Corus 2010 Epilog - Gibraltar and Moscow Open

Group A - 1st Magnus Carlsen. His second Corus title, as he was winner in 2008 edition (shared with Aronian). His fourth title in last three months after his Nanjing, Tal Blitz and London title. So far Kramnik is the only one manage to defeated him. His live rating is now 2812,9 ,still number 1.


2nd Vladimir Kramnik and Alexey Shirov. Shirov is a pleasant surprise and Kramnik only catch in middle end of the tournament. Kramnik being then slowed down by Anand. Kramnik live rating is also up to 2789,9 and Shirov get 10 points more, at 2733,9.


3rd Viswanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura. Anand starts slow with nine draws but defeated Nakamura and then Kramnik. He is losing some point here and now with 2788,7. Meanwhile a word for Nakamura is "not bad at all" with him stayed no.5 behind all top guns and Shirov. He get most points and now at 2734,8 (+26,8 ).


Overall the group A gives much pleasure to chess fan with Short, Tiviakov, and others give a fighting chess. Shirov vs Dominguez is the last OMG of the tournament, see diagram below where Shirov agree to draw but analysis said he was actually winning. White to moves.

At this point, a draw was agreed, but in fact, Black's last move was a fatal blunder. White can now win immediately with 31.b4! Qc7 (31...Qb6 is the same; Black must keep control of d8, to prevent 32.Rd8+) 32.Qa8+ Bf8 33.Rf1 and Black cannot defend f8! (from chessbase)



Group B - 1st Anish Giri. No objection to Giri as he is also play a chess in the way the fans wanted to see. He was only lost to Anna Muzychuck and can counted as lost to Wesley So, after the later dully gives a shocking blunder of the tournament. A big welcome to group A and see how he can survive the upper class.

Group C - 1st Li Chao. The group C is kind of battleground with only 18 draws out of 91 games (13 round x 7 games). That is 20% only! Li Chao is the only dominated player in Corus with 10 point and closest rival at 8.5 point by Abhijet Gupta. Ray Robson who started great finished 7.5 point only. Still not a bad result.

Of all Group A , B and C there are 273 games. The Sicilian being played 80 times mean 29.3 %. The result is 22 White wins, 40 draw and 18 Black wins. Still a balance statistic.

see also
http://players.chessdom.com/magnus-carlsen/carlsen-wins-corus-chess

Meanwhile the next big menu are Gibraltar and Moscow Open with many strong GMs participating.