Friday 8 June 2012

Feb~Apr~Jun

by Junta

Hello after another period of inactivity. I'm in the middle of the university exam period so I'll be giving the NSW Open on this long weekend a miss, but I'm planning to play in the Gold Coast Open for the first time in two weeks' time. It's a 6-round FIDE-rated swiss (with a gruelling 3 rounds on the Saturday).

In May the chess world saw Anand defend his world champion title in a rapid playoff after the 12 classical games ended level. Gelfand prepared excellently and he had Anand on the ropes throughout the even match, but wasn't quite able to convert at the decisive moments. It was great to see him receive a hero's welcome upon his arrival back home to Israel, covered in this ChessBase article.

The Candidates tournament (a double round robin! revised from the knockout format of last year) to determine the next challenger to Anand is scheduled for March next year, with the 8 qualified players (in seeding order) being Gelfand, Carlsen, Aronian, Kramnik, Radjabov, Ivanchuk, Grischuk and Svidler.

And of course, the year's strongest tournament, the annual epic, Tal Memorial tournament has commenced in Moscow today. With an average FIDE rating of 2776 and all of the live rating top 5 (Carlsen, Aronian, Kramnik, Radjabov, Nakamura) playing, it couldn't have come at a better time for university students.

An innovative idea for the drawing of player numbers was seen yesterday as the 10 monsters battled it out in a blitz round robin. Being a big fan of Alexander Morozevich, I was delighted to see that he won this side event with 6.5/9 (on tiebreak from Carlsen) and a 2943 performance, pocketing €5000! Photos and all games can be seen in this ChessVibes article.

Games start at 9pm AEST.
You can watch the (live) games in a cool viewer @ this link:
http://talmemorial2012.live.whychess.org/
There is great live commentary (with quality video) by Ian Rogers every round from this page. Press conferences with the players can be watched on the RCF's video page here.

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