Thursday, June 7, 2012 at 11:13PM The match polemics and post mortems continue. This time it's Nigel Short weighing in, stating that world champion Viswanathan Anand has become "cautious", "conservative", mentally old and so on. It's not quite as bad as it sounds, when you read the piece, but it isn't a paean of praise to the chess Anand is playing these days.
(HT: Brian Karen)
Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 8:35AM All Nigel Short needed was a draw to clinch clear first in the Bangkok Chess Club Open, and he got it. He finished with 8/9, good for a full-point margin over his closest competitors. A little icing on the cake is that it pulls his rating back over 2700 - not bad for a 46 year old, soon 47!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 1:10PM The Bangkok Chess Club Open is nearing the finish, and British GM Nigel Short has the sole lead with 7.5/8 with a round to go. He drew with the untitled Sander Severino (2344) in round three, but has an otherwise clean score that includes wins over GMs Farrukh Amonatov and Hou Yifan. He leads the Vietnamese duo of Duc Hoa Nguyen and Van Huy Nguyen by a point, and so would clinch clear first with a draw in round 9 against the former. As for Hou Yifan, she's in a tie for 11th-22nd with 5.5 points.
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 4:54PM The Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival didn't quite finish with the full fairy tale ending, but it was pretty close. Hou Yifan entered the last round with a half-point lead over her closest pursuers, and her reward was a game with second-seed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. They drew after a full and complicated fight, and that gave several other players the chance to catch up with 8/10.
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.
Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 6:08PM Garry Kasparov is still retired, only peeking up from time to time for little blitz events and/or rematches with former opponents. This time he played an eight-game blitz match (5' + 3" increments) against Nigel Short; it was their third match. The first was a rapid match in 1987 with six decisive games: Kasparov won 4-2, losing games 3 and 6. Then they played a world championship match in 1993, a 12.5-7.5 drubbing in Kasparov's favor that wasn't even as close as the lopsided score might suggest. (It was 10.5-4.5 after 15 games!)
This time it was closer, a 4.5-3.5 squeaker for the former world champion. Kasparov generally had the better of it in the first three games, but they were all drawn. Games four and five were deserved Kasparov wins, and it looked like the rout was on. Surprisingly, it didn't materialize. Short won games six and seven to level the match, and had White for the final game. Fortunately for Kasparov and his fans, he rose to the occasion, as he almost always used to before his collapse in the second Deep Blue match in 1997. He won a very good game against 4.Ng5 in the Two Knights to eke out an overall victory.
Another event finished today, the Swiss-system tournament in Oslo. As noted yesterday, Matthew Sadler had already clinched first place with a round to spare, but he finished in style by defeating the strong Russian GM Sergey Volkov. Sadler's score of 8/9 (2849 TPR!) gave him a 1.5 point margin of victory over Sipke Ernst and two full points over the next group of players. If he keeps this up, he might wind up in elite events again.
There were three decisive games in the Governor's Cup in Saratov, Russia: Morozevich beat Vitiugov, Alekseev defeated Ponomariov and Ni Hua was upended by Alexander Moiseenko. The three winners co-lead the tournament with 1.5/2; as you may recall, all six games were drawn in round 1.
Nothing happened today in the Karpov tournament in Poikovsky. That has been true for the most part even when they've had rounds, but this was a rest day so the players had an excuse.
Kasparov, Nigel Short, Sadler Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 3:13AM It's coming, or at least that's what TWIC strongly suggests. First Kasparov-Karpov, now Kasparov-Short. Is Kasparov-Anand next?
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 1:08PM Only two games, but they're nice: one features a sound two-knight sacrifice, while in the second a simulee achieved a winning position against Nigel Short (before tragedy struck). In the questions department, pride of place goes to a fascinating rook ending. One side was two pawns up, but had a very difficult time dealing with the opponent's outside passer. The ending is instructive and entertaining, and the viewer's intro to that ending is priceless.
You can watch the show here, free (free registration required), available on-demand for the next month or so. Enjoy!
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 12:31AM In this post I reviewed the first volume of Nigel Short's two-volume DVD series for ChessBase, and the bottom line is that they're both enjoyable and especially instructive for a general audience. They're not exercises in deep analysis, but it's not mere story-telling either. Short offers very good explanations, and to almost every move, so the videos do have instructional value - it's not just entertainment.
In the first volume, almost every opponent was a world champion (though not necessarily at the time of the game being presented). The opposition this time around is slightly weaker, but not by much - and we get an extra game, too, with 15 clips instead of the 14 in volume 1. There's another win over Garry Kasparov here, and a win over erstwhile FIDE champion Alexander Khalifman, and that wraps it up for world champs. There are super-GMs aplenty, however, including Gelfand, Seirawan, Ljubojevic, Timman, Adams, Korchnoi and Gligoric; so the chess remains at a very high level.
As before, Short's presentation style is very clear and engaging, so to reiterate my conclusion from last time: this is not a purchase for those looking for hard-core training material, a la Dvoretsky, but it's otherwise an enjoyable product for those interested in Short, in seeing high-level games explained in an accessible way by a top player, and/or in the history of the game over the past few decades.
More details and ordering info here.
Nigel Short in DVD Reviews