Chess Satranç ajedrez échecs schaken Schach scacchi escacs xadrez şah шахматы šahmaty

At the World Team Championship Chess tourney at Bursa, Turkey we are seeing some very interesting developments. Nakamura is shooting up the Live Ratings ladder. There are bunch of others making waves, namely Mamedyarov, Onishchuk, Grischuk, Vitiugov, and Sutovsky among others with 2800+ performances. Now we come to another interesting observation. The top three players after Anand, namely Harikrishna, Ganguly, and Sasikiran are not only making a valiant effort at reaching the top of the standings in the event, but are battling among themselves indirectly against each other to finish second highest after Anand. They have already swapped places a few times just in this event alone. The standout performer is by far Sasikiran, who has wins against Gashimov and hold your breath, Aronian (in a Rook and pawns endgame!!! excuse the exclamations- really!)

There was controversy at the World Mind Sports games. The event was the Pairs Blitz event. India and Ecuador had reached the finals. GM Sasikiran and Matamoros were to play the tie-break sudden death game and tradegy struck when Matamoros disturbed a piece after pressing his clock. Sasi protested and the claim was upheld by the arbiter and a decision was to be taken. By now Matamoros was already branded as unlucky, but the tournament committee decided to ask the players to replay the game in the spirit of fair play. Motomoros won and with that the gold medal in this section went to Ecuador.

The following players advanced to the Quarter finals of the World Cup Chess at Khanty Mansiysk. Sergey Karjakin Ivan Cheparinov Ruslan Ponomariov Alexei Shirov Magnus Carlsen The winner of this tournament takes on Veselin Topalov. The winner of the ensuing match will play the winner of Anand-Kramnik world championship match that will be held next year. Carlsen reached the quarter finals in spectacular style, improving upon his 10th position as a 15 year old. His rival Michael Adams pushed hard and was dominating the proceedings but again as in the first game, time played a big factor. Carlsen found a surprising saver to draw this dangerous game. Karjakin's advance too has been smooth but not as heavily advertised. Karjakin beat back a determined Nisipeanu today. Cheparinov beat Wang Yue of China with black pieces. Yue took his chances by playing a very risky opening against the solid but enterprising Bulgarian. Ponomariov won the second game of the pre-quarterfinal match against Sa...