Nakamura (and Tata Steel Chess 2011)

Well, here we go, some more glorification for GM Hikaru Nakamura. The last round drama, on paper is absolutely stunning anti climax. Naka drew Wang Hao (surprise....) , Anand draw Nepo in a +1 score for Anand Black's sicilian (my first lost of the Sicilian of the Month...), Carlsen draw Grischuk, Aronian draw Smeets, oh, and is it draw for the rest....? But even with a draw... Nakamura won (his first super) tournament, great and Banzai! It is good to see new (ouch..) face for the tournament,and present now, the USA flagship for chess, though they really still need to invite Kamsky next year!

In group B, was also half boring. Li Chao B pointed full score to Tkachiev for the last Asian pride. Hammer get one of his worst tournament performance by losing again to Fressinet. Then the who join the A club battle, saw some drama (yes), David Navara, who actually belong(ed) to elite press really hard to his competitor, GM Luke McShane, but dunno what happened, after 20. Bb6 Qd7 21. Qa4 Qxa4 22. Nxa4 Bd7 23. Nab2 Nc8 24. Rac1 Rf7 25. Bd8 suddenly the score went to 1/2-1/2 . With this Navara lost to McShane in tie break system, and looks clear it will be the Britton to be presented next year, in A team. But overall McShane is okay also, he had done well against elite in London tournament before. Last note on Group B is Wesley So, who wrapped last round with draw, a spiritful middle tournament with 4+ in a row is probably consolidation prize, for fans and himself. Still there's next year, and if only he really make it to elite, the country, region and continent will once again have more name to cheer. Le Quang Liem finished ahead of So in tie break system, very last note.

Waiit, group C. The last battle for B-ticket, Vocatura vs Illya Nyzhnik (yes, without copy paste) is another lost to awesome-Black-win-in-Sicilian , again. The boy is really almost there!, but 32. Nxd6+ Bxd6? is a draw! 33. Qh5 Nf6 34. Rxf6+ Kxf6 35. Qh6+ Kf5 36. Qh7+ Kf6 37. Qh6+ Kf5 38. Qh7+ Kf6 39. Qh6+ ½-½. It was a Q vs Q+R+R+B draw! Congratulation to Vocatura Daniele, queitly, stealthily, trying to slide Caruana in the future. And the awesome Illya boy is a "pending" star as well.

We hope to see more face, especially younger breed for next year, maybe Jorge Cori (no Latin American presentation this year?), and Richard Rapport to compete officially with Nyzhnik. Also Sjugirov of the Kalmykian is great also. And... bring back Ivanchuck.

Vocatura,Daniele - Nyzhnik, Illya

Turnament tahunan super kuat, Tata Steel Chess (dulu Corus Chess) di kota Wijk Aan Zee Belanda usai dengan kemenangan pecatur US GM Hikaru Nakamura di group B. Si darah Jepang membawa pulang tropi dengan setengah angka lebih baik dari pecatur ber-elo banyakan seperti Anand (juara dunia), Carlsen (ex-no.1 rating), Kramnik (ex-juara) dll. Ronde terakhir cukup seru drawnya, semua draw LOL... Dengan ini era USA dengan Hikaru tampaknya resmi dimulai, Hikaru akan mewakili lagi di turnament kuat hadiah dari memenangkan turnament ini, Bilbao Chess master. Turnament ini adalah bagian dari Grand Slam catur, selain itu adalah Dortmund, Linares, M-Tel dan Pearl Spring di Cina.

Di Group B, pertandingan puncak GM David Navara vs Luke McShane juga berakhir remis, walaupun putih seharusnya menekan cukup kuat ke hitam, tapi Navara, yg konon kabarnya mengalami autisme di masa muda, tak cukup kuat mengalahkan si orang Inggris McShane. Posisi akhir adalah McShane yang akan naik divisi ke grup A taon depan. Wesley So musti puas main lagi di grup B tahun depan, dan pecatur Vietnam Le Quang Liem memperbaiki peringkat dan lebih baik tie breaknya dari saingan Philipin nya.

Di Group C, pecatur 14 tahun (coba bayangkan anak lebay Indonesia usia 14 tahun) yg sudah bergelar GM nyaris naik ke divisi B, blunder di pertandingan kritis melawan pecatur 21 tahun Daniele Vocatura (lihat diagram). Hasilnya si bocah cuma mendapat hasil remis akibat di skak abadi putih dan puas di posisi 2. Vocatura akan join dengan Wesley So (dan mungkin Shirov) di group B tahun depan.

Seusai Tata Chess, masih ada turnament seru di Gibraltar. Ronde terakhir menyaksikan Ivanchuck merebut posisi puncak dari Nigel Short, yang sebelumnya tampil ngetop dengan 5/5. LIVE show di Chessbomb dan web resmi.

