GM Alex Finkel was directly involved in the live coverage of two big events. He was broadcaster and audio commentator for Dortmund and Canadian Open 2005 on the WorldChessNetwork.
You can read his Dortmund preview article to see how good his predictions were.
After the events were concluded, he took a seat and wrote excellent reviews.
Indeed, the final result of the tournament left all chess experts wondering what is happening to modern chess (and barely forced me to quit my position as an oracle:-)?!
Dortmund article
This year the organizers of the Canadian Open celebrated its 10 th anniversary. And what could be a better way to make the event to stand out than inviting such prominent players as Ivanchuk and Shirov?!
Lafuente just took black bishop on b7, and now computer had to recapture on b7. But Shredder played unexpectedly 19...Rfd8?? In official builten they said it wasn`t "mouse slip" or some other human factor. Shredder used more then 3 minutes for this move, and at the beginning he was calculating 19...Qxb7 deep down to 20 moves but then he drove his attention to the move which he finally played. His evaluation was that black has small advantage . After the game organizers have tested the critical position with Shredder again and they said this was the case which happens "ones in the milion"!
This event took place on 9-17 july, 2005. in Edmonton, Alberta. It gathered quite a few of World`s ellite players - GM Vassily Ivanchuk (2739), GM Alexei Shirov (2737) and GM Viktor Bologan (2700).
After 10 rounds have been played we got five participants to share first place with 8 points each. The most pleasent suprise is certainly the result of 17-years old GM Mark Bluvstein who fought well with big guns and even beat Shirov in a very important game.
Final standings: 1-5 Ivanchuk Vassily (2792 gm), Shirov Alexei (2745 gm), Bluvshtein Mark (2529 gm), Bologan Viktor (2740 gm), Chowdhury SR (2421 im) with 8 points, 6-11 Ganguly,SS (2636 gm), Quan Zhe (2396 fm), Kidambi S. (2524 im), Kunte Abhijit (2601 gm), Krnan Tomas (2462 fm), Roussel-Roozmon Thomas (2417 im) with 7.5 points etc.
Arkadij Naiditsch is the sensational winner of this years Dortmund Sparkassen tournament. 19 years old German was the lowest rated player in this meeting but he started with no respect for "the olders" to score three nice wins and grab the first place.
Delhi's 12-year-old chess wizkid, Parimarjan Negi, on Sunday became the youngest International Master, when he earned his third and final IM norm at the Sort International open chess tournament in Sort, Spain.
A student of Amity International School (Saket) and coached by Grandmaster Evgeny Vladimirov, Negi played a quick draw with Karen Morsziszian of Armenia in the final round, aggregating five points out of a possible nine. It also fetched him the final norm.
Negi made his first IM norm at the Bad Wissen tournament in Germany in 2003 and earned his second norm during the Dubai Open Chess Festival in April this year.
Last year, Parimarjan became the youngest Indian ever to win the national sub-junior title to eclipse the record of Grandmaster P. Harikrishna.
Negi will be the top seed in the under-12 category at the World Chess Championships scheduled to be held in Belford (France), later this month.
The Sixth European Individual Chess Championship, a 13-round Swiss tournament, is being held from June 17 to July 3, 2005, in Warsaw, Poland. The rate of play is 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per a move, starting from move 1.
The winner and new European Champion is Romanian Grandmaster Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. He scored 7 wins and 6 draws to grab uncontested first place.
