Open Forni di Sopra

The First International Chess Tournament of Forni di Sopra will take place from June 12th to 18th in Forni di Sopra, part of the Friulian Dolomites Natural Park and one of the jewels of the Italian Alps.

The tournament will be covered on www.scacchirandagi.com and www.accademiainternazionalediscacchi.com and the top 30 boards will be broadcasted live. Ten Grandmasters and 15 International Masters will be invited, as well as top Italian players.

Currently confirmed titled players are Grandmasters Julio Granda Zuniga, Oleg Korneev, Manuel Leon Hoyos, Carlos Matamoros, International masters Giulio Borgo, Duilio Collutis, Danil Dyvrnyy, Pierluigi Piscopo, Martha Fierro, Federico Manca, Fabio Bruno.

Anna Zatonskih Wins Fourth Title

After two weeks of almost non-stop playing, IM Anna Zatonskih needed a few more hours to win the 2011 U.S. Women’s Championship. She won her first rapid game as Black on Thursday against WFM Tatev Abrahamyan. Zatonskih seemed to be able to cruise to the title, but in the next round she spoiled a better position and lost.

The two had to play a deciding Armageddon match that Zatonskih drew to give her the title. She had draw odds by virtue of playing Black and with less time.

Including the tiebreak and playoff matches, Zatonskih played 19 games of chess over a two-week period. This marks her fourth U.S. Women’s Championship title and second since 2009 when the U.S. Women’s Championship was first hosted in St. Louis.

Asian Continental Individual Championship 2011

The 10th Asian Continental Individual Championship and First Asian Individual Blitz Championship (Open and Women's) is scheduled to take place from 1st to 11th May at the Hotel Pardisan, in Mashhad, Iran. Members of all FIDE Affiliated Chess Federations in Asia, Zones 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 are eligible to take participation.

Official website

Viet Nam players ready for the 10th Asian Individual

Games schedule of the Candidates Matches 2011

The Candidates Matches of the FIDE World Championship cycle 2011-2012 will be played 3-27 May, 2011, in Kazan, Russia.

The schedule of the Kazan 2011 Candidates Matches is posted below.

More about the Candidates: Pairings / Live / Topalov - Kamsky preview / Kramnik - Radjabov preview / Levon Aronian preparing

03 May - Arrival
04 May - Players Meeting / Opening Ceremony
05 May - Game 1, round 1
06 May - Game 2, round 1
07 May - Game 3, round 1
08 May - Game 4, round 1
09 May - Tiebreaks
10 May - Free Day
11 May - Free Day
12 May - Game 1, round 2
13 May - Game 2, round 2
14 May - Game 3, round 2
15 May - Game 4, round 2
16 May - Tiebreaks
17 May - Free Day
18 May - Free Day
19 May - Game 1, round 3
20 May - Game 2, round 3
21 May - Game 3, round 3
22 May - Free Day
23 May - Game 4, round 3
24 May - Game 5, round 3
25 May - Game 6, round 3
26 May - Tiebreaks / Closing Ceremony
27 May - Departure

Viet Nam players ready for the 10th Asian Individual

The Viet Nam chess team will compete in the 10th Asian Individual Chess Championships, which will be held in the holy city of Mashhad in northeast Iran on May 1-11.

The team will include the nation's top players, including grandmasters Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, Dao Thien Hai, Hoang Bao Tram and Nguyen Thi Mai Hung.

Top player Le Quang Liem who won the recent Aeroflot Open will not take part in this event. He finished fifth in the Asian championship last year.

The US$65,000 tournament will be conducted according to the Swiss System, with competition over nine rounds, with the top four qualifying for the 2011 World Cup.

The first Asian Individual Blitz Championships will take place alongside the main tournaments.

After the Asian event, Viet Nam will head to Tagayta in Philippines on May 23-31 to take part in the Zone 3.3 Zonal Championships 2011 for Open and Women and the Asian Youth Chess Championships on May 14-22. In June, they will compete in Asian U-20 Chess Championships in Colombo, Sri Lanka and the Southeast Asian tourney.