Tata Steel Chess, Gibraltar and Oceania Zonal 2011

Tonight round still haven't decide any champions for Tata Steel Chess 2011. Group A saw leading Nakamura achieved another "successful" draw, playing Kramnik. Carlsen give some lesson to Wang Hao with White in Caro Kan game. Grischuk finally score a win playing Smeets... The the group again hanging on its next round 13:

Group A: Round 13 - Sun. Jan. 30st

Ian Nepomniachtchi - Viswanathan Anand
Vladimir Kramnik - Max. Vachier-Lagrave
Wang Hao - Hikaru Nakamura
Alexander Grischuk - Magnus Carlsen
Levon Aronian - Jan Smeets
Alexei Shirov - Erwin l'Ami
Anish Giri - Ruslan Ponomariov

Of all possibility the four players, Naka,Anand,Magni and Levon can win this! With Smeets ready to replace Shirov to provide some hardness to Group B next year.

Talking about Group B, similar conspiracy happened. Wesley So repeated a deja vu, losing the group leading in crucial match to his tailer (similar to last year against Giri), this round to McShane. Bad day for  the Caro Kan, as played by So. David Navara also take advantage and serving himself as main menu for round 13: a game vs McShane for the glory of next year in Group A.

Group B: Round 13 - Sun. Jan. 30th

Jon Ludvig Hammer - Laurent Fressinet
Zahar Efimenko - Gabriel Sargissian
Surya Ganguly - Le Quang Liem
Wesley So - Radek Wojtaszek
David Navara - Luke McShane
Wouter Spoelman - Friso Nijboer
Li Chao - Vlad Tkachiev

No less situation occured in Group C. After 12 round fighting, Vocatura, the leading party of the group, surrendered to Dariusz Swiercz. 14 years old Illya N. fight another epic, defeating van Kempen. So, its easy to select which game to follow from group C tomorrow :
 
Group C: Round 13 - Sun. Jan. 30th

Robin van Kampen - Benjamin Bok
Daniele Vocaturo - Ilya Nyzhnyk
Murtas Kazhgaleyev - Dariusz Swiercz
Jan Willem de Jong - Katherina Lahno
Mark Bluvshtein - Ivan Ivanisevic
Tania Sachdev - Sebastian Siebrecht
Roeland Pruijssers - Mark van der Werf

Conclusion is a total of nine players, will have the opportunity to go home with Holland's delight.
 
Now Gibraltar. The great escape for those who did not invited to Wijk Aan Zee (or refused to go there!). We are not sure if next year Shirov will join in also! But the event looks more colorful. Passing by round saw two Brittons dated a Russian girls with success, that is Adams and Short in fiasco with the Kosintseva sisters!
 
Amazingly, this put mr. Nigel Short in 5/5 result. Another 14 years old GM Richard Rapport stayed as "regular" 14 year by not stayed survive in a game with GM Daniel Fridman, Rapport doing not normally yesterday defeating Spain GM Vallejo Pons! But tonight Game was Vasily Ivanchuck win to his other Vasily, Vasilios Kotronias. Ivanchuck is in 4.5/5 mode. Black is in danger most of time but White blundered give a celebrated Sicilian win for our Surreal Sicilian game collection:
 
Vasilios Kotronias vs Vasily Ivanchuck
 

 
Not very far away, in New Zealand!, the Oceania Zonal started and running, read this blog to see GM Zhao Zongyuan still dominated the region to have a zonal ticket...but to where??  Can find one page result for this event.

Chennai Open and Gibraltar 2011

Apart from the ongoing Tata Chess Steel, there is a massive chess competition on Indian peninsula. Chennai is hosting an annual event that attracted 300+ players, mostly above 2000+ elo as shown in chessresult.com pairing. But up to last phase, round 11 will see a top rank rivalry between foreign aka. non Indian players. The foreigners are Israelite Nabaty Tamir and Alon Greenfeld facing Ukraine GM Alexander Areshchenko and Martyn Kravtsiv, all four with 8.5 points. Closely behind now is China man GM Ni Hua and three locals Sundararajan Kidambi,  Pradeep Kumar and GM Adhiban B. See Chess result and report here.

