Mask Your Bishops

From GM Patrick Wolff's wonderful book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess":


I was one of the grandmasters who helped Anand prepare for match against Kasparov. One time, Anand and I were analyzing a chess position together, and I was trying to decided whether to move my (white) bishop to b3 or a2.

"You know, I had a position like this once," he said, "and I discovered that it is definitely better to put it on a2."

"Why is that?" I asked.

"When White bishop is on b3, it's easier for Black to see it. On a2, it's farther away, and so he might forget about it later in the game. And that's just what happened later in my game, when I captured his rook with the bishop on a2 he had forgotten about!"

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M-Tel Masters Website With Chinese Version

From Dimitar Naydenov, M-Tel Masters press officer

(Sofia, 27 March, 2008) - The web site of the international super chess tournament M-Tel Masters that will take place 7–18 May in the Bulgarian capital, launches a version in Chinese. In the three previous editions the visitors of www.mtelmasters.com were able to follow the news from Sofia in Bulgarian and English.

"We decided it is obligatory to offer a Chinese version to the chess fans, mostly for Bu Xiangzhi's participation as he is one of the world's fastest progressing players, shared Silvio Danailov, director of M-Tel Masters. – The interest towards chess in China is huge, I hope we will provide full information about our competition to the fans there."

The Chinese web version project was entrusted to a team lead by Spanish GM Javier Moreno Carnero, who is also in charge of the relations with Chinese media.

Walking Through Indian Wells

Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic continued Serbian terror on the tennis courts. Ana, who used to practice in empty swimming pool when she was a teenager, defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4 6-3 to grab the Indian Wells trophy.

Novak Djokovic confirmed Serbian reign at this Masters after beating dangerous Mardy Fish 6-2 5-7 6-3 in the final. Fish, American ranked 98th prior to the tournament, flew on the wings of his fantastic semifinal when he demolished World number one Roger Federer. He was hitting hard but at times inaccurate, thus allowing Djokovic to take the match under control.

Wonderful start for Serbian players on the hard courts. Next Masters comes in a week in Miami.

Anand: Rating is just numbers

In the end, rating is just numbers. If you keep playing in tournaments the numbers go up and down. You can’t try and hold on to them. It is nice to go over 2800 again, but it is more important to win tournaments...

...I think my first game (with black pieces) against Alexei Shirov was good. The funny thing was I saw the rook-sacrifice five minutes before the game. I had finished my preparation but was not completely satisfied so I just checked this variation and then went straight for the game and was able to use it. The white win against Shirov was also good as I was able to guess exactly where he would go in the Sveshnikov.
The other black wins against Peter Leko and Carlsen were also exciting. The game against Leko was a complete turnaround. White was much better, but a few imprecise moves at the time control turned the game completely and my pawns were all very close to the enemy king. Against Carlsen, I was able to find this move (Rook h6). Magnus had somehow missed that and he said that it occurred to him during the game. The position was in black’s favour and some accurate play in the end turned the game in my favour...

...Magnus has had an excellent year and we are only in March. He belongs to the young brigade but has been able to break away. He will be in the top-5 and his rating should be close to 2766 (on April 1, 2008). This, by any yardstick, is just fabulous. For a 17-year-old to achieve that it is really extraordinary. He not only plays amongst the top players but has started winning tournaments. In both Corus and Linares, he showed his tactical skills. In many games he was able to turn the situation around 180 degrees. He keeps his calm in tough situations and strikes back effortlessly. In Corus, he was just unstoppable and in Linares he always came back after a loss much stronger. If you see in Linares, he beat Topalov 2-0...

Read the entire interview with Rakesh Rao (for SportStar)

Serbian Chess Championship 2008

Serbian Championship is taking place on 15-28 March in Mataruska Banja, near Kraljevo. Almost all top Grandmasters, with the exception of Dragan Solak and Mihajlo Stojanovic, are taking participation, forming the tournament of respectable 12th category.


Players (with rating and year of birth):
GM Ivanišević Ivan 2649 1977
GM Miladinović Igor 2604 1974
GM Damljanović Branko 2582 1961
GM Markuš Robert 2575 1983
GM Kovačević Aleksandar 2575 1974
GM Perunović Miloš 2570 1984
GM Sedlak Nikola 2568 1983
GM Vučković Bojan 2556 1980
GM Pikula Dejan 2524 1969
FM Bogosavljević Boban 2492 1988
GM Dražić Siniša 2489 1967
IM Leskur Dejan 2468 1972
IM Pavlović Miloš M 2457 1984
IM Veličković Saša 2401 1951


Official website

Bulgarian Chess Championship 2008

Championship of Bulgaria is taking place on 14-24 March in Plovdiv, at the same hotel that will host European Individual Championship next month. Prize fund for the national competition has been poor for many years, and again some of the best players, like Kiril Georgiev, Alexander Delchev and Boris Chatalbashev, are missing.