Tamaz Gelashvili Winner in Philadelphia

The 5th Annual Philadelphia Open was held as usual over the Easter weekend from April 20-24, 2011, at the upscale, luxury Loews Philadelphia Hotel, rated Four Diamonds by AAA, 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia.

The Open Section was won by Georgian Grandmaster, Tamaz Gelashvili, who finished with 7.5/9. Gelashvili recovered from his Swiss Gambit draw with IM Jay Bonin in round 1 to top the 105 player section.

Open Section final standings:

1. GM Tamaz Gelashvili 2596 GEO - 7.5
2. GM Julio J Becerra 2549 USA - 7.0
3-8. GM Jiri Stocek 2580 CZE, GM Carlos Matamoros 2549 ECU, GM Eugene Perelshteyn 2533 USA, GM Mesgen Amanov 2495 TKM, IM Lev Milman 2462 USA and GM John P Fedorowicz 2444 USA - 6.5
9-15. IM Jacek Stopa 2453 POL, IM Daniel J Ludwig 2450 USA, IM Marc T Arnold 2435 USA, FM Conrad Holt 2408 USA, IM Michael A Mulyar 2396 USA, IM Oladapo Oluto Adu 2295 NIG and FM Dov Gorman 2292 USA - 6.0 etc

Official website

World Youth Chess Championships 2011

The Brazilian Chess Federation (CBX), the WYCC 2011 Organizing Committee and companies participating, have the honour to invite all the FIDE member Chess Federations around the world to participate in the World Youth Chess Championship 2011 (under 8, under 10, under 12, under 14, under 16 and under 18 years old - open and girls) which will take place in Caldas Novas-Goiás, Brazil, between November the 17th, 2011 (arrival) and November the 27th, 2011 (departure).

Official website

Americas Continental Championship 2011

Continental Absoluto de America 2011 concluded this weekend in Toluca, Mexico. 222 players participated in the 9-round tournament.

FM Yasser Quesada Perez, FM Orlen Ruiz Sanchez (both Cuba) and Erik Santarius (USA) are claiming IM norms.

Final standings:
1-4. GM Bruzon Batista Lazaro CUB 2668, GM Bluvshtein Mark CAN 2589, GM Vescovi Giovanni BRA 2634 and GM Quesada Perez Yuniesky CUB 2620 - 7.5
5-7.GM Cori Jorge PER 2485, GM Corrales Jimenez Fidel CUB 2597 and IM Ortiz Suarez Isan CUB 2543 - 7.0
8-17. GM De La Paz Perdomo Frank CUB 2473, GM Lafuente Pablo ARG 2572, GM Friedel Joshua USA 2529, IM Barrientos Sergio COL 2499, GM Perez Rodriguez Luis Manu CUB 2483, FM Quesada Perez Yasser CUB 2421, GM Gonzalez Zamora Juan Carl MEX 2545, GM Nogueiras Jesus CUB 2566, GM Cordova Emilio PER 2562 and Santarius Erik USA 2274 - 6.5 etc

World Team Championship 2011

The Chinese Chess Association with the patronage and support of the Ningbo Municipal Government and Ningbo Sports Bureau has the honour to announce the 2011 World Team Chess Championship in Ningbo, China. The event will be held from July 15 2011 (arrival) to July 26 2011 (Departure) at the playing venue in New Century Grand Hotel Ningbo.

According to FIDE Regulations D.07.11.6.2., the following Federations are entitled to send a team:
1. China (host country)
2. Russia (winner 2009)
3. Ukraine (Olympiad 2010)
4. Israel (Olympiad 2010)
5. Hungary (Olympiad 2010)
6. Azerbaijan (Europe qualifier)
7. India (Asia qualifier)
8. USA (America's qualifier)
9. Egypt (African qualifier)
10. Armenia (FIDE President's nomination)

The championships will be played using a 9 round, round-robin system. Each match will be scored by match points as used in the FIDE Olympiad. Winner will get 2 points, a draw will give each team 1 point, and a loss is scored as 0 points.

