Young Russian Ian Nepomniachtchi won the European Individual Championship in style yesterday, going in with the lead and crushing Akopian to finish with a fantastic 9.5/11 and clear first. Two of the other top boards were also decisive as those who had pretty much locked up qualification for the next World Cup made a push for a bigger chunk of the prize money. Jobava beat Khismatullin in an exciting game and Timofeev beat Mamedov in a great performance. That settled the top spots, almost. They are sticklers for tiebreaks in these events and Jobava beat Timofeev in the rapid games for the silver medal.
Congrats to Ian "Finding" Nepo on the biggest win of his career. at 19 he's already had a few great results and plays a very exciting brand of chess. He was being compared to Morozevich even before he impressed with his big run at Corus C in 2007, where he started out with 7.5/8. A formidable speed player, he hasn't impressed enough, or raised his rating enough, to break into the elite alongside the biggest names in his cohort, Carlsen and Karjakin. His surprisingly solid +1 undefeated at Dortmund 2008 surely should have resulted in more attention, but he also sufferers from Russian Disease, for which there is currently no cure. But this is a very big win and I hope we get more chances to see him soon, even if it means a lot of ctrl+v.
Meanwhile, the real tooth and nail battles were going on Thursday as the massive train wreck of 30 players with 7.5 were dumped into a marathon of tiebreak games. These were to decide the final placings and therefore, who would get the 12 remaining of the 22 spots in the next FIDE World Cup. (It usually doesn't turn out to be just the top 22, since some end up qualifying in other ways.) The first rapid game between Navara and Movsesian deserves a look, wow. After poring over the pages of live tiebreak games at the official site I'm still not sure who got those last dozen spots. It does look like that of the three final-round losers who ended on 7.5, Mamedov and Akopian went through, but Khismatullin did not. Ouch. They must have finished quite late, perhaps after any sensible webmaster's bedtime. Speaking of...
Nepo's score was 9/11, still fantastic, though.
Congratulations to Pia Cramling too, who won the final game against the leader to take the title.
Not too hard to find on the official home page of the event:
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Players who have qualified for the World Cup and World Championship
23 players qualified for the World Cup: Nepomniachtchi, Jobava, Timofeev, Efimenko, Lysy, Almasi, Tomashevski, Rodshtein, Salgado Lopez, Pashikian, Mamedov, Movsesian, Drozdovskij, Babula, Vorobiov, Akopian, Berkes, Potkin, Halkias, Nisipeanu, Alekseev, Grachev and Socko.
14 players qualified for the World Championship: Cramling, Cmilyte, Socko, T. Kosintseva, Sebag, Zhukova, Dembo, Stefanova, A. Muzychuk, N. Kosinsteva, M. Muzycduk Kovalevskaya, Ziazulkina, Rajlich.
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"Two of the other top boards were also decisive "
In fact, 4 of the 5 top boards were decisive in the last round. :o)
Question to Mig and the many well informed and insightful power users, please:
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Clearly Ivanchuk has been back in form, and continuing to play chess with renewed vigor and results after his sorrowful episode last year. I know that we all love and respect Chucky for the same reasons---not only chess beauty and magic, but his boyish charm, and affable honest way of sharing himself such as at Les Eches or through, Robert Fontaine's many wonderful videos, is it?
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With Magnus Carlsen either taking it all to another level, or at the very least, holding his own at the high level he has emerged into, it is all to easy to forget Chucky's sudden statements of plans to leave chess, and obviously, his very quick capitulation after, to the delight of many of us all.
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Question to Mig and others: can he post about this or if not, do some of you offer perspective on this?
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I have chosen to be quiet here since the last round of comments, but have been diagnosed with a very serious illness, but am not dying but fighting for my life, as it were in many ways.
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I wish you all love and peace and for sure, good chess and beautiful brilliant wins, resourceful draws in clearly lost positions, and civility in losses alike. Blessings, dk
[ I could have waited to post this INTO surely ample posts immanent on Amber cum Carlsen-Ivanchuk, but thought it better to do so before hand, to be able to reach into that BEFORE that, not after.Hope no one is offended off my off subject above. dk ]
I am happy that both Monika and Bartosz Socko qualified. But then who will play chess with their three children when they are participating in the World Championship?
Mig
What is this "Russian desease" Ian suffers from? I know you mean it as some smartass comment but I don't get it.
Best
Steve
@ Steve
I think what Mig means is that Ian is a Russian and there are so many Russians ahead of him in the rating list that his name gets lost in the crowd. If he had been a Dane or a Belgian he would have got a lot more attention.
I could be wrong, though.
Does "Russian disease" mean alcoholism?
Does "Russian disease" mean alcoholism?
I am curious...
Russian Disease = one great player amongst many
Resistance is futile. All will be assimilated.
"I know you mean it as some smartass comment"
Rather a tribute to the strong chess nation Russia and an explanation why an otherwise big talent like Nepo hasn't got more attention.
It should be said, though, that Nepomniachtchi has been uneven in his performances, also over the last two years. But he's born in the golden year of 1990 like Carlsen, Karjakin and Vachier-Lagrave, so it's just a matter of time before he push 2700 like the rest... ;o)
Yes, Nepo is uneven but getting less so. As he matures, he'll keep moving up. He's already "pushing 2700" (2680+ after EICC) and will break it soon.
Migloid comments sometimes appear obtuse - its part of his being "inebriate on the exuberance of his own verbosity" ie need to demonstrate cleverness LOL at least in chess blog comment terms Yes the "disease" refers to their being lots of good russian players (apart from those in US)
Does "Russian disease" mean alcoholism?
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That's how I read it, but I hope we're both wrong. If we're both wrong, Mig should be careful about using this phrase in the future. Alcoholism is its common meaning.
Russian disease=the Petroff
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that was why it was funny.
Typical FIDE...
I go to FIDE's web site where they announce that the Official site for the Anand-Topalov match is up and running (Anand-Topalov.com). So you take the link and lo and behold one gets the error:
"Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (11)"
Hilarious. How "FIDE"!
In case anyone from that useless organization happens to read the Dirt: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?11,353427,353427
Various people in the world receive the loan in different creditors, just because this is easy and fast.