After a peaceful start, a lot of blood was spilled for the second round in a row. Unfortunately, some of it belonged to the Dirt home team. US champ Hikaru Nakamura got into a bad bishop vs knight endgame against Dominguez. In the rush to put up tomorrow's pairings, today's games have disappeared from the official site and there's no download link yet, and I'm tired of waiting, so no game comments right now. But if it was possible to hold that I'll be surprised. Just for that, I'm not going to let Dominguez crash at my place when he defects; that'll teach him.
All five games were decisive in round five. Wins by Ponomariov and Vallejo Pons jumped into first place on 3.5/5, ahead of Nakamura and Dominguez with 3. The Ukrainian trio formally abolished any suspicions of Soviet-style truce-making. First Ponomariov beat Volokitin and today Volo beat Karjakin. It's a very balanced event, more of one than expected thanks to Leon Hoyos's defeat of Cheparinov in a Dragon in round four. Hikaru's game against the Argentine Felgaer tomorrow splits my loyalties a bit, but loyalty to the Ninja flag is for true patriots, so I hope Nakamura mashes him.
Viva Cuba!! Good job by Lenier. I understand most people here want Nakamura to win but it's just not going to happen :) This is Pono's tournament. As the highest rated player I know he'll show his superiority and finish ahead of the field. Naka's good but Pono's better :-)
Mig, have you seen the pics on the official site? Any idea as to why Cheparinov is playing under a Russian banner instead of Bulgarian?
http://www.uaem.mx/ajedrez2006/imas/fotos_torneo/r4/500/DSC_0451.jpg
If that's the organizers being bone-headed, why doesn't he complain? Very mystifying.
As any citizen of the world (TM) knows, the higher-rated player usually wins.
Nah, white wins 54.4% of the time... or is it 50-50, I forget?
there are no russians so Cheparinov is playing for Bulgaria but thr russians will cheer him on.
Maiby there are not enough BG fans:)
It's the BG flag -- white, green, red. Why would you think it's the Russian?
OK, now I'm scared. Are you telling me I have developed color-blindness? Too much ICC, I guess. Or maybe I need to upgrade my monitor.
The middle bar on the left flag (Cheparinov's) looks distinctly BLUE to me. As opposed to the left-side bar on the right flag (Mexican), which is more or less GREEN.
"Hikaru's game against the Argentine Felgaer tomorrow splits my loyalties a bit, but loyalty to the Ninja flag is for true patriots, so I hope Nakamura mashes him."
OMG take it easy Mig. maybe just a simple win. but a total mashing !
Now take me. I am an easy going person. I have no loyalties to Argentina. so I say. bury him deep Naka. Blow him off the board. H-bomb him. No more Mr Nice Guy Hikaru.
signed
fanatical Naka fan
Most monitors should have an easy way to adjust the color balance. no need to buy a new monitor.
I dont think I have ever watched a TV or monitor that had correct color balance. no big deal.
dcp23, was that pun intended?
ICC also stands for International Color Consortium who defined a widely used ICC profile format with the goal to achieve color consistency on various electronic devices.
It looks mostly blue to me as well. I checked a spot on the middle stripe of Cheparinov's flag, with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop (even turned off colour management), and that gave the values 6, 166, 211 (for red, green, blue respectively). That would make it blue blue green or something. Maybe it's the camera or the lighting there's something wrong with.
I'm not color blind, and it definitely looks blue to me. And my monitor has no trouble distinguising between blue and green. The following two images look very different to me.
the Bulgarian flag:
http://www.flags.net/BULG.htm
the Russian Federation flag:
http://www.flags.net/RUSS.htm
If Cheparinov is supposed to be playing under the Bulgarian flag, it must be a problem with the photo/lighting. :)
Cheers,
Duif
Just out of curiosity, why would Mig Greengard be loyal to an Argentinian?
I lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina for seven years; also the last place I played chess seriously. I know most of the players, although young guys like Felgaer weren't around much before I left in 1999.
looks blue to me
Cuba has the best players of South America and could maybe hold with the USA even with our Eruropean imports.
Not bad for a tiny island under imbargo.
I hope we are not watching an installment of Hikaru loses a game and loses motivation. a3 b4 is not exactly Qh5 and I don't mean to question Hikaru's authority, but why not the Maroczy bind?
Strike the last comment the move order was Anti Sveshnikov( I wish there was an erase function for incredible stupidity), still I thought d4 gave some advantage even with Nc3.
Sorry for the triple post but although you lived in Argentina for 7 years, you have lived in the States for a larger portion of your life.
Ah, is that the way these things are decided. But I've spent more of my adult life outside of the US.
More blood in Mexico, wins by both leaders. Ponomariov beat Bruzon and Vallejo Pons beat Karjakin with a pretty final combo. Nakamura and Felgaer are trying to see who can have a crappier bishop. Hikaru does have the exchange for a pawn, however, and good prospects for eventual unentanglement.
And he has 28 minutes to Felgaer's three if the times are accurate. 30 second increment isn't much under pressure.
Mig's(and Tommy and nearly everyone else's) wish come true.
Peace...
Hikaru is doing his best to reclaim the points he lost in Khanty. I am interested in seeing what a US Olympiad team with Kamsky and Nakamura at the head can do, given the strong finish of the recent edition without our two strongest players. It is quite an attractive prospect to have a player like Onischuk as Bd. 3.
Hotep,
Maliq
Nakamura fulfilled Migs wishes and Mashed Felgaer. a bloody ending. I loved it.
I feel Great. Unfortunately for my hopes for Nakamura, Pono and Vellejo Pons both won. only 3 games left now.
It was a great game I enjoyed it immensely. a few more wins like this and I just might become a fenatical fan. haha. some think I already am.
Great recovery for Nakamura from yesterday's loss and also the less than comfortable position he achieved out of the opening. For someone that can obviously prepare strong openings (as he showed vs. Volokitin) it's frustrating to see him try something off the beaten path and achieve little out of the opening as white.
Cheparinov's flag is definitely the flag of Russia, unless there's some weird color thing going on in this pic. The green in Mexico's flag is supposed to be slightly lighter than the green in Bulgaria's. That is clearly not the case.
Yah, you can see the same blue in the other pictures of his flag. Maybe he's the only one who would notice, and since he's sitting at the table he doesn't notice. Or he's just too polite to mention it. He should go buy a yellow marker and make that stripe a nice green!
I guess the best American US player in the history (Fischer) is no longer American, (I think he is now Finnish. Nakamura sounds something like Japanese. Onischuk sound Russian. And Von Brown lived most of his life in Germany (I think the same as Einstein). Well, I still like the Americans.
Pedro.