Nakamura (Is? Was?) Working With Kasparov: Confirmation

Have a look here, and scroll down to the section on Dortmund, paragraph two, which reads

For this ChessBase Magazine the serial victor of Dortmund has chosen to annotate his win against Hikaru Nakamura. The American went into a theoretical duel in the Nimzo-Indian and chose an unfashionable variation with 8.Qb3. However, Kramnik points out in his analysis that in his day Kasparov championed this move. And especially since Kramnik knew that Nakamura had been working with Kasparov recently, he would probably not have been all that surprised at the choice.

HT: "anonymous coward"

Grischuk on the World Cup

The World Cup runner-up speaks about his tournament, here. (HT: Brian Karen)

Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2011, Round 3: Ivanchuk Leads, Carlsen Cracks

As usual, Francisco Vallejo Pons was involved in a decisive game, and most of the way he was following the script. He lost his first two games and was well on the way to losing a third game, but a funny thing happened on the way to the finish. Magnus Carlsen had plenty of time - at least for a while - to find a win, but didn't manage. Vallejo had just about equalized when Carlsen uncorked an amazing blunder - a two-mover - and soon had to resign. Thanks to the 3-1-0 scoring system the win leapfrogged Vallejo out of the cellar, where Carlsen now resides! (Not for long, I expect.)

More remarkable still, Carlsen has company there: the world champion. In this case, however, it was a more normal loss, albeit with White. Vassily Ivanchuk played the Schliemann (aka Jaenisch) against Anand's Ruy Lopez, and equalized without any obvious difficult against Anand's non-topical variation. Ivanchuk was doing well, and when Anand sacrificed (blundered?) a pawn for play the Ukranian was able to cool off his opponent's initiative and squeeze out the point in 69 moves. Ivanchuk is the clear leader with 2.5/3 (or rather, 7/9), and on the live rating list he's up to #5 in the world. (Incidentally, Aronian is within .3 of Anand for second, and isn't that far from Carlsen, either.)

Finally, Hikaru Nakamura played a Kamsky opening Kamskyishly and achieved a pretty comfortable draw with Black against Aronian.

Standings After Round 3 (3-1-0 scoring first, normal scoring in parentheses):

1. Ivanchuk 7 (2.5)
2. Aronian 5 (2)
3-4. Nakamura, Vallejo 3 (Nakamura 1.5, Vallejo 1)
5-6. Anand, Carlsen 2 (1)

Round 4 Pairings (for Friday; Thursday's a rest day)

• Aronian - Ivanchuk
• Vallejo - Anand
• Carlsen - Nakamura

Official site here; games (with some comments) here.

A Kasparov Blitz Game

Just came across this earlier today, on YouTube. It's not in TWIC, and while it's not against a professional player, his opponent is at least strong enough for the game to have entertainment value. Here's the video; the game score is reproduced below.

Ghannoum vs. Kasparov

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 a6 3. f4 b5 4. Nf3 Bb7 5. d4 cxd4 6. Qxd4 e6 7. Bd3 Nf6 8. h3 Qc7 9. Be3 d5 10. exd5 Nxd5 11. Nxd5 Bxd5 12. O-O Nc6 13.Qb6 Qxb6 14. Bxb6 Nb4 15. Be2 Rb8 16. Bf2 Bd6 17. a3 Nc6 18. Be3 O-O 19. a4 bxa4 20. Rxa4 Rxb2 21. Bd3 Nb4 22. Bd4 Nxd3 23. cxd3 Rb3 24. Rxa6 Bxf4 25. Ne5 Bxe5 26. Bxe5 Rxd3 27. Ra7 f6 28. Bd6 Rc8 29. Rc7 Rxc7 30. Bxc7 h5 31. Rf2 Kh7 32. Kh2 e5 33. g3 Bf3 34. Bb6 g5 35. h4 g4 36. Bc5 Rd1 0-1

Games of Interest in Today's European Club Cup Action

No time to annotate or post the games, but after a quick look at some of the top boards I'd suggest interested readers have a look at Jakovenko-Gelfand, Tomashevsky-Ponomariov and Petrosian-Shirov. The first game was a nice endgame win by Jakovenko, demonstrating just how important activity in the endgame can be. The second was a brutal attacking performance by Tomashevsky, and the latter was a remarkable triumph of caveman chess by Shirov.

Event website here - enjoy!

