Off to a Chess Social

Things will be a little quiet on my blog for the next week or so, I'm officially on holiday and wouldn't you know it just to kick start it off with a bit of bad luck my broadband connection decided to pack up.

So with no way to post, I'm getting my head right for this coming weekend. Come Friday I'm packing a bag and heading for the big smoke (London) to stay at a friends house before attending the Chessworld.net social event and meeting up with more chess friends. This years event is being held at the Corner Store, Covent Garden on Saturday 25th, if you register (for free) on the site, everyone is welcome to attend.

No doubt plenty of good food and beer will be sampled, but the main objective for me is to play some good OTB chess games and hopefully get some revenge after the beatings I got last year (yes Tom and Tryfon, I mean you two). I don't get to play much if any OTB chess at home so this is a really exciting chance for me to see if my studies have helped improve my game at all. I've improved my French Tarrasch, Najdorf and Slav this year so we'll soon see if that has helped, my endings are somewhat better too, although my rook endings seem to have got worse.

Hopefully I'll get a few pics to post here so you might finally get to see what I look like (probably scare most of you into never returning).

See you soon, Best wishes, Juicy.

PS. Who won the Staunton Memorial? Never mind I'm not interested. :o)

White to play and mate!

Nice easy one for you today so that your brain doesn't get fried too much before you head for a nice cold beer.

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

Kramnik Overwhelming Favourite

Current standings in my poll would suggest that this is the case, as the current position of the voting is:

Kramnik 52%
Anand 23%
Aronian 17%
Morozevich 5%

Does anyone else find it odd that Anand and Aronian are warming up for the World Championship tournament by playing 960 and Rapidplay at Mainz just 4 weeks before it starts?

Does it have any relevance at all?

Is this what seemingly separates someone like Kramnik from other contenders and that his focus for the past few months has been solely that of retaining the World Championship?

As professional chess players, I'm sure Anand and Aronian are doing plenty of preparation with their opening repertoires, studying thousands upon thousands of games, but will that extra focus be the enduring factor which retains the title for Kramnik?

Staunton Memorial Joke

I just though I'd pop to the homepage of this tournament again in the hope that I might find Mickey Adams strolling away in the lead. Alas this was not so, however, whilst I was there I re-read the details on the main page and I nearly wet myself as it finally sunk in how appalling this whole shenanigans is.

The following is a quote from that page, on what the tournament organisers hope to achieve.

"The Staunton society exists to perpetuate the name of Howard Staunton , Britain's only ever claimant to be world chess champion, and to promote uk chess and in particular give young british players the prospects for gm norms and titles."

Well we've already covered the fact that running the tournament alongside the official British Chess Championships is counter-productive in promoting the game of chess in the UK, along with the lack of internet coverage.

However, I just thought I'd point out to the organisers that "young british players" probably shouldn't include in any list the following players: Speelman B.1956, McNab B.1961, Wells B.1965, Adams B.1971 and it's probably pushing it to include Houska B.1980 but I'll allow them that one.

But what about the Norms and Titles for these so called young british players?

Seems to me, that all the players aside from Houska have a GM title. Were they hoping she would win the tournament outright with a rating 300 points lower than Adams'.

Oh, and as a footnote to this post the current team score is Holland 28.5, U.K. 19.5

These not so old British players are really performing spectacularly well, if you are actually interested in this event at all you can see the crosstable and games here.

V. Marx György Memorial

A disastrous finish to this tournament for the legendary Victor Korchnoi, he seemingly had a very comfortable position in his game with Peter Acs before allowing the Black Queens intrusion into his side of the board. The win enabled Acs to tie for the lead after the current leader Pentala Harikrishna managed only a half point in his final game. Hou Yifan and Berkes Ferenc drew their game, surely a stepping stone to greater achievements for the youngster from China.

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You Hou!

It hasn't been the greatest tournament for her as she is placed bottom, but the youngster Hou Yifan in round 9 at the Gyorgy Memorial in Hungary, demonstrated again her fine talents.

For the second time in this tournament she faced the tournament leader with the Black pieces and in a game simplified to a major piece endgame gained a nice half point. Hopefully she can pick up another win today against Berkes Ferenc and finish the tournament in style.

Pentala Harikrishna still leads the tournament and it will be a good tournament win for him if he can bring it home today he faces Balogh in the final round effectively in a playoff for the title.

Don't forget you can follow the final round games live from the link on my sidebar, no need for downloads or sign-in registration procedures.