Tuesday Top Tip

"The retreat of a minor piece to the back rank, where it cuts the lines of communication between the Rooks, is permissable only in exceptional cases." - Alekhine

World Championship Mexico 2007

1 Month to go now until the opening ceremony takes place and little much high level chess to speak of until it starts.

The current voting on my poll is favouring Kramnik, no surprise there really given that he is the current Champ, Anand, Aronian and Morozevich have all received at least one vote, a little surprised noone's money seems to be on Leko. Still plenty of time to vote though so if you are visiting the blog please cast your vote on the sidebar.

Follow this link for the Official site where you can get all the latest information. I followed the registration as much as I could (the end page is in Spanish) in order to hopefully receive a newsletter, which looks like it will contain detailed analysis of each player in turn, compiled by GM Mihail Marin.

I have 2 Marin books and enjoy his penmanship so hopefully these analysis will be very interesting.

White to play and win!

Click on the piece you want to move, then select the square you wish to move it to.

Kasparov vs Topalov 1999

This video is brought to you courtesy of the webmaster at chessworld himself, Kingscrusher.

This game features one of the greatest King hunts of all time, but was it merely just superb home preparation in a very theoretical game?

Out with the old - In with the new.

Not quite just yet.

Today I spent considerable time watching the Korchnoi vs Hou Yifan game on the playchess server and thoroughly enjoyed the battle. There is over 60 years of difference in their ages and it was fascinating to watch the struggle of experience versus youthful exuberance.

It did seem that once the game reached a pretty even Rook Knight and Pawn ending that the old dog was turning his overwhelming experience into a win, however the super talented youngster fought on bravely and secured a half point against the tournament leader with the black pieces.

Certainly this should prove valuable experience for her on her inevitable rise to the top. Follow the link on the previous post for the game.

V. Marx Gyorgy Memorial

This is probably not a high profile event, but I'm following the progress of the extremely talented Hou Yifan before she turns up to bash a few Brits at the UK vs. China match being held in Liverpool next month. Halfway through the tournament she's stuck at the bottom of the crosstable but she did have a good win against GM Balogh.

The event does include the legend that is Victor Korchnoi who currently leads and also the talented young Indian player Pentala Harikrishna. Follow this link here for the official site and you can follow the live games which start again tomorrow from the link on my sidebar.

Enjoy!

British Championships 2007 - Great Yarmouth

Congratulations to Jacob Aagaard for the main title and to Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant who retains the ladies title. I hope we see Jonathan Rowson come back next year and now that he doesn't have to defend the title, abandons it for some other petty tournament which shall remain nameless.

Congrats also to the couple of fellow chessworld members who played in the event, they also performed very well.