A world blitz championship in Almaty on November 7? What was wrong with the last blitz championship? Wait, that wasn't one? Looked stronger to me... Anyway, this press release just came in and I'm a sucker for any website from the .kz domain. The text reads like it was run through Google Translate set to "Borat." The creative spellings of well-known players' names are particularly nice. Anyway, this was announced by FIDE a few weeks ago and, unlike the press release the organizers sent out, they included the list of players.
Amin Bassem (Egypt)
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan)
Krishnan Sasikiran (India)
Gata Kamsky (USA)
Alexander Morozevich (Russia)
Lenier Dominguez Perez (Cuba)
Rafael Vaganian (Armenia)
Sergey Rublevsky (Russia)
Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan)
Vlad Tkachiev (France)
Peter Svidler (Russia)
Alexander Grischuk (Russia)
Boris Gelfand (Israel)
Judit Polgar (Hungary)
Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine)
Murtas Kazhgaleev (Kazakhstan)
World Blitz Championship promises to become one of the most important events in Kazakhstan's sport life in 2008. The greatest 16 chess-players of the world, arbiters and masters of chess will take part in the championship. FIDE president, the head of Kalmikia Kirsan Ilumzhinov will take part in the Championship as official person.
The goal of the Championship is to develop Kazakhstan's chess, to advance Kazakhstan's chess-players to the first-class level and also to form positive image of Republic of Kazakhstan as the developing and stable state at the international scene.
Organizers of the tournament are the Chess Federation of RK, FIDE and Noncommercial Charitable Seimar Social Fund. Prize fund - 350 000 Swiss francs is granted by Kazakhstan's Chess federation with the support of Noncommercial Charitable Seimar Social Fund and JSC "Alliance Bank".World Blitz Championship is one of the most important and prestigious events in sport. As usual, the greatest chess-players from all over the world take part in championships.
Chess Blitz - is blazing game, where an extremely short time control is used - 5 minutes to each one on the whole game of chess. Loses this one, who exceed a time limit first or take mate. The World Championship will be conducted by Swiss system. Results will be counted by international FIDE system. Games of chess on the tournament will be played by classical time control - 5 minutes to each player during the whole game, without excess.
We have no doubts, that future championship will give a lot of memorizing, perfect, designing moments to all chess fancies not only in Kazakhstan, but in the whole world. It will be possible to watch the events on 8 chess-boards on-line and live.
Wait, there are still banks somewhere offering to guarantee things? Hot damn, how do I open an account in Kazakhstan? I hope all of you chess fancies are excited about this. Tee-hee. Later in the release we learn about Nijdorf, Bronshtain, Michail Tal, and, inevitably, Robert James Fisher and Harry Kasparov. All sic. But the history section does perform the service of reminding us all of the winner of the blitz world championship in St. John (or "Jhon"), Canada, in 1988. Kasparov and Karpov were there but the winner was Mikhail Tal. I still remember that cover of Inside Chess.
Grischuk won this title in 2006 and Ivanchuk in 2007. This is a strong field, but only three members of the top ten are there: Morozevich (2), Ivanchuk (3), and Radjabov (8). Brooklyn's finest, Gata Kamsky -- no insult to Irina Krush and Pascal Charbonneau -- is going to be there too. Speaking of Kamsky, he's hanging tough at the #16 spot between Karjakin and Svidler. Anybody heard anything about his match with Topalov lately?
Well, this seals the verdict! The Miglette has accentuated your funny bone. Must be you looking at the lighter side of life, Mig. No doubt the inspiration of your humorous approach to the 64 squares and it is most refreshing. In all seriousity mate. Cheers to the fine Greengardian family! You are one blessed chessoid.
I guess we should start a new thread: who is the greatest player of all time? Is it Harry Kasparov or Barry Kasparov?
The name Harry Kasparov is my favorite .. really made me laugh!
I heard somewhere, that Kasparovs original name was Harry Weinstein, not Garry, but maybe this has something to do with pronunciation.
It is comforting to know the games will be played without excess.
So much the better for the prefect, designing moments to come.
Transliteration, not pronunciation exactly. The standard way to write Garry's name in Russian would commonly be written Harry in English. But it's a hard sound in his case. He was commonly listed as Harry in the western press when he was still a teen. There's at least one English book on him that uses Harry. But yeesh, you'd hope they'd have someone with knowledge of the English versions of all those names glance over it before they sent it.
And yes, Garry went by his father's name Weinstein during his early years. (There's a good story about this when the coach at the Pioneer Palace misheard it as "Bronstein" and was so happy to have a "new Bronstein" that little Garry was too shy to correct him!) But after his father's death, and living with his mother and her family, they decided to change it to his mother's name. I think he was 10 or 11 at the time and already a prodigy. Oddly enough, Kramnik's case is similar. He was originally Vladimir Sokolov but took his stepfather's name when his mother remarried. Good enough, there are enough Sokolovs in chess already.
That was a useful nugget about Kramnik. Just imagine Vladimir Sokolov playing a match, supported by a team of Ivan Sokolov and Andrei Sokolov.
Interesting trivia about Kramnik/Sokolov. Where did you dig that up?!
"This is a strong field, but only three members of the top ten are there"
No. They have the "16 greatest players in the world".
Are you joking? During the 2000 match Mig's role as Kasparov's VP candidate was to dig up and consequently throw mud on Kramnik (he still can't get over it as you can see from his blog). His favourite was that family name stuff and so on, but strangely Kasparov called it off.
You heard it here first.
According to the all-knowing Wikipedia:
Vladimir Kramnik was born in the town of Tuapse, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is occasionally asserted that his real name was Sokolov but this is not the case (though it is a family name). His father's birth name was Boris Sokolov, but he took his stepfather's surname when his mother (Vladimir's grandmother) remarried.
Would love to see Nakamura in this thing...
So the question remains: And how did Karpov and Korchnoi acquire their big K's?
It is always easy to poke fun at other nationalities, particularly if they are not comfortable with the few thousand words that make up Amerenglish. By the way, how is your Kazakh?
I hope we can take criticism as well as we can give it? Time will tell...
Hey!! Get a sence of like humor ,loser.
One major difference with last year's championship is 5 0 time control as opposed to increment time control used last year. Therefore, I predict a fairly easy win for Grischuk and a subpar perfomance from Grischuk and Kamsky.
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