UPDATE, Martyn Kravtsiv beat Alon Greenfeld in the last round and clinched the title. He was solely on that because the other pairing,Nabaty Tamir vs Alexander Areschchenko, ended up a draw. Last standing top 5:
1. GM Kravtsiv Martyn UKR 2566 9.5
2. IM Nabaty Tamir ISR 2565 9.0
3. GM Ni Hua CHN 2645 9.0
4. GM Areshchenko Alexander UKR 2671 9.0
5. GM Adhiban B IND 2530 IOC 9.0



On Gibraltar, round one started yesterday with 99% decisive result. Ivanchuck, Onischuk, Nisipeanu, Adams, Short, Caruana and Kiril Georgiev are playing. This surely will going to be a nice show for the end of Tata Chess Steel on next week. Interesting game is in Georgiev Kiril vs Natalia Zhukova games, where a time trouble seem take effect in the very last setup. Official site :  http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com/
Top player playing http://www.gibraltarchesscongress.com/gib2011/whois.html



Tata Steel Chess still give space for leader in almost all three groups till round 9. Wesley So lost moments to Li Chao and Liem gained more point defeating Fressinet.On Group A Grischuk and Shirov on last places, Anand, Kramnik , Aronian and Maxime LV still undefeated.

Tata Steel Chess 2011 So is leading

Even the B group news is good enough to write in for Tata Steel Chess. Wesley So is leading again, in his specialist tournament, the Corus Tata Steel Chess 2011. Tonight a win against very serious opponent GM David Navarra put him on top of group B, again. Must be thanks to is GM Le Quang Liem who manage to give some bitter to previously sweet sole leader GM Luke McShane. Wesley So track record in previous Wijk Aan Zee tournament are :
2009 - Winner in Group C
2010 - 5th in Group B

In Group A, Hikaru Nakamura on lead, but admitted that he will only plays big dogs starting now...in his twitter.

In Group C, young boy Nyzhnyk is going to punish all chess bloggers by winning this and make us remember permanently how to spell his name correctly.

The Muggles of the Chess Wizardy World

The Muggles of the Chess Wizardy World - Blitz story on  Asian descendents chess player in the western hemisphere.

The Muggles is a person born into a non magical family - JK Rowling


This is a weird posting ,but I just want to highlight a new chess phenomenon nowdays. There are a few sampling of success chess player who is a half breed, from a Western and Asian parent. Mostly they are a normal student, seeking for extra activity in the school, end up success and then converted into serious chessplayer. I like to present a phenomenon of Far East Asian parent or mixed parents, that choose chess as their children extra curriculum. Thus I suspect the Far East mummy loves scholastic competition as a reason.

There will plenty of examples, especially if Asians certainly also means Indian, Vietnamese and others. What I like to pointed out here is not story about grew up Indian or Filipino chess player seeking fortune in the West. But this is about phenomenol Asian mixed race young baby that suddenly turn to be a chess GM. If I followed report from USCF website on Scholastic chess, Asian surname (especially Chinese) is coming up too frequently now, especially for girls.



Here are few examples, very familiar names.

Hikaru Nakamura, born to a Japanese father and an American mother. Grew up in Japan and at the age of two, he moved with his parents to the United States. He began playing chess prior to the age of five and was coached by his Sri Lankan stepfather, FIDE Master and chess author Sunil Weeramantry. Now a succesfull chess player with die hard fans following his Twitter!

Ray Robson
Early life Robson was born in Guam to Gary Robson, a professor at the college of education (applied linguistics) at St. Petersburg College, and Yee-chen, a kindergarten teacher at Country Day School.[2] They later moved to Largo, Florida, where they live today. An only child, he learnt chess from his father at age three. Later become youngest GM in USA. I can't confirm what "asian" is Yee-chen, but geographically Guam is not really Western. But his breakthru in chess is outstanding here, and a big proud to Guam.

Moving to European soil, we found:

David Howell
David Wei Liang Howell (born November 14, 1990[1]) is an English chess player. He is the youngest chess Grandmaster in the United Kingdom. Howell was born in Eastbourne to Angeline (originally from Singapore) and Martin Howell. He has a younger sister, Julia, and lives with his family in Seaford, East Sussex.

Anish Giri (born June 28, 1994) is the son of a Nepalese father (Sanjay Giri), and a Russian mother (Olga Giri). Anish was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 28 June 1994. In 2002, he moved to Japan with his parents. Since then he had been residing in Japan, and visiting St. Petersburg regularly. Since February 2008, Anish and his family have been living in the Netherlands, where his father is working in a research and consulting foundation (Deltares). He also spoke Japanese and Dutch, as the later is his federation now.

Another "Western" continents also provide sampling for this "trend".

Zhao Zong-Yuan (born June 26, 1986, Beijing) is an Australian chess Grandmaster. He is the current Australian Chess Champion and number one ranked chess player in Australia. Early lifeZhao grew up in Coffs Harbour, Australia, a pharmacy graduate from the University of Sydney. Zhao is probably 100% Chinese, judging from his name.

George Xie (born October 20, 1985) is an Australian chess player and 2009 and 2011 Joint Australian Open Chess Champion. He became an International Master in 2006[2] is ranked 3rd in Australia. He was a board 4 member of the Australian national team at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad.

