Chess in World Cup 2010 Season

With World Cup 2010 hailed in South Africa, will it enough time for chess watching ? Sure it is, in fact the combo do nicely, sadly, the chess live perfectly fill for waiting time between World Cup match. On last night, North Korea finished the 90 minute with a face look like a person who just won the battle, though they are 1-2 against Brazil. Portugal score a 'spectacles' against Ivory Coast and New Zealand is perfect example chess player to never resign (early), having equalized against Slovekia 1-1. Tonight will be Spain versus Swiss, Honduras vs Chili and S.Africa looking for first win over Uruguay.

Meanwhile in the waiting time here recommended live chess :

45th Capablanca
Ivanchuk and Short are the only guy who has a win result. Ivanchuk now won three times and twice draw, he is on top with 4 point after 5 rounds. The event is double round robin of 6 players.

Dutch Championship
Funny game between Benjamin Bok - van Wely, Bok try a 13 repetition fold draw. A bit stubborn, van Wely reportedly not happy with this approach by the young player. See Chessvibes.

4th Bazna King
Magnus Carlsen play, Nisipeanu and Gelfand temporary on top standing. Radjabov and Wang Yue need to pay their minus point and Ponomariov still looking for decisive result. Chessdom annotated live games.

1st Danzhaou Tournament
Is in Danzhou City, Hainan province, China. All elites from China guys minus Wang Yue. Wang Hao is top seed , Hou Yifan still enjoying jump in all male species tournament.

Ruy Lopez Festival
And a rapid chess, nice to watch live, in Spain. Unique combo of 8 players, from 2700 elite Malakhov, Madame Pia Cramling, Peruvian Deysi Cori, Caruana and so on.

11th ASEAN Age Group - Dita Karenza and friends result

This year ASEAN+ Age group chess is ongoing. The Standard chess section already finished and I guess this are the most prestigious section to be mentioned. The ASEAN team included Indonesia, Phillipine, Vietnam, Singapore,Thailand and Malaysia, while a 'plus' indicated players from Australia, Iran and Russia also join in. Phillipine is the host and score many boys/girls on gold medal, Vietnam also dominated and Indonesia come third, all girl rulez!

Standard CHess 11th ASEAN+ Age group 2010

Open 20 - FM Ton That Nhu Tung (VIE)
Open 16 - Dang Hoang Son (VIE)
Open 14 - Literatus Austin Jacob (PHI)
Open 12 - Bersamina Paulo (PHI)
Open 8 - Nguyen Anh Khoi (VIE)
Open 10 - CM Tabatabei M Amin (IRI)
Open 50 - Ibanez Rudy (PHI)


Girls 20:
1st WIM Pham Bich Ngoc (VIE)
2nd WIM Hoang Thi Nhu Y (VIE)

3rd WIM Nguyen Thi Mai Hung (VIE)
4th WFM Medina Warda Aulia (INA)
6th WFM Liu Yang (SN)
10th WFM Dewi Aa Citra (INA)

Girls 16 - WCM Sihite Chelsie Monica (INA)
Girls 14 - Do Hoang Minh Tho (VIE)
Girls 12 - WCM Anastasia Patrics (INA)
Girls 10 - WCM Karenza Dita (INA)
Girls 8 - WCM Le Tran Phuong Uyen (VIE)

Chess result here.

The event continue to Rapid and Blitz section.

Mumbai Mayor Cup 2010

Quick update on this event: The 3rd Mumbai Mayor Cup finished minutes ago. GM Dmitry Kokarev from Russia has the highest point with 9 out of 11 rounds. Six players followed behind with 8,5 points including names like Dreev etc. Then more than dozen of players  with 8 which is included a sole Indonesian IM Tirto. Tirto finished the event with 'only' three loses to all GM opponents, but he managed to get down the last GM, Deepan Chakkravarthy. The game is quite bizzare with Deepan taking black side of Sicilian started a provocative attack involving some sacrifice. At some point in fact Tirto in significant winning position. Here the game :

See chess-resulst for final standing.

Wang Hao and Ju Wenjun 2010 Chess Champions

Wang Hao come out the best tie breaker to get the Chinese Chess Champ title. He shared same point with Bu Xiangzhi and Zhou Jianchao with 7.5 points. 12 participant, 11 men and Hou Yifan played in Men section of the championship, in Xinghua.

In Women section, Ju Wenjun continue to be a bright promising 2010 generation chess line up. She was a point clear in the championship for the title. Second place is Huang Qian and third Tan Zhongyi. Week in Chess report here.

Here Ju Wenjun's game for Sicilian of the week. See the king traveling to the other end without worry since there is nothing to stop her.

Other LIVE games to watch this weekend :
Karpov Poikovsky, featuring many interesting line up, Sokolov, Onischuk, Karjakin, etc.
Mitropa Cup, well.. just to see Caruana hanging around. Can be watched at Chessbomb.
Leon Rapid KO, just begin and going to finished...Gelfand beat Vallejo
3rd Mumbay, Dreev extended his staying in India.
and French Team Championship with Svidler and friends.

