Tal Memorial Final-Blitz Begin

One of the super strong tournament this year, the Tal Memorial 2009, won by Vladimir Kramnik. This is the second prestigious title won by Big Vlad. The other is being nos 1 in Dortmund Sparkassen this year. Also by gaining this title, chess fans is once again convinced that Kramnik still remains a powerful force in elite chess.

Other news is Magnus Carlsen finished his last two games with a draw, against Ponomariov and Leko. Both games swim in the sharp Sicilian. In Ponomariov, Carlsen is white and managed break the e pawn and launced a deadly attack by sacrified a Knight. In Black, Carlsen put White into hard Rook endgame and finally Leko can't answered his endgame problem. This two won made Carlsen to be no.1 in live rating.

Photo : Kosteniuk arriving in Moscow for Blitz event.

Last round other news is Aronian once again defeated Anand and Ponomariov down Morozevich. Final standing here :
1. Kramnik 6
2-3. Ivanchuk, Carlsen 5½
4-5. Aronian, Anand 5
6. Gelfand 4½
7. Ponomariov 4
8. Svidler 3½
9-10. Leko, Morozevich 3

Meanwhile all the participants shall continued to World Blitz followed by many strong players. Full list of Blitz participants :
1. Viswanathan Anand
2. Levon Aronian
3. Magnus Carlsen
4. Vladimir Kramnik
5. Peter Leko
6. Boris Gelfand
7. Vassily Ivanchuk (world blitz champion 2007)
8. Alexander Morozevich
9. Peter Svidler
10. Ruslan Ponomariov

(qualificants from Aeroflot blitz)
11. Sergey Karjakin
12. Vugar Gashimov
13. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
14. Evgeny Bareev
15. Vladislav Tkachiev
16. Arkadij Naiditsch (replacing Zhou Jianchao)

(invited by organizers)
17. Anatoly Karpov
18. Alexander Grischuk - world blitz champion for 2006
19. Alexandra Kosteniuk - present world women chess champion
20. Leinier Dominguez Perez - present world blitz champion

This whole Tal event is a great exercise for chess fans. Live games are provided in many website with GMs hanging around to comment. See chessbomb (=chessdom), and chessvibe to follow live games.

After this, Morozevich, Ivanchuck, Gelfand , Ponomariov and Svidler will fly to Siberia playing the World Cup round 1.

Chessgames link to Blitz event here, where you can followed the discussion (=debate) that equally entertaining.