New Zealand - And if you haven't seen this website, seems like this chess tournament done in a Chinatown.

to be continue....

Tata Steel Chess 2011

Formerly called Corus Chess it is now renamed as Tata Steel Chess. Happening yearly in Wijk Aan Zee, I love this tournament because of its Division A,B, and C feeling. This year the A-team consisted many of "regular members", with only Anish Giri being handed the membership card. And he might be disliked to be there too! Hikaru Nakamura is standing high at current with 2.5/3, beating his twitter nemesis Grischuk like a baby and win the tactic assault on Shirov.

On Division B, David Navarra, ex-A team, should unleashed some frenzied according to his reputation. But it is Luke McShane that to shame to be there with a 3/3 performance so far. This group is usually a fight of young master.GM Wesley So still looking to break his egg but South East Asian-ers Le Quang Liem suffered a tragic end to Spoelman, losing his winning game.

And group C. After Judith gone, this must be the favorite group to audiences, at least for Photographer Fred Lucas! Lahno and Sachdev won her 3rd round. Well, to be success in this group, preparation to overcome your opponent charm is main concern here.

Australian Open Chess 2011

Firstable it is a hard time for Aussie staying in Brisbane QLD because of the notorious flood on their riverside area. I hope there will be encouragements for those those affected. Moving south, there was Australian Open Chess Championships 2011 happening in Cammeray NSW. This year edition finished with three players on tie. GM Zhao Zongyuan , GM George Xie Wendi and Moulthun Ly altogether finished at 8.5/11. The chess result page give the number 1 spot for GM Zhao Zongyuan, but I read on Shaun's blog it is George Xie to win the tie break (?). Official site.

Compared to last year, this year edition looks a bit less strong, only Zhao Zongyuan holding a GM. But it is also hard for him to pace a smooth way to the top. He was lost (only) ot FM Ikeda Junta, in a tight Sicilian Kan game below. White is losing on time (as noted in PGN file), in maybe a very interesting unbalance late middle game:

[Event "Australian Open"]
[Site "NSLCC, Cammeray, NSW"]
[Date "2011.01.06"]
[Round "5.2"]
[White "Zhao, Zong Yuan"]
[Black "Ikeda, Junta"]
[Result "0-1"]
[WhiteElo "2586"]
[BlackElo "2262"]
[ECO "B43"]
[EventDate "2011.01.02"]
[PlyCount "77"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Bd3 Nf6 7.O-O Bc5 8.Nb3 Be7 9.a4 O-O 10.a5 d6 11.Be3 Nbd7 12.f4 g6 13.Qe2 Re8 14.Na4 Bf8 15.c4 Nh5 16.Nb6 Nxb6 17.Bxb6 Qe7 18.e5 Bh6 19.g3 f6 20.exd6 Qxd6 21.Rad1 Qe7 22.Be4 Ng7 23.Nc5 Rb8 24.b4 g5 25.Rd3 Kh8 26.Kh1 Qf7 27.fxg5 Bxg5 28.Bg2 e5 29.Ne4 Bf5 30.Nxg5 fxg5 31.Rd5 Qe7 32.Bc5 Qe6 33.Rd6 Qc8 34.Rf6 Qd7 35.Bd5 Bg6 36.Qe3 Nh5 37.Rd6 Qg4 38.Qf3 Qh3 0-1

White lost on time while playing, otherwise it probaly went on 39.Qg2 Nxg3+ 40.Kg1 Qxg2+ 41.Kxg2 Nxf1 42.Kxf1 , with unbalance endgame in slightly favor to Black.
 

Reggio Emilia and Hasting 2011

Two classical events started the year 2011. In Italy, the Reggio Emilia started with GM Alexander Morozevich playing. He was not much going the remember 2010 for its less chess achievements, losing about 80 elo rating. His present in Reggio is await by fans. Come together were Ivanchuck, Short, Caruana, Gashimov, and other to complete a ten players tournament. Gashimov won this with a tie break on Vallejo Ponds.

In round six, Movsessian down Short in a sort Sicilian games. Short (white) playing brutally tried to open the center, but as in most Sicilian, black is always ready for a blunder.

Movsesian - Short, Reggio Emilia 2011

In Hasting, UK, the traditional Hasting Open also happening. This historical event mostly celebrated by local players. David Howell shows great deal in the beginning phase of game but Indian Sengupta won this, ahead of favorite French's Edouard Romain. For Indonesian readers, the interesting story is a report by event official FM Steve Giddin on Chkartina Gerhana (2014). Can be read on Chessbase article :

Eames,Robert - Chkartina, Gerhana, Hasting 2011