Kamsky US Champ and late May Chess

Bravo to Gata Kamsky for his 2nd US title and he got it with a draw. The event play several round before pick up top four guys and called it quad final. Shulman defeated Nakamura and Kamsky take Onischuk. Then Shulman and Kamsky play a draw game and go to armageddon mode. Somehow you can bid for your time and Kamsky win the bid with 25 minutes against a default white side of 60 minutes, for this Kamsky got black and draw odd. Very blurry but believe me this is the shortest sentence I can put in and hope everyone understand. So that is why with a draw he can kiss the 2010 US cup. See more here.

Meanwhile the other competitor country (in business, a bit in chess) China also started the party and play their championship. Yesterday Hou Yifan give the most entertainment in live chess (happening afternoon in Singapore, best time) defeating Zhou Weiqi in a miniature of anti 1.d4. I steal the PGN from Mig's Chessninja, hope he doesn't angry, but this is really nice game. The LIVE page for China CC here and TWIC.

Then there are also enough LIVE chess for this week's loooong weekend, it is Vesak (Waisak) Day tomorrow so Happy Vesak day for my fellow Buddhist friends.

4th ACP Rapid, last year winner was Boris Gelfand remember? LIVE
18th Sigeman, Anish Giri try to tricks other chess player with his magic. LIVE.
83rd St Petersburg Championship, all Russian vodka party.
STG Matches Warsaw, featuring duels : LIVE
-Malakhov vs Bartel
-Rajlich, Iweta vs Sznapik, Aleksander
-Socko, Monika vs Macieja, Bartlomiej
III Copa Roggio A Asuncion, somewhere in Paraguay, LIVE
2nd Open Bhubaneswar, Dreev and Turov enjoy some Indian foods, LIVE
and... Battle of Grandmaster in Phillipine, Wesley So shows some talents

Astrakhan Final and WC2011 Preview

Too early for 2011 World Championship Candidate match but finally we got more detail into it. There are eight players and so far 7 already confirmed. After last night Astrakhan Grand Prix, Teimour Radjabov confirmed his participation by drawing the last game with Wang Yue. Radja come to this Grand Prix with 99% clear swept, he was supported by the other two blood brothers, Gashimov and Mamedyarov. Now the conspiracy theory will sounds like this, Radja need to play solidly, drew to everybody then the two brothers take care of the rest. In a correct moment they beat each other to make sure one of them go in the WCC. Things not so easy as until last couple of moves between Wang 'Panda' Yue and Radjabov thing still not ok for Radja, because if Wang won he will be go in instead. But in the end the game is draw and Radja go in as shared 2nd and overall 2nd spot in FIDE Grandprix. Enough with the paranoia now and congratulation for Radja for his ticket.

Wait.. are we suppose to talk about the winner of Astrakhan? oh yeah, the name is Pavel Eljanov of Ukraine. This is maybe his greatest resume,the last feature was winning the 2009 Bosna. Ivanchuck started wrongly here, he even resign to Akopian in round 12 where the computer analysis only show 0.456565656565.

Back to Candidate match for WCC, the pairing is something like this :

Veselin Topalov vs Gata Kamsky
Magnus Carlsen vs Teimour Radjabov
Vladimir Kramnik vs NOMINEE
Levon Aronian vs Boris Gelfand

The Nominee should be between Mamedyarov or Gashimov, but I like it to be Mamedyarov just for the sake to see the complete Top 5 FIDE rating present there. This should be really fun somewhere next year.

See Chessvibes

Sicilian Games of week - May 2010

Still a busy week to keep up and watch what happened in chess. Apart from the (many draws) Astrakhan (now about four players at 4.5/8) there are 2010 Commonwealth CC in Parsvnath and two junior theme event, VIII World's Youth Stars 2001 and Max Euwe Match 2010. And we still need to count the US Championship which produced great games so far. So here some games to be preview this week, as usually I only interested in Sicilian wins, and miniature... that's enough for chess. No comments on each games (as I am actually never good in commenting games :) ).

In Junior theme Max Euwe memorial, the juniors are to be teached a lesson by senior GM. Most notably is Yasser Seirawan, according to some source staying in Holland now, is playing. The juniors are all Holland's latest product, including Giri, van Kempen, Benjamin Bok etc. The game selected is senior Lubomir Ftacnik teach lesson to Robin van Kempen, twice in Sicilian defence :

In another junior event, the Somov Memorial also called World's Youth Youngstar , Armenian Samvel Ter-Sahakyan give some show in 23 moves against 1.d4 . The tournament won by Ukrainian Yaroslav Zherebukh.

In US Championship, senior Shabalov also give thrilling game in Sicilian and defeated Melikset Khachiyan.

And last is the 2010 Commonwealth Chess Championship, won by Pavel Maletin of Russian, but Commonwealth member RR Laxman (India) saves some face by tied up first place. Last year winner (but in different format) is Singaporean IM Enrique Paciencia, unfortunately the Indian food maybe too much for this fellow Phillipino master and he finished quite in the middle.