http://gameknot.com/ World chess news digest by GameKnot.com, where you can play chess online! en-us Levon Aronian shrugged off an early loss to the chess world No1 Magnus Carlsen and a late defeat by a tail-ender to win first prize at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee this week with impressive authority. The Armenian world No2's 9/13 total was a point clear of Carlsen, Teimour Radjabov, and the Italian 19-year-old Fabiano Caruana who shared second prize. The elite chess events which make up the chess equivalent of a Grand Slam include Moscow's Tal Memorial and the London Classic as well as Wijk. Aronian was subdued in London, but he tied first with Carlsen in Moscow and his overall rating is closing in on the Norwegian's. Aged 29 and at the height of his powers, Aronian would have been a good bet to capture ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18527;ext=1 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:24:59 GMT Armenian GM Levon Aronian has added another chapter to a chess career that has been both illustrious and somewhat under the radar, capturing the 74th Tata Steel Grandmaster “A” Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, Sunday by a full point over Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Azerbaijan’s Teimour Radjabov. Despite a loss to Carlsen during the Category 21 event, Aronian won going away, notching a quick last-round draw to finish at a very impressive 9-4. The genial 29-year-old Aronian, ranked second in the world behind Carlsen, led his small country to gold in the 2006 and 2008 Chess Olympiads and to a World Team Chess title last year. He also has racked up a slew of firsts in elite chess events over ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18513;ext=1 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:05:35 GMT Chess has always been a game in which votaries prefer to play rather than watch. Instead, of a stadium in which there are just a few players on the field and hundreds or more in the stands, chess usually found the field full and the stands reasonably empty. Nor could chess players get anywhere with persuading television producers to follow their contests. Now, however, with the Internet, the play and public attention has greatly expanded in a way that chess organizers have always hoped. At any particular time, there is a major world chess event going on. Chess is not seasonal like sports; so, anytime fans all over the world can tune in on the live tournaments, watch videos, and look at the positions - and as ever ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18509;ext=1 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:09:24 GMT Chess has been called the “gymnasium of the mind,” but sometimes it is a crucible of the soul. Its vicissitudes lend both elation and dismay but rarely boredom. Chess players think they know what’s around the corner, but their reliable nemesis — the opponent — has different ideas. A good example is a game from the 2011 Tal Memorial chess tournament in Moscow. The winner — Viswanathan Anand, who annotated the game for New in Chess magazine — was playing Levon Aronian. The encounter had the typical abundance of twists and turns. On move nine, Aronian made a play that he later said he was “unhappy with,” Anand wrote. At move 15, a situation developed that was “not entirely clear.” Three moves later ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18510;ext=1 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:12:51 GMT Is it possible to be No. 2 in the world and be overlooked? In some respects, that is the situation facing Levon Aronian, 29. Magnus Carlsen, 21, who is No. 1, has been the boy wonder of the game of chess since he became a grandmaster at age 13. Viswanathan Anand, 42, who has dropped to No. 4 after recent poor results, has been the world chess champion since 2007. His predecessor, Vladimir Kramnik, 36, now ranked No. 3, is known as the man who dethroned Garry Kasparov as chess champion. Rising stars like Fabiano Caruana, 19, and Anish Giri, 17, are considered future challengers to Carlsen. Yet Aronian is the reigning world blitz chess champion and was the world rapid chess champion in 2009. He has won or tied for ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18507;ext=1 Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:57:19 GMT When the world No1 Magnus Carlsen beat the No2 Levon Aronian in an early round at Wijk aan Zee last week, it seemed that the 21-year-old Norwegian would continue his smooth advance towards Garry Kasparov's all-time peak chess rating. Aronian, 29, had a different script. The Armenian caught up Carlsen, who was bogged down by draws, then took the lead in Tuesday's ninth round, where the favourite crashed with the white pieces to Sergey Karjakin. It was a huge psychological blow and the next day Carlsen, whose trademark is to operate with small edges in long chess games, halved out in a mere 21 moves while Aronian won again to go 1.5 points up on Carlsen with only three rounds left. But there was another ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18498;ext=1 Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:46:19 GMT Having spent the bulk of my competitive playing chess career somewhere in the middle of the wall chart, I am firmly convinced that some of the highest drama at a chess tournament can be found on some of the lowest boards. The top seeds and top scorers, isolated from the chess masses in their special rooms and roped-off areas, may be producing a higher-quality product, full of deep subtleties and quiet brilliance. But the battles are just as intense, the elation just as high and the heartbreaks just as bitter out where the lower-seeded masses are huddled. And in many cases, the most dramatic games can be found far from the top boards. Case in point - the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament, which wraps up this weekend in ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18490;ext=1 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:16:34 GMT At the beginning of each year, the seaside resort town Wijk aan Zee in The Netherlands holds a chess tournament with many super grandmasters. Unlike most top-level chess events, this one features three grandmaster groups, so called A, B and C. The A group, which is the strongest of the three, features most of the world's best chess players, and this year is no exception. The reigning champion is St. Louis' own Hikaru Nakamura who had his breakout tournament last year. The event, named Tata Steel after the sponsor of the event, is a 14-player round robin, which gives each of the chess players 13 games in all. The last time Hikaru Nakamura (left) played reigning U.S. Chess Champion Gata Kamsky was ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18476;ext=1 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:15:09 GMT It was not surprising to see the world's top two rated chess players, Magnus Carlsen of Norway and Levon Aronian of Armenia, sharing a lead at the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament at the Dutch coastal town of Wijk aan Zee. They amassed a 5.5-2.5 score and with five rounds to go, we can expect a dramatic finish. But it was one single move that drew the attention away from the world's finest chess players. Since it created so many holes in white's position, the move could only have been invented by a chipmunk. Six moves into the game Hikaru Nakamura-David Navara, the top-rated American chess grandmaster dented his position with a strange pawn move. He didn't create a crater, but the gap was big enough for ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18472;ext=1 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:18:37 GMT The findings of a new study about mathematics may explain why there are so few women among the chess elite. It concluded that cultural factors, not biological ones, are the reasons why boys outperform girls in math. The study, by Jonathan M. Kane and Janet E. Mertz, both professors in the University of Wisconsin system, was published in the January issue of the journal Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Kane and Mertz wanted to see if they could identify why there are performance gaps between men and women in mathematics. They examined student assessment scores from 86 countries and found that although boys always outperformed girls, the gap was narrower in some countries. That suggested that ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18462;ext=1 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:24:41 GMT Hikaru Nakamura is the whirling dervish of the chessboard — whose pieces seem to assail his opponents from all directions. Playing for fun is his credo. Victories against top chess players are frequent for him — including a recent one against reigning world chess champion Viswanathan Anand. Nakamura’s fondness for double-edged moves has prompted Garry Kasparov, his recent mentor, to urge him to play more solidly. But taming Nakamura is “like tethering a wild stallion,” according to columnists Harold Dondis and Patrick Wolff of The Boston Globe. In a recent chess tournament in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Nakamura jumped off to an early lead. With three rounds to go, he was two points ahead of a field that included ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18459;ext=1 Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:25:33 GMT Matthew Sadler is the only UK chess grandmaster competing at Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, which passes halfway this weekend and attracts more than 7,000 viewers daily to its live games on the internet. The 37-year-old, originally from Kent but now a Dutch resident, is top seed in the C group, where he currently stands on 3/5 after a slow start. Sadler was ranked in the world top 30 and had the current world chess champion, Vishy Anand, close to defeat at Tilburg in 1998 just before he suddenly abandoned chess for an IT career. His impressive 2011 comeback when he won first prizes at Barcelona and Oslo occurred during his normal work holidays. In an interview for ChessVibes just before Wijk, Sadler