meant ten years ago). Here is the calculation:

• A tournament gets 4 points for each participant ranked #1 or #2 in the world.
• A tournament gets 3 points for each participant ranked #3 or #4 in the world.
• A tournament gets 2 points for each participant ranked #5 or #6 in the world.
• A tournament gets 1 point for each participant ranked #7, #8, #9, or #10.

Thus the theoretical maximum, if a tournament included all ten players in the
top-ten, would be a Class of 22. There has never been a Class 22 tournament;
the ten all-time strongest tournaments by this measure have ranged from Class
19 through Class 21:

As you can see, there have been six tournaments that had the eight top players
in the world, and two of those also had the #10 player (but not the #9 player).
Thus the two highest-Class tournaments of all time were Vienna 1882 and Linares
1993, both Class 21. As a tiebreaker, I would give the nod to Vienna 1882 because
it also included World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz, who was inactive on the rating
list (having not played in six years) and thus not a member of the top ten.

I have previously used the Class calculation to identify the "super-tournaments"
throughout chess history, referring to any tournament having a Class of 15 or
better. There have been 57 such tournaments, including seven during the current
decade (2000 through 2009). The only decade having more super-tournaments was
the previous decade (1990 through 1999), which had thirteen. Here are those
seven tournaments from the current decade (2000 through 2009):

	Tournament	Class	Top-10 Participation
#6	Wijk aan Zee, 2001	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8
#25	Corus A, 2005	17	#2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9
#27	Linares, 2000	16	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5
#29	Corus A, 2008	16	#1, #2, #3, #6, #8, #9, #10
#35	Tal Memorial, 2009	16	#2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9, #10
#39	Linares, 2005	15	#1, #2, #3, #5, #6
#41	Wijk aan Zee, 2000	15	#1, #2, #3, #5, #7, #9

However, this is not the end of the story. The above approach places the most
emphasis on how many top-ten players participated in a tournament, especially
top-six players, but there is no penalty if the tournament includes one or more
lower-rated players. In fact, from that list of the ten tournaments from history
having Class 19+, all but one of them (AVRO 1938) included at least one participant
who wasn't even ranked in the top-50 in the world. This is a real problem with
the above methodology, since I think a lot of people mean "most elite"
when they are talking about the "strongest" tournaments.

So, how can we measure the "most elite" tournament, using only world
rank and not directly using ratings? I would say that however many players a
tournament has, if they are all taken exactly from the top of the rating list,
then it is a perfectly elite tournament. And it should be possible to come up
with a formula to measure how close each tournament came to being perfectly
elite.

Las Palmas 1996 is frequently cited as being the most elite tournament of all
time, supposedly including the top six players and nobody else. However, this
does not appear to be true. From the July 1996 FIDE rating list, we find that
Vassily Ivanchuk (lowest-rated of the six players at Las Palmas) was #7 on the
rating list, with Gata Kamsky (who did not play at Las Palmas) 15 points ahead
of him at #6. Perhaps the "live FIDE ratings" at the time would have
had Ivanchuk higher up and Kamsky down at #7, but of course those are not available
and we wouldn't want to use them even if they were.

Similarly, my Chessmetrics historical ratings for 01-Dec-1996 (right before
the tournament) also have Kamsky at #6 on the list, half a rating point ahead
of #7-ranked Las Palmas participant Veselin Topalov. So it turns out the Las
Palmas 1996 was not perfectly elite. Very very close, but not quite. The only
tournament in history that was perfectly elite was AVRO 1938, which had the
top eight players from the 01-Nov-1938 Chessmetrics rating list, and nobody
else in the tournament.

To continue this analysis, let's look at the recent ten-player Tal Memorial
tournament. An "ideal" ten-player tournament would have players ranked
#1, #2, #3, …, #9, #10. If you add up those ranks, you get 1+2+3+…+9+10=55.
Instead, the Tal Memorial included #12 and #13, and did not include #1 or #6.
So for that tournament, when you add up the ranks, you get 2+3+4+…+10+12+13=73.
Dividing 55 by 73 gives 0.75, and by my simple formula, that tells us the tournament
was "75% of ideal".

We can do this for all the tournaments in history, and unsurprisingly we find
AVRO 1938 on the top of the list, and Las Palmas 1996 at #2 on the list. You
may find a few surprises lower down. And it turns out that the recent Tal Memorial
shows up as the seventh-most-elite tournament of all time, and the most elite
tournament in more than ten years.

This is certainly an interesting list, and indicates the historical significance
of the 2009 Tal Memorial. You will notice that out of all events that lacked
the top-ranked player in the world, it qualifies as the most "elite"
tournament ever, since it brought together 10 of the next 12 players below #1
Veselin Topalov, with no participants worse than #13 in the world.