Lineups: China and Armenia

Heart of Finland

Chessclub Jyväs-Shakki organizes the 21st Open Heart of Finland in Jyväskylä, Finland on 11-17th July, 2011. The Venue is Harju Building of Jyväskylä College, Sepänkatu 3, Jyväskylä. The Heart of Finland tournament is the biggest annual chess event in Finland.

The tournament will be played over 9 rounds according to Swiss system. Time rate is 90 min + 30 s/move, add 30 min after 40th move. Tournament is ELO rated and there are possibilities to win FIDE title norms. The first prize will be 1000 EUR.

Pre-registered players: GM Sulskis Sarunas LTU 2564, GM Kanep Meelis EST 2528, GM Novik Maxim RUS 2470, IM Yuneev Alexey RUS 2425, IM Kiik Kalle EST 2423, IM Agopov Mikael FIN 2423, IM Lauk Ular EST 2402, GM Yrjölä Jouni FIN 2366, GM Rantanen Yrjö FIN 2363 and IM Norri Joose FIN 2343.

More information on the official website.

Round two of the 2011 U.S. Championship semifinals

In round two of the 2011 U.S. Championship semifinals, defending champion GM Gata Kamsky pressed his initiative and broke through against GM-elect Sam Shankland to become the first player to advance to the finals. GMs Robert Hess and Yury Shulman played another game devoid of wild swings; their second straight draw meant the match will continue tomorrow with a pair of rapid games.

The U.S. Women’s Championship produced two decisive games yesterday, but today both women who trailed enacted revenge, thus requiring all four players to enter a playoff tomorrow. IM Irina Krush dramatically came back in her match against IM Anna Zatonskih. After playing an abysmal game in round one of the semifinals, she took over both sides of the board and sacrificed a bishop on g6. Zatonskih saw that capturing it meant getting checkmated but leaving it meant going down a lot of material.

Full report

Women's Grand-Prix 2011-2012

FIDE announces the Women's Grand-Prix 2011-2012 which will give qualification to the Women's World Championship match 2013. The schedule of the 6 events is the following:

1-15 August 2011, Rostov, Russia
8-22 September 2011, Shenzhen, China
8-23 October 2011, Nalchik, Russia
30 May - 13 June 2012, Kazan, Russia
16-30 June 2012, Jermuk, Armenia
16-30 November 2012, Istanbul, Turkey

In total 18 players will participate, 10 qualifiers as per regulations plus 6 nominees from the organizers of each tournament plus 2 nominees of the FIDE President.

Chess in Armenian Primary Schools

Armenia is to make chess a compulsory subject in primary schools in an attempt to turn itself into a global force in the game, the education ministry said on Friday.

"Teaching chess in schools will create a solid basis for the country to become a chess superpower," an official at the ministry, Arman Aivazian, told AFP.

The authorities led by President Serzh Sarkisian, an enthusiastic supporter of the game, have committed around $1.5 million (one million euros) to the scheme - a large sum in the impoverished but chess-mad country.

Children from the age of six will learn chess as a separate subject on the curriculum for two hours a week.

Read more

Memorial Pedro Lezcano Montalvo

The 4th Memorial Pedro Lezcano Montalvo was played from 18th to 24th April in Gran Canaria, Spain.109 players competed in this nine-round open, and among them were five Grandmasters.

GM Julio Granda Zuniga took a clear first place with 7.5 points and claimed the top prize of 1100 EUR. Fellow Grandmasters, Aleksa Strikovic, Bojan Kurajica, Dragan Barlov and Reynaldo Vera, and the untitled Omar Garcia Blanco shared the second place with 7.0 points each.

Tournament website

5th Annual Grand Pacific Open

The 5th annual Grand Pacific Open Chess Tournament is being played on Easter Weekend April 22nd to 25th at the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria, Canada.

The main event is a 6 round FIDE and CFC rated Swiss with $4000 in prizes. There are also a number of side events, including a Scholastic tournament, an active tournament, Midnight Blitz with $100 in prizes, and a Bughouse tournament.