explained that ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18456;ext=1 Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:03:02 GMT A fine technical victory with white over Gata Kamsky of the U.S. in fourth-round action brought Armenia’s Levon Aronian back on top of the standings in Grandmaster Group A of the 74th annual Tata Steel Chess Tournament at Wijk-aan-Zee Tuesday (see picture). The world’s second highest ranked chess player was level with Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, who headed the field as the sole leader at the outset of the round but had to settle for a draw with black in a hard-fought Berlin Wall game against Fabiano Caruana of Italy (see picture). Referring to his defeat at Carlsen’s hands the day before, Aronian expressed his joy at finding himself “on the other side today. This time it was me who was pressing, and ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18445;ext=1 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:18:33 GMT The most romantic of chess openings doesn’t get many dates these days. A favorite of 19th-century masters, including Paul Morphy and Johannes Zukertort, and a powerful — if occasional — weapon in the arsenal of chess gunslingers such as David Bronstein and Boris Spassky, the King’s Gambit is a rarity on the modern tournament circuit. Though never refuted, the gambit opens up White to a dangerous attack, and a number of defensive ideas have been found for Black to return the sacrificed pawn and set up a reasonable defense. Still, there are a few top chess players willing to run the risk, if only for the sake of ensuring a dynamic, unbalanced struggle. American GM Hikaru Nakamura used the King’s Gambit to ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18438;ext=1 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:05:16 GMT It is not surprising that California is a center of chess in the United States. But in the last couple of years, there has been a burst of activity there, with a large number of international chess tournaments that have given players a chance to qualify for grandmaster and international master titles. Two groups are behind those chess events. One is Metropolitan Chess, which is based in Los Angeles and is run by Amanov Zhanibek, Ankit Gupta, Konstantin Kavutskiy and Alejandro Ruiz Jr. Metropolitan has held 13 invitational chess tournaments, as well as a major international tournament last August. Nine chess players have earned norms toward titles at Metropolitan competitions, according to ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18430;ext=1 Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:35:35 GMT Playing conditions are important in baseball, football and basketball. In chess, how can they matter? It would seem that a decent chess board and pieces are all you need. Yet concentration can be affected if the chair is uncomfortable, the chess pieces are poorly designed, the lighting is inadequate or the environment is noisy. When he played IBM’s Deep Blue in 1996, Garry Kasparov made the following pre-match demands, according to computer expert Monty Newborn: “The board must be perfectly flat and produce no glare. Each square must measure 2.25 inches on a side and be colored brown and cream. The pieces must be wooden, seamless, glareless, well-weighted and also colored brown and ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18415;ext=1 Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:35:49 GMT Anish Giri, just 17 years old from the Netherlands, scored a historic result last week when he won the elite chess tournament at Reggio Emilia, Italy, to boost his credentials as a future world title contender. Only current world No 1 Magnus Carlsen at Wijk 2008 has won a top contest at a younger age. Giri's victory looked most unlikely when he was last after four of the ten rounds while the favourites, Russia's Alex Morozevich and America's Hikaru Nakamura, vied for the lead. But Moro suffered two late defeats while Naka crashed and lost his final three games. The Italian chess champion Fabiano Caruana, 19, was joint second and he and Giri are now the highest ranked teenagers on the planet. Norway's Carlsen, ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18413;ext=1 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:59:33 GMT It is 2012, and everyone has a resolution or two. I recommend playing more chess! Improving your chess game is a great resolution because it is beneficial for your mind, and it can be a lot of fun as well. Here are a few steps to help you along your path to chess success in 2012: 1. Play, play, play! The best way to improve your game is to play chess more often. You can play friends, relatives, online, or at the chess club! The Chess Club and Scholastic Center has a tournament for beginners and unrated players once a month, usually the last Sunday. There also are a number of great classes at the club each week including adult beginner classes on Tuesdays, classes for kids on Sundays and ladies' beginner classes on ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18405;ext=1 