Participants:
GM Spasov Vasil 2579
IM Rusev Krasimir 2521
GM Radulski Julian 2511
IM Nikolov Momchil 2500
IM Iotov Valentin 2495
GM Janev Evgeni 2485
IM Vasilev Milen 2470
IM Kozhuharov Spas 2456
GM Petkov Vladimir 2434
FM Milchev Nikolay 2373
Tsvetkov Ilia 2352
FM Arnaudov G Petar 2345
Lilov Valeri 2323
Mladenov Plamen 2288


Valentin Iotov - Ilia Tsvetkov
Round 1
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 d5 4. Nf3 Be7 5. Bg5 h6 6. Bh4 O-O 7. e3 b6 8. Rc1 Bb7 9. Bxf6 Bxf6 10. cxd5 exd5 11. b4 c5 12. bxc5 bxc5 13. dxc5 Nd7 14. c6 Bxc6 15. Nd4 Bb7 16. Be2 Nc5 17. O-O Ne6 18. Nxe6 fxe6 19. Na4 Qe7 20. Nc5 Rac8 21. Nxb7 Qxb7 22. Bg4 Qa6 23. Qd2 Rfd8 24. Rxc8 Rxc8 25. Rb1 Rd8 26. g3 d4 27. exd4 Bxd4 28. Re1 Rd6 29. Qc2 Qb6 30. Bxe6+ Kh8 31. Bb3 Rd8 32. Re6 Qc5 33. Qg6 Qf8 34. Re2 Bc5 35. Bc2 Qg8 36. Re5 Bd4 37. Rh5 Rd7 38. Rf5 Rd8 39. g4 Bb6 40. g5 Rc8 41. Rf3 Rc5 42. h4 Rc8 43. Kh1 Rc4 44. Rf8 Rxh4+ 45. Kg2 1-0

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Nakamura Rant

Beside playing countless number of games against Transwarp on ICC, GM Hikaru Nakamura also became active in writing his own blog. He's announcing that his training regime is back in full power and posts remarks about different chess topics.

So far two of my records have been broken...oh no! The first one I'd like to get to is my blitz record which was broken by Alexander Grischuk (Depressnyak) although I wish I could applaud him on this record, it seems rather unfair for players to make deals amongst themselves and toss games as is what happened yesterday. Sadly, this is not the first time Rauf Mamedov (MLRaka, Generalisimus, etc) has tossed games to Grischuk...

The other record, which I lost this week was the record of youngest American Master. This record was broken by Nicolas Nip, a Chinese kid out in San Francisco. Generally, I do not mind positive reports about junior chess in America; however, I did notice that when looking up Nips tournaments, he gained a lot of points via matches...

I have not really made any remarks about Linares, so I will simply say that Anand is clearly so much better than everyone else when Kramnik is not in a tournament...

Anand Wins Linares

Viswanathan Anand won three games with black in Morelia and quickly drew most of the games in Linares, which was enough for the first place, half point ahead of Magnus Carlsen. Norwegian was always close to the top, but occasional defeats held him on the second place. Still great success for the young star.


Morelia Linares standings:
1. Viswanathan Anand (IND 2799) 8.5; 2. Magnus Carlsen (NOR 2733) 8.0; 3-4. Levon Aronian (ARM 2739) and Veselin Topalov (BUL 2780) 7.5; 5. Teimour Radjabov (AZE 2735) 7.0; 6. Vassily Ivanchuk (UKR 2751) 6.5; 7-8. Alexei Shirov (ESP 2755) and Peter Leko (HUN 2753) 5.5


Tournament website

Karjakin? Nakamura?

Dylan Loeb McClain, NY Times chess columnist, discussed on why Sergey Karjakin and Hikaru Nakamura are not being invited to top chess tournaments, like Corus and the ongoing Morelia Linares.


Dylan says:

Part of the reason is probably that Carlsen is the "sexier" story. Karjakin is from Eastern Europe, the traditional spawning ground for most top players, while Carlsen comes from an area of Western Europe with almost no history of world class players (other than Bent Larsen of Denmark). Being based in Western Europe helps Carlsen as most of the elite tournaments are also there and Western Europe certainly has a better developed media machine, so Carlsen naturally gets more press.

As for Nakamura, I personally wouldn't invite the player to slam my clocks like in coffeehouse chess.

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