The draw has started things off with bang in the annual supertournament. 14th world champion Vladimir Kramnik has white in the first round against the man whose title he took in 2000. Kramnik hasn't beaten Kasparov in a classical game since that match. Then again, NOBODY HAS. Yep, Kasparov is undefeated in classical chess since losing game 10 of the world championship to Kramnik on October 24, 2000. That includes four supertournament first prizes and the four classical games against Kramnik in the Botvinnik Memorial. Kasparov is also going for his eleventh consecutive supertournament victory. Going back to Wijk aan Zee 1999, Kasparov has 52 wins, 62 draws, and 1 loss in a little over four years of supertournament play. (Counting the 2002 Olympiad would add six more wins and three draws.) Terrifying.
ChessBase will have daily coverage of the games and should also be showing them live on the Playchess.com server. As usual there is a pretty and graphics-heavy official website. It should go down in a heap around 15 minutes into the first round, just like every year. I'd like to be wrong on this for once.
