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The mercurial Vassily Ivanchuk won the Capablanca Chess Tournament of 2012 with 6.5/10. Dominguez and Nepomniatchi finished tied at 5.5 points a piece. Vladimir Potkin, Quesada Perez Yuniesky, and Viktor Laznicka finished 4-6 in an all play all tournament.

A preview of the January ratings and a few observations I made. I'm not yet sure if the World Cup results will be included. If yes, then a lot of other changes are possible. Kramnik and Anand will probably be tied for the World No.1 position. Big loser on points, no marks here for the correct guess, yes, Ivanchuk losing more than 30 pts (has already started to make up for it, though) Topalov moves to clear third with 2780. Mamedyarov gains smart points and he is likely to be fourth on the list. Big movers up - Karjakin, Cheparinov, Svidler and Carlsen. Sasikiran moves up a bit. Among the ladies, Koneru Humpy is inching up on Judit Polgar, even though she is not yet a match in class. She will be at 2612. Polgar loses a couple of points. Hou Yifan gains impressively.

Vassily Ivanchuk won the XX Carlos Torre Memorial tournament at Merida, Yucatan. In the finals, he beat India's Pentala Harikrishna 3-1, winning the last two games after being tied 1-1. Ivanchuk continues his habit of collecting points at the non-prime events and losing heavily in the leading tournaments. Whatever, but works ! Earlier, in the semi-finals Ivanchuk beat Alexander Graf and P Harikrishna beat Jesus Nogueiras. The knock out style tournament had started with 16 players. The format was similar to the recently held World Cup chess tournament. Two games first and then tie-breaks if required.

Note: At the time of writing this report, Ivanchuk beat Graf in the first game of the semi-finals and the other semi-final first game was drawn. The semi-finals seem to have been reached and the following seems to be the situation: Vassily Ivanchuk 2787 vs Alexander Graf 2576 P Harikrishna 2668 vs Jesus Nogueiras 2549 There is a local presence in Nogueiras. The full quarter-final results: Ivanchuk beat Almeida 1.5-0.5 Graf beat Quezada 1.5- 0.5 Nogueiras beat Cordova 2-0 Harikrishna beat Meier 1.5-0.5

Game 1 results of the Quarterfinals: Tregubov – Meier 1-0 Cordova – Zapata 1-0 J.Gonzalez – Almeida ½–½ Bruzon – Ivanchuk 0-1 Harikrishna – G.Hernandez 1-0 Nogueiras – Dominguez ½–½ H.Hernandez – Graf 0-1 Quezada – Leon Hoyos 1-0 Now, I'm a bit confused about the games on 20th Dec 2007. Ivanchuk seems to have drawn his game against Bruzon and won another game against Omar Almeida Quintana, and both with white ! And he's supposed to have won a game against Bruzon yesterday. Whats going on here ? Why oh why do you (Ivanchuk) play in these places and make things difficult for us ? Oh ok, to gain back the rating points you just lost, you say ? OK OK. Someone please help ! One more result I have is of P Harikrishna beating Georg Meier. A weird game where black resigns in a position that he can hold and just a few moves before the end, he was kind of better ! Once again folks, what's going on ? !

This tournament takes place at the growing chess town of Mérida, Yucatán, México from 15th-23rd December 2007. The tournament includes a knock out phase. The leading players are: GM Ivanchuk Vassily, GM Bruzon Batista Lazaro, GM Dominguez Perez Lenier, GM Harikrishna Pentala, GM Tregubov and others. Games of round two are here: http://www.okantomi.com.mx/torre2007/w2/tfd.htm If the above link does not work, then try this one - http://www.idey.gob.mx/ct2008.htm

The rapid games will be fought today. Today's games are no less interesting. Witness the prominent names involved today - Vassily Ivanchuk, Magnus Carlsen, Arkadij Naiditsch, Ruslan Ponomariov and Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In some ways, its interesting to watch these games live on say, playchess.com. One reason is that the games are faster and pretty accurate from a patzer's point of view. The second reason is that the confusion of having to follow several games does not exist.