Normally you might think it would be one of the first five FIDE World Championship
Candidates Final tournaments (1950 through 1962) that would qualify for the
odd distinction as the "most-elite" tournament that also lacked the
top-ranked player in the world. In fact, while the 1950 Budapest tournament
did indeed attempt to bring together the next ten players after top-rated Mikhail
Botvinnik, you can see from the above table that more top-ten-players were omitted
than in the recent Tal Memorial, and Budapest also included two participants
well below #13 in the world, so on both counts the Tal Memorial seems to have
been more elite. And my historical ratings did not consider World Champion Botvinnik
to be the top-rated player in the world at the time of the 1953, 1956, 1959,
or 1962 Candidates Finals, so in fact each of those tournament did include the
top-ranked player in the world (S.Reshevsky in 1953, V.Smyslov in 1956, M.Tal
in 1959, and T.Petrosian in 1962) according to Chessmetrics.

In any event, one could legitimately argue that it is a serious omission for
an "elite" tournament to be lacking the very top player in the world.
It is true that my simple formula would penalize a tournament as much for including
the #19 player instead of the #9 player, as it would for including the #11 player
instead of the #1 player, and that probably isn't quite right. Instead of a
pattern like 1+2+3+…+9+10, we could use the reciprocal of the world rank,
and thus it would be 1.00+0.50+0.33+0.25…+0.11+0.10 instead. This rewards
the events more that have full participation from the top handful from the rating
list, and at the other end it doesn't care as much whether you have #20 or #30.
This modification brings Las Palmas 1996 even closer to the "ideal"
AVRO 1938. By this final measure, here are the 12 most "elite" tournaments
of all time:

Clearly it would be very hard to argue with the choice of AVRO, 1938 as the
strongest, most elite tournament of all time, the perfect blend of top-ten participation
and elite selectivity. After that tournament, it's not as clear; it really depends
on whether you think a "strong" tournament means it has a host of
top-ten players, or if you mean it is an extremely elite event. It is difficult
for one tournament to accomplish provide both. Either way, the above data should
hopefully be a good resource for the next time you want to argue about what
was the strongest tournament of all time!

Copyright
Chessmetrics

Cross tables of the twelve top tournaments

Looking back in nostalgia

In 1996, with the Las Palmas tournament completed, the fledgling ChessBase
news page, set up with the assistance of John Nunn, was up and running. The
Wayback Machine has archived
the front page from December 18 (but not all the links), and this is what it
looked like:

As you can see we had a report on the second strongest tournament of all time,
with blinking headline and all. Unfortunately the report itself is gone, although
you can still see it, with pictures and videos, on an ancient CD of ChessBase
Magazine. Click around the above
page for other fun bits – and no, we are not taking orders for Fritz
4 or ChessBase 6 any more.

Read Full Post »

06.12.2009
– The semifinals of the FIDE World Cup saw Boris Gelfand, 41, beating his 19-year-opponent Sergey Karjakin in impressive style with the black pieces. Karjakin now has the daunting task of having to win the second game on Monday or say goodbye to Khanty Mansiysk. In the other game Ponomariov and Malakhov drew a Slav game in 40 moves. Illustrated report.

Sam Collins:
1.e4 Repertoire
Grandmaster lines explained for club players – Constructing an opening repertoire is one of the chess player’s most difficult and time-consuming tasks. Turned off by masses of theory, many players shy away from critical lines and concentrate on trappy lines, ‘universal’ systems, or variations which concede the advantage of the first move in order to get a playable position.
More information...

The FIDE World Chess Cup is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk from November 20th
to December 15th 2009. It is a seven-round knockout event with six rounds of
matches comprising two games per round, with the winners progressing to the
next round. The final seventh round consists of four games. The time control
is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of
the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move from move one. Games start
at 15:00h local time, which is GMT +5 hours = 11:00 a.m. European time = 5 a.m.
New York. The World Chess Cup is an integral part of the World Championship
Cycle 2009-2011.

Semifinals: game one

Boris Gelfand, 41 years old, very convincing in the FIDE World Cup

Former boy prodigy Sergey Karjakin, 19, struggling against his experienced opponent

Karjakin,Sergey (2723) - Gelfand,B (2758) [C55]
World Cup Khanty-Mansiysk RUS (6.1), 06.12.2009
1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3 Nc6 4.Nf3 Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.Bb3 d5 7.exd5 Nxd5
8.h3 a5 9.a4 Nd4 10.Nxd4 exd4 11.Re1N

11...Ra6! A very interesting piece sacrifice (12.Bxd5 Qxd5
13.Rxe7 Rg6 – with the threat of 14...Qxg2#) immediately after Karjakin's
novelty, which the Ukrainian did not dare to accept. 12.Qh5 Nb4 13.Na3
Rg6 14.Bf4 b6 15.Qf3 Be6 16.Bxe6 fxe6 17.Qe4 Bd6 18.Bxd6 cxd6 19.Qxd4

White is a pawn up, but Black is calling all the shots. 19...Qg5
(once again the annoying threat of ...Qxg2#) 20.g3 Qf5 21.g4 h5 22.Re4
d5 23.Kh2 Qf3 24.Ree1 hxg4 25.Qe3 gxh3 26.Qxf3 Rxf3 27.Rg1 Rxf2+ 28.Kxh3 Rxg1
29.Rxg1 Nxc2 30.Nb5 Rf3+ 31.Kg4 Rxd3

White has ended up three pawns down and not a hope left to survive. 32.Nd6
Ne3+ 33.Kf4 Nc4 0-1.