Carlsen *May* Play in the 2012 Candidates

At least that seems to be what Magnus Carlsen said, or suggested, in an interview with a Brazilian website. (A rough English translation can be found here.)

HT: Brian Karen

Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2011, Round 2: Ivanchuk Beats Vallejo, Shares Lead With Aronian

Francisco Vallejo Pons is a great player in his own right, but he's likely out of his depth here, as he sometimes was in the Linares super-tournaments. As the strongest Spanish player (or at least native-born Spanish player), he often receives invitations to elite events in his home country, and while it's a great experience for him, there's always the danger that he'll wind up as cannon fodder. So far, after two rounds, all the games have been drawn except for his, and in both cases he came out second-best. (It didn't help that he had Black in both games!)

Against Vassily Ivanchuk, he was ground down in an English Opening, finally losing when what he intended as a (desperate) piece sacrifice was an unintended blunder of the queen. That enabled Ivanchuk to catch Levon Aronian in first, though it was close to being a tie with Magnus Carlsen instead. Carlsen had White and pushed Aronian hard, and it long looked like he might win. Eventually Aronian survived, saving a rook ending a pawn down. He was not the only player who had to suffer before achieving a draw. Hikaru Nakamura had world champion Viswanathan Anand in trouble, but the world's best defender escaped by a thread.

Standings After Round 2 (remember, it's 3-1-0 scoring):

1-2. Aronian, Ivanchuk 4
3-5. Anand, Carlsen, Nakamura 2
6. Vallejo 0

Round 3 Pairings:

• Anand - Ivanchuk
• Aronian - Nakamura
• Vallejo - Carlsen

Tournament site here, games here (but only Nakamura-Anand is annotated).

European Club Cup: A Nice Gelfand Win

Who knows, he might be the next world champion! Even if not, though - and he will be an underdog against Viswanathan Anand next year - Boris Gelfand still plays some great chess when he's on. To be fair, his opponent in this round 3 game of the European Club Cup, Baadur Jobava, did not play anything near his best chess, but it was still an impressive and flashy win by the Israeli GM.

Have a look here.

Sao Paulo/Bilbao 2011, Round 1: Aronian Takes The Early Lead

Two of today's three games were short, uninteresting draws, but the third game was both exciting and decisive. Anand achieved nothing against Carlsen's Berlin Defense (maybe Carlsen is working with Kramnik now? Just kidding...), and Nakamura got nothing against Ivanchuk's Keres Defense (I believe that's what 1.d4 e6 2.c4 Bb4+ is called) either.

The fun game was Aronian-Vallejo, a sharp Slav sideline that saw Aronian employ a rare gambit his opponent greedily accepted. White's compensation was always sufficient, and it became (a lot) more than enough after 16...Qc8. For tactical reasons this was a big mistake, and Aronian soon built up a (near-) decisive attack. Vallejo was able to scrape his way to a bad ending, but he was unable to save it and Aronian was the deserved victor.

As they're using the 3-1-0 scoring, Aronian leads by two points at the moment. (They're also using the Sofia anti-draw rules - a double absurdity. First of all, it didn't work: Anand-Carlsen and Nakamura-Ivanchuk were both 28 move draws. Secondly, with the 3-1-0 scoring the white player especially has no reason to draw, so it's overkill.

Round 2 Pairings:

• Ivanchuk - Vallejo
• Carlsen - Aronian
• Nakamura - Anand

Official site here, games here (I've annotated Aronian-Vallejo, but not the two draws).

FIDE Considering Raising Rating Fees

Considerably, too - this isn't a penny-ante increase to keep up with inflation. (More about it here and especially here.) In brief, to be eligible for a FIDE rating a player would first have to shell out 10 euros as a "license", then pay 30 euros for a yearly license or 500 euros to keep them in good standing the rest of his life. (Note: it's ambiguous, the way it's written in the material I've seen online, as to whether the 30 euros/year or 500 euros/lifetime fees would apply to everyone or only those who don't yet have a FIDE rating.)

FIDE also intends to considerably jack up the title fees - from 70 euros to 200 for the FM title, from 165 to 300 for the IM title and from 330 to 500 for the GM title. There are still other fees, too - but how many will pay them? Should this crazy measure pass, FIDE will discover that raising fees and rates doesn't automatically mean raising income.

It's a pity chess isn't run by professional management.