There's a big group with 4 points, and one of them is former FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman, who defeated defending two-time champ Le Quang Liem in round 5. Le lost yet again in round 6, and with 2.5 points may already be mathematically eliminated from defending his title. As I mentioned a few days ago, I hope the Dortmund organizers recognize his terrific achievements the past two years (twice having qualified by winning Aeroflot and both times taking second at Dortmund) and give him an automatic entry to the tournament. One can hope! Meanwhile, I hope he manages to salvage this event with a strong finish.
Finally, lest American readers accuse me of "forgetting" Ray Robson, he's having a decent event and has a +1 score.
Tournament website here.
]]>Anyway, here's the field and how they qualified:
The site has been set: It will take place in London this fall from October 23 to November 13. (More on this, and a bit of editorializing besides, over at TWIC.)
]]>This time around we start with the Archangelsk, and after 6...Bb7 White chooses between 7.c3, aiming to build an ideal pawn center with d4, and 7.d3. The latter move is more patient and has a modest appearance, but may well be the best choice, aiming to blunt the fianchettoed bishop on b7. 7.d3 will (likely) be the subject of next week's video; this time around it's the 7.c3 approach we'll focus on. As we'll see, Black is doing quite well, as long as he's willing to play bravely and able to handle active, sacrificial chess.
The show is here and it's free - as always. (One-time free registration is required.) Eventually it will be archived, but for the foreseeable future it will be available on demand.
]]>More on Averbakh, and his birthday, on the ChessBase and ChessVibes websites.
]]>It's a nine-round event that started on Tuesday and continues through Wednesday, February 15. After two rounds there are five players with perfect scores: Evgeny Alekseev, Denis Khismatullin, Sergei Zhigalko, Abhijeet Gupta and Maxim Rodshtein.
]]>Akiva (Akiba) Rubinstein was one of the greatest players of the early 20th century, and one of the greatest players never to even have a shot at the world championship. His openings and his approach to the openings were ahead of their time, and he was an absolute genius when it came to the ending - rook endings in particular. Of course his middlegame play was at an elite level as well, and his tactical skill is on display in many games - most famously and flashily perhaps in the game with Rotlewi, but in many more besides.
Rubinstein, unlike his great (near) contemporaries Jose Raul Capablanca and Alexander Alekhine, never published a book of his best games, and for whatever reason there's a paucity of English-language literature on this great player. Fortunately IMs John Donaldson and Nikolay Minev have sought to repair this with their two-volume series on Rubinstein. Volume 2, "The Later Years", covers his career from late 1920 on to his retirement from tournament play in 1931, and presents some later battles including a number of training games with his son Sammy played in the mid-to-late 1940s.
In all there are 583 games, many of them annotated with notes going back to early or even original sources. (Examples include Hans Kmoch's book on Rubinstein, tournament books by Nimzowitsch and Alekhine, and on some rare occasions comments by the man himself.) Occasionally the authors (Donaldson and Minev) make some brief parenthetical comments, but theirs is a light touch. As a rule, I think it's to an editor's credit to go light on correcting annotations made in a pre-computer era, but as this wasn't a reissue of Kmoch's Rubinstein's Chess Masterpieces but their own new, original work, it would have been nice to see them annotate some of his classics. They do offer some comments on occasion to some otherwise unannotated games, but more would have been nicer. With the benefit of a more modern understanding, as well as the opportunity to consult with older sources and chess engines, it would have been valuable to see what they could find re-examining Rubinstein's games. (Maybe they'll do that with a "best games" volume in the future? One can only hope.)
Along with the games are a large number of crosstables and photographs, not to mention a fair amount of historical information. The authors typically say a few words about the tournaments and Rubinstein's travels, often quoting reports from contemporary sources. They also offer quite a few mini-biographies and other bits of background on Rubinstein's opponents. About Rubinstein himself they offer 16 pages of biographical material at the start of the book, which is well-supplemented by the background info mentioned above.
All in all it's a treasure trove of information for Rubinstein's fans, who should be many, and for beginners to his oeuvre they offer on page 28 a "sampler" recommending 34 games that "represent some of the high points" of the second half of his career. My only regret - and this is really a request for another book and not a criticism of the one Donaldson and Minev have written - is that we don't have a satisfactory "best of" book on Rubinstein in the English language. Nonethless, I can recommend this book, especially to fans of chess history in general and Rubinstein in particular.
]]>It's a really beautiful and well-played game, and I hope my readers on this site will also be my viewers over on ChessVideos. It's a game worth seeing, and I do my best to show just how many shoals both sides, but especially Shirov, had to avoid along the way. This is great chess.
You can see my video of the game here. It's free as always (one-time only free registration is required), and it will be available on demand for the next month or so.
]]>The only one to succeed was Nigel Short, who defeated Krishnan Sasikiran with Black in a Modern Benoni. It was a gutsy choice that paid off (literally!), and after that it was on to a two game blitz (10 minutes + 5 seconds per move) tiebreak match. Short won the first game - convincingly - in a Grand Prix Attack, and he probably could have won the second game as well, but was content to allow Hou to draw by perpetual check.
So Short took first, but all the same it was an incredible performance by the 17-year-old women's world champion. She finished with a 2872 TPR, going +4 -1 =2 against 2700s (and beating everyone below that as well). Michael Adams, Mamedyarov, Viktor Bologan and Emil Sutovsky finished half a point behind, and then another 17 players (including Judit Polgar) finished with 7 points apiece.
]]>Still, the job is not done. There are five players within half a point entering the last round: Michael Adams, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Nigel Short, Krishnan Sasikiran and Viktor Bologan; and although Hou will have White she's getting the second-seeded Mamedyarov as her final hurdle. A draw clinches a tie for first, and a win would give her clear first and possibly the greatest tournament performance by a female chess player ever; indeed, one of the all-time great performances in an open event, period.
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