Happy New Year and an open thread for a present. And cat photos.
December 2005 Archives
The top 100 January 2006 FIDE rating list is out.
I'm trying to track down some players to solicit their input for the next volume of Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors book series: Robert Byrne, Jonathan Speelman, Jonathan Mestel, Zoltan Ribli, Gyula Sax.
It's going to be hard to stop Sergey Rublevsky from winning the Russian championship superfinal in Moscow.
Back in action, almost. What else do we need to cover in the waning days of 2005?
There's a week left in 2005 and it's been a big year in the chess world. I'm putting together a year in review item that will focus on the most important stories.
Three players are tied for the lead with 3/4. Morozevich overslept and lost his third-round game by forfeit.
13-year-old American Fabiano Caruana just got his last IM norm, but is going to change federations to Italy.
American GM has been released from a Russian jail and acquitted.
A fluffy Reuters item on CNN.com has Veselin Topalov talking about chess and computers. Interesting timing since he's not doing anything with them in public right now. Or is he?
This powerful event started today in Moscow with Svidler, Morozevich, and Kramnik leading the field. Continuing a dubious tradition for this event there were two last-minute drop-outs.
Levon Aronian of Armenia is the winner of the 2005 World Chess Cup. He beat Ruslan Ponomariov 2-0 in the rapid tiebreaks to take the title and the $80,000 first prize.
Ponomariov and Aronian rocked the chessboard again today with another exciting draw. Kamsky beat Carlsen to equalize.
Bessel Kok and Ali Nihat Yazici are the "Right Move Team" for the 2006 FIDE presidency. They agreed to make an interview and I thought I would open up the floor.
The finals are here and in just two more days it will be all over. Ponomariov and Aronian played a sharp, interesting draw today.
Jon Jacobs sends in a link to the online version of an anti-cheating petition he helped organize and send to the USCF.
Amazing! Sure, it's rapid and blitz but the drama was stupendous today.
Finally some news as Aronian beat Bacrot to move into the final. (But the final position looks drawn?!) All the other relevant matches are going to tiebreaks.
The final four didn't show many signs of life. The four young stars should make for exciting chess, but Grischuk-Ponomariov was a brief Petroff draw.
Grischuk beats Gelfand in blitz to become the final member of the final four along with Aronian, Bacrot, and Ponomariov.
According to Cafe Press, this week is the last chance you have to get ChessNinja.com gear you can be sure will arrive in time for Christmas.
US champ Hikaru Nakamura might just be biding his time to see if FIDE will finally turn the world championship into a blitz event.
All four of the top-tier games were decisive today, amazing. Just seconds ago Grischuk converted against Gelfand to level the score and force tiebreaks.
Bagley in the sink, what's not to like? Open thread, suggestions, questions, the usual. I can't believe Argentina got another brutal group this year. The USA is toast. England got a pansy group....
The games in Khanty-Mansyisk are over. The only decisive top-tier game was Gelfand baring his fangs and beating Grischuk with white.
Apparently the HB Foundation, which sponsored the huge HB Challenge tournament in May this year, is kaput.
I updated the US Championship website this week. Five new qualifiers, plus confirmation of the new, Morelia-friendly schedule.
The Great Eight are now known. This also means we know eight more of the participants in the candidates matches, the next stage of the 2007 FIDE world championship cycle.
There is a nice piece by Tom Mueller in this week's New Yorker on computer chess.
Early thread today, round still underway. Pono wiped out van Wely and is through.
You never know what a Technorati blog search for chess will turn up. (NSFW)
Grischuk played a very powerful game to beat Kamsky today.
At 8:00pm on A&E, Knights of the South Bronx with Ted Danson. From all the PR info it looks like a nice love letter to chess in the classroom and in general.
Results and 4th round pairings up now. At least the tiebreak gods were merciful and spared us further sudden-death horror.
A remarkable 11 of 16 matches are going to tiebreaks, involving most of the top seeds.
Just flipped on the marvelous Mel Brooks film "Blazing Saddles" for a minute. Cute chess scene.
Lots of good chess on the first day of the third round. Also some pretty bad chess, fairly typical of the short time control.
Russian superfinal dates: December 18th to 30th.
Tiebreak results up at ChessBase. Some wild matches today, will be updating that page with some selected games and notes late tonight.
Morrigan with her favorite toy. Open thread, suggest topics, look at the cuddly kitty and forget your woes and rancor......
Bessel Kok's campaign for the FIDE presidency is on in earnest. At the very least the website for it is.
Results and games in PGN up at ChessBase now. I'm working on the games and photos. Another exciting round, a pity that all this gets reduced to rapid and blitz garbage time every third day.
A Peruvian radio website laments the exit of national chess star Julio Granda Zuņiga from the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansyisk. But it gets worse for Julio.
The brain scanners are at work again. This study purpotedly illustrates that caffeine improves short-term memory, as demonstrated by brain activity and memory tests.