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:05:48 GMT In the final instalment of Ronan Bennett and Daniel King's chess masterclass, can you work out how Black extricates himself from this hopeless-looking position? RB: Some years ago I suggested that the Guardian approach Nigel Short, who had just parted company with the Sunday Telegraph. The Guardian, I pointed out, was the only national broadsheet without a daily chess column. Short started to write in G2, not daily, but, with Leonard Barden and a new column from Stephen Moss, chess started to appear three times a week instead of just once. After the Short and Moss contributions finished, I wrote to the then-new editor of G2 to suggest a different and – as far as I am aware – unique kind of chess column ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18397;ext=1 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:58:26 GMT The holiday season is always a busy one in the chess world. This year, two chess tournaments stood out by using new rules to make the competitions more exciting. The more unusual of the two ideas was incorporated into the Donestia-San Sebastian Chess Festival in Spain, where José Raúl Capablanca, a Cuban who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927, earned his first big international triumph 100 years ago. The chess festival, which ended on Thursday, held elimination matches in which the competitors played two simultaneous games against one another. If a match ended in a tie because each player won a game or both were drawn, it was followed by a playoff of two simultaneous rapid games and ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18386;ext=1 Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:10:51 GMT One of my favorite chess quotes is the Indian proverb “Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.” Each great player of the game thrives according to his predilections. Bobby Fischer, more than anyone of his time, was obsessed with certainty. He combed libraries, documents and books to uncover the hidden truths of his beloved game, in addition to crunching more hours of original analysis than anyone could imagine. His great knowledge of chess typically helped him take control of the board with crushing effect. He hated the unknown and tended to falter in unclear chessboard situations, particularly in his early encounters with Boris Spassky. Spassky, on the other hand, was often ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18383;ext=1 Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:50:26 GMT Eight world chess champions have won first prize at Hastings in the world's longest running chess tournament, launched in 1895 and held annually since 1919. Nowadays most top grandmasters prefer to play in winter for big money at the London Classic, Wijk aan Zee, Moscow and Gibraltar, but Hastings holds its niche and is kept alive and well by Hastings borough council and volunteer organisers. The list of previous winners includes many names from Russia and Eastern Europe, and this week the fastest rising chess power also made its mark. The top-seeded Wang Yue, 24, is China's No2, is ranked in the world top 50, and was nearly 100 points ahead of his nearest Hastings rival in the chess ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18379;ext=1 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:59:19 GMT St. Louis' own Hikaru Nakamura is crushing the competition at the Super-Grandmaster chess tournament being held in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Hikaru has been playing often of late and has more than made up for his bad performance in Moscow at the Tal Memorial (last place) with back-to-back fantastic results! Last month, Hikaru was able to clinch clear second at the London Chess Classic, ahead of world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen. Hikaru is doing even better in Reggio after starting out with a scintillating score of five points out of six games against the world's best. After a draw against Fabiano Caruano of Italy in round seven, Hikaru had a slight misstep in round eight as he lost to Alexander Morozovich, the chess player just ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18378;ext=1 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:01:09 GMT Kentucky GM Gregory Kaidanov is perhaps better known today as a chess teacher than a competitor. But he gave his students an object lesson on the value of doing one’s homework while winning the 39th annual Eastern Open, held last week at its traditional home at the Westin Washington hotel downtown. With 2½ points in the chess tournament’s final three rounds, including victories over fellow GMs Alexander Ivanov and Magesh Panchanathan, the affable Kaidanov posted an undefeated 6-1 result, a half-point ahead of Ivanov and New Jersey IM Dean Ippolito. A total of 170 chess players competed in the event’s four sections. Kaidanov revealed after his critical Round 5 win over Ivanov that he had worked out fully ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18366;ext=1 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:18:17 GMT After a strong start world chess champion Vishy Anand falls to an enterprising counterattack. The world chess champion Vishy Anand only made a 50% score at the recent London Chess Classic, suffering this early defeat to the US no 1. Anand started well, but with so many pieces on the chess board and both kings compromised, a counterattack is always possible. How did Nakamura turn the game in his favour? RB: Wow, complicated. I really have no idea. Maybe – this is clutching at straws – I can march my second h-pawn down the board to try to open up the White king position? It looks promising, but then runs into the problem of White's light-square bishop, which has an eye on h3. 