Play begins at 6:00 pm Friday and continues during the afternoon and evening on Saturday and Sunday, concluding with the final round Monday at 10:00 am.

Top contenders are Grandmaster Igor Rausis of the Czech Republic, BC Champion Jack Yoos of Vancouver, Women's Grandmaster Nino Maisuradze of France, International Master Lawrence Day of Toronto (last year's winner) and Women's FIDE Master Valeria Gansvind of Estonia.

However, the younger generation is out in force, led by World Under 10 Champion Jason Cao of Victoria. Also present will be US Grade One Champion Praveer Sharan of Lake Oswego, Oregon, Canadian Under 16 Champion Tanraj Sohal of Surrey, US National Girls Champion Alexandra Botez of Burnaby, Canadian Under 8 Champion Joshua Doknjas of Surrey and Canadian Under 8 Girls Champion Andrea Botez of Burnaby.

The tournament hall itself is the very nice ballroom at the 5 Star Hotel Grand Pacific. The hotel is located on the Inner Harbour in downtown Victoria, close to tourist destinations and across the street from the Seattle Clipper and Coho ferry connections.

Sections: Open (FIDE and CFC rated); U1400 (CFC rated) - 6 round Swiss
Time Control: Game in 90 minutes with a 30 second increment

Prize Fund: $4000 Guaranteed:

Open Section: $1000+Trophy, $600, $400
U2000 $400 + Trophy, $300
U1700 $350 + Trophy, $250;
Top BC Player qualifies for BC Closed.
U1400 Section: $300 + Trophy, $200;
Top Unrated (Highest score in either section) $100
Biggest Upset $100

U.S. Chess Championships Semifinals

For four players at the 2011 U.S. Chess Championship and U.S. Women's Championship, the rest day was anything but a leisurely day off. Tied after round-robin play, GM Alexander Onischuk and GM-elect Sam Shankland faced off for a spot in the semifinals, while IM Anna Zatonskih played WGM Sabina Foisor.

Both matches were repeats of round seven, and when the two-game series ended, Shankland upset Onischuk and Zatonskih beat Foisor to advance.

Zatonskih will now play Krush in the semifinals, while WGM Camilla Baginskaite and WFM Tatev Abrahyam will play in the other semifinal.

Besides Shankland-Kamsky, GMs Robert Hess and Yury Shulman will play head-to-head in the U.S. Championship. All semifinal matchups are two-game matches spread out over two days, with a possible tiebreak on the third day.

Full report

Live games with computer analysis

GM Robert Hess makes headline on Bloomberg

Robert Hess, who interned at a hedge fund in 2008 and will attend Yale University in August, will try to see the future over the next seven days -- on a chessboard.

The 19-year-old grandmaster is alone atop his group in the first phase of the 2011 U.S. Championship in St. Louis, and has clinched a spot in the semifinals. In five months, he plans to use his chess skills to help study finance at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, and join the likes of Harvard University economics professor Ken Rogoff as grandmasters to attend the university.

Hess, who deferred from Yale for a year to play chess full time, worked a 2008 summer internship at Fortress Investment Group LLC, a New York hedge fund. At Fortress, Hess analyzed entertainment stocks and developed an interest in finance.

Hess said finance is similar to chess, in that success depends on the ability to see the effective move out of a wide range of possibilities.

Full article on Bloomberg.com

4th New York International

The Fourth New York International Chess Tournament, organized by the historic Marshall Chess Club, will take place from June 17 to 21, 2011, at the Manhattan Campus of St. John's University in the heart of downtown Manhattan under impeccable playing conditions.

Since its premiere in 2008, the event has grown every year in size and strength and is an excellent opportunity for both established Grandmasters (the $10,000 prize fund in the Championship section is unconditionally guaranteed) and younger players who seek to obtain IM and GM norms.

Last year, players from 15 different federations, including 13 GM's and 14 IM's, took part, ensuring norm possibilities independent of pairings with foreign players.

