2 weeks of chess in Japan

"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency."

- Raymond Chandler

by Junta

Through August-September I'm in my summer holidays here in Japan, and my last two weeks were filled with chess.

August 5-8:
Participated in a joint training camp of 7 university chess clubs of Japan, in Niigata.
August 9:
Played some training (rapid & blitz) games with Japan's top player, FM Shinya Kojima.
August 10-13:
Played in the 7-round FIDE-rated Japan League tournament in Tokyo, finishing =3rd with 5/7.
August 14, 16-18:
Played one blitz, one rapid tournament in Yokohama, with overseas masters also participating.

Over the two weeks I played 7 classical games, 17 rapid games, and easily over 100 blitz games over the board - I feel it's time for a bit of a rest from playing! I'll be posting game snippets and pictures in the days to come.

The second most important (after the World Championship match in November) and perhaps most exciting chess event of the year is the Chess World Cup currently going on in Norway - tonight the second game of the 4th round is being played, and every round has been very interesting to follow, with intriguing games and high drama.

On the official website above, you could enter your predictions for all 64 matches - there were 809 entries submitted before the commencement of Round 1, and after 3 rounds I'm sitting on =61st-84th with 69.8% of match winners correctly predicted. A Morozevich-Nakamura final seems extremely unlikely, but who knows...

Edit: Yes, Nakamura has been knocked out by Korobov.