Gelfand vs Karjakin, closely followed by chief arbiter Ashot Vardapetian and
Ruslan Ponomariov

Ponomariov-Malakhov was a well-fought Slav that ended in a drawn four-bishop
endgame

Ruslan Ponomariov, former FIDE World Champion, in the semifinal of the World
Cup

Photos by Galina Popova courtesy of FIDE

Results of round six

• Click to replay the
  semifinal games

Schedule of the World Cup 2009

Links Official tournament site – All ChessBase reports All games in zipped PGN Games in PGN: Rnd 1 – Rnd 2 – Rnd 3 – Rnd 4 – Rnd 5 – Semifinal The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

Chessbase.com

Read Full Post »

06.12.2009
– The semifinals of the FIDE World Cup saw Boris Gelfand, 41, beating his 19-year-opponent Sergey Karjakin in impressive style with the black pieces. Karjakin now has the daunting task of having to win the second game on Monday or say goodbye to Khanty Mansiysk. In the other game Ponomariov and Malakhov drew a Slav game in 40 moves. Illustrated report.

Sam Collins:
1.e4 Repertoire
Grandmaster lines explained for club players – Constructing an opening repertoire is one of the chess player’s most difficult and time-consuming tasks. Turned off by masses of theory, many players shy away from critical lines and concentrate on trappy lines, ‘universal’ systems, or variations which concede the advantage of the first move in order to get a playable position.
More information...

The FIDE World Chess Cup is taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk from November 20th
to December 15th 2009. It is a seven-round knockout event with six rounds of
matches comprising two games per round, with the winners progressing to the
next round. The final seventh round consists of four games. The time control
is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves followed by 30 minutes for the rest of
the game with an addition of 30 seconds per move from move one. Games start
at 15:00h local time, which is GMT +5 hours = 11:00 a.m. European time = 5 a.m.
New York. The World Chess Cup is an integral part of the World Championship
Cycle 2009-2011.

Semifinals: game one

Boris Gelfand, 41 years old, very convincing in the FIDE World Cup

Former boy prodigy Sergey Karjakin, 19, struggling against his experienced opponent

Karjakin,Sergey (2723) - Gelfand,B (2758) [C55]
World Cup Khanty-Mansiysk RUS (6.1), 06.12.2009
1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3 Nc6 4.Nf3 Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.Bb3 d5 7.exd5 Nxd5
8.h3 a5 9.a4 Nd4 10.Nxd4 exd4 11.Re1N

11...Ra6! A very interesting piece sacrifice (12.Bxd5 Qxd5
13.Rxe7 Rg6 – with the threat of 14...Qxg2#) immediately after Karjakin's
novelty, which the Ukrainian did not dare to accept. 12.Qh5 Nb4 13.Na3
Rg6 14.Bf4 b6 15.Qf3 Be6 16.Bxe6 fxe6 17.Qe4 Bd6 18.Bxd6 cxd6 19.Qxd4

White is a pawn up, but Black is calling all the shots. 19...Qg5
(once again the annoying threat of ...Qxg2#) 20.g3 Qf5 21.g4 h5 22.Re4
d5 23.Kh2 Qf3 24.Ree1 hxg4 25.Qe3 gxh3 26.Qxf3 Rxf3 27.Rg1 Rxf2+ 28.Kxh3 Rxg1
29.Rxg1 Nxc2 30.Nb5 Rf3+ 31.Kg4 Rxd3

White has ended up three pawns down and not a hope left to survive. 32.Nd6
Ne3+ 33.Kf4 Nc4 0-1.

Gelfand vs Karjakin, closely followed by chief arbiter Ashot Vardapetian and
Ruslan Ponomariov

Ponomariov-Malakhov was a well-fought Slav that ended in a drawn four-bishop
endgame

Ruslan Ponomariov, former FIDE World Champion, in the semifinal of the World
Cup

Photos by Galina Popova courtesy of FIDE

Results of round six

• Click to replay the
  semifinal games

Schedule of the World Cup 2009

Links Official tournament site – All ChessBase reports All games in zipped PGN Games in PGN: Rnd 1 – Rnd 2 – Rnd 3 – Rnd 4 – Rnd 5 – Semifinal The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light, which gives you immediate access. You can also use the program to read, replay and analyse PGN games. New and enhanced: CB Light 2009!

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