For details please visit the official tournament website . Please do not hesitate to contact us by E-mail ( admin@marshallchessclub.org) or telephone (+1-212-477-3716) for any questions or concerns you might have.

Dr. Frank Brady,
International Arbiter
President, Marshall Chess Club

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

Candidates Matches

From 3 to 27 May 2011 Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, will play host to the participants of the Candidates Matches 2011.

Pairings:
Topalov (BUL) - Kamsky (USA)
Kramnik (RUS) - Radjabov (AZE)
Aronian (ARM) - Grischuk (RUS)
Gelfand (ISR) - Mamedyarov (AZE)

Official website

As every major chess event, the Candidates Matches will have live commentary on Chessdom. This time the team will be especially strong - GM Naiditsch, GM Bacrot, and the Chess Evolution team will comment live together with the resident commentators GM Bauer, IM Ipatov, and IM Perunovic.

The Independent About Magnus Carlsen

Even its staunchest defenders would struggle to describe chess as sexy, but the growing stature of Magnus Carlsen could change all that. Not only is the 20-year-old Norwegian the number two ranked chess player in the world, but he is also carving out a highly successful career in the world of fashion modelling.

Once known as the Mozart of chess, for his prodigious talent and astonishingly rapid ascent to the top of the game, today his brooding yet boyish looks and contract with the G-Star RAW fashion label mean he is just as likely to be compared to the teenage singer and heart-throb Justin Bieber as he is to the Austrian composer.

Full article

GM Cerdas Barus wins Telin chess tournament

Grandmaster Cerdas Barus of Indonesian won the first Telin Chess International with 7.5 points in nine Swiss rounds at Graha Citra Caraka in Jakarta on Thursday.

Cerdas (2443 Elo) grabbed the title after beating his counterpart, International Master Irwanto Sadikin (2417 Elo), in the ninth round.

Cerdas, 50, a talented player with physical disabilities, said through a translator that he was happy to win the international level title since his last victory was as a gold medalist in the 35th Chess Olympiad in 2002 in Bled, Slovenia.

Full article in The Jakarta Post

Kevin Kline learns chess

The Oscar winner says he brushed up on his French to play a French-speaking American in "Queen to Play," an offbeat drama set for U.S. release Friday. Kline also improved his chess game for the film, in which his character strikes up an unlikely friendship with his housekeeper on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea.

Full article

Vladimir Potkin is European Champion

The 12th European Individual Chess Championship was held in Aix‐les‐Bains, France, from March 21st (day of arrival) to April 3rd (day of departure).

393 players from 41 countries, also including five under ECU flag, took participation. Among them was an impressive number of Grandmasters, 167, and 63 International Masters.

Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Potkin, who started furiously with five consecutive victories, maintained the lead with a series of draws and by adding another win in the later stages, to eventually share the first place with three other players and claim the title of the European Champion on superior tiebreak.

French chess grandmasters accused of cheating

The French Chess Federation has suspended three players after reports they cheated at the 2010 Olympiad in Russia.

The players are accused of communicating moves by SMS during the tournament, from which rising French star Sebastien Feller came away having won six of his nine games and netting a 5,000 euro prize.

Feller, along with fellow grandmaster Arnaud Hauchard and Cyril Marzolo have all been suspended by the federation, although they are appealing against the decision.

The disciplinary committee was presented with evidence that Marzolo used Firebird to suggest moves for Feller which Hauchard, the non-playing captain at the event, communicated to Feller from the position where he stood.

Full article

Invincible Djokovic

Novak Djokovic has done it again, defeating world number one Rafael Nadal 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to win the ATP Miami Masters crown and remain unbeaten in 2011.

Djokovic has now won all 24 matches he has played this year, the best start to a season since Ivan Lendl began 1986 25-0.

The Serbian, ranked second in the world, has captured four titles, including the Australian Open, Dubai and, now, back-to-back elite Masters titles at Indian Wells and Miami, both with victories over Nadal in the finals.

Full article