1…Qe8 doesn't help, because ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18362;ext=1 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:57:14 GMT Recent months haven’t been kind to reigning world chess champion Viswanathan Anand, who posted mediocre results in three consecutive chess tournaments. His last effort — the London Chess Classic, in which he scored six draws, one loss and just one win — was, in his words and by his standards, “a disaster” not befitting the status of world chess champion. No doubt he was distracted, in part, by preparations for an upcoming May title defense against Boris Gelfand in Moscow’s renowned Tretyakov art gallery — a venue that Anand hopes will inspire “ beautiful and artistic chess.” Based on their past performances in hundreds of games, Anand is an almost a 3-to-2 favorite to win the 12-game match. He also has ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18351;ext=1 Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:58:33 GMT Chess again crossed paths with politics in 2011, with the most remarkable moment occurring in Tripoli, Libya, during the NATO bombing campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the World Chess Federation president, flew to Libya in June and played Qaddafi. Ilyumzhinov had known the Libyan leader since at least 2004, and there was speculation that he was on a mission to try to end the war. The game ended in a draw, but the war continued. (Tripoli fell to the rebels two months later, and Qaddafi was killed in October.) Politics also shadowed an achievement by Ehsan Ghaem Maghami, an Iranian chess grandmaster who set a record in February by playing 614 people at ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18349;ext=1 Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:57:31 GMT The World Chess Hall of Fame celebrated the 10th anniversary this month in a new location in St. Louis, Missouri. The history of the Hall and portraits of inducted chess players are available on the impressive web site. When it first opened in Miami in December 2001, I was inducted there together with five great chess players: the unofficial world chess champion Paul Morphy (1837-1884) and the official ones such as William Steinitz (1836-1900), Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941), José Raúl Capablanca (1888-1942) and Robert James Fischer (1943-2008). I shared the same birth city, Prague, with Steinitz and as fate would have it, we both ended up in America. "The decision of Lubomir Kavalek not to return home from a foreign chess ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18346;ext=1 Sat, 31 Dec 2011 17:04:17 GMT When Miguel Najdorf played 45 chess games simultaneously blindfold in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1947 the exhibition took over 23 hours, including an interval for Najdorf to change his perspiration-soaked shirt and rest his eyes. Later the Hungarian Janos Flesch played 52 games without sight of the board, but his claim unravelled because many opponents resigned after a few moves, and it seemed that Najdorf's performance would never be approached. But last month a little-known 41-year-old 2300-rated German chess master, Marc Lang, toppled the record with 46 games in 21 hours. In previous years Lang set a German record, then broke George Koltanowski's historic European mark of 34 games played at ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18347;ext=1 Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:05:11 GMT And what a year it has been! 2011 started with St. Louis’ own Hikaru Nakamura winning the 2011 Tata Steel chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, Holland, against the world’s best chess players. It was the biggest tournament victory for an American since Bobby Fischer, and his performance catapulted him to No. 7 in the world chess rankings. Although he has experienced some ups and downs this year, Hikaru is currently holding onto the No. 10 spot in the world and is looking forward to an exciting 2012. World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, who turned 21 in December, proved he is worthy of his top spot as he turned in solid performance after solid performance all year. He is steadily climbing toward Gary Kasparov’s peak rating of 2851 and ... http://gameknot.com/news.pl?id=18345;ext=1 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:06:46 GMT