Chess news

In the Dutch city of Wijk aan Zee the famous tournament Corus 2008 is being held. In round 9 there was a match of principle both psychologically and in terms of chess between Topalov and Kramnik. At this time Bulgarian managed to break the Slav Defense performed by Vladimir Kramnik through an amazing sacrifice of a piece in an often used variant. The opening worked absolutely well and brought Veselin 1 point.

In this round also the leader of the tournament, 17-year old Magnus Carlsen, sustained his first defeat. He was beaten(/outplayed/outdone/overcome) while playing Black by Peter Lek...

The Championship of Russia continues to be amazingly resultful and unpredictable. After a rest day the players delivered the excellent round 4 with Black winning over White 5-1 - 4 wins and 2 draws! In round 5 Black gained a point too, but White turned the scales to their favour by that time - he won twice. The resultfulness of games exceeds 50%! We wonder if grandmasters are impacted that much by Sofia rules!...

Morozevich didn't lose a single point after his defeat in round 2, having gained 3 victories one after another, and 2 of them with the black pieces by the way. In round 5 he outplayed ...

Round 3 of the Championship of Russia ended. The venue of the championship is the famous Central House of Chessplayer named after Mikhail M. Botvinnik, Moscow. There are two tournaments: the one of the 17th category for men, and the other of the 7th category for women. Unfortunately, the start list of both tournaments doesn't include strong players who were supposed to take part in the championship: Evgeny Alekseev (the champion of Russia, 2716, 14th on the world rankings) and Alexandra Kosteniuk (2515, 6th on the world rankings, and 1st on the national rankings). Nevertheless, the tournaments...

In the final match of the World Chess Cup consisting of 4 games Gata Kamsky (USA, 2714) overcame Alexei Shirov (Spain, 2739) by the narrowest margin of 1 point. In addition to a considerable sum of prize money, Kamsky got the opportunity to play a semifinal match for the world championship title against Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria, 2769).

Related links:

• Official website
• Participants
• Personal results
• Semifinal
• Final
  

Previous news:

• 12/10/2007 - World Chess Cup: the fifth round
• 12/7/2007 - World Chess Cup - the fourth round ended
• 12/3/2007 - World Chess Cup – the third round
• 11/27/2007 - World Chess Cup – th...