Today was quite a dramatic day for the Chess Olympiad that saw quite a few upsets on both the team and individual level. As was the case yesterday I’m going to be very lightly annotating some games and discussing the results. You’ll note that of the first five teams with perfect scores none are from Eastern Europe; which is quite… Read more →
Category: Current Events
Tromso Olympiad Recap: Rd. 1
Greetings everyone, I’m going to do my best to give everyone a concise little recap of the news and games I find interesting from the men’s Olympiad. This is going to include individual upsets (with some light commentary on the openings) as well as team upsets and standings. The first round went pretty smoothly; the favorite teams won fairly easily… Read more →
Gata Kamsky to Play In Rochester!
Hello everyone, breaking news here in Rochester: Current US Champ Gata Kamsky is going to be playing in the Marchand! Gata Kamsky is the second highest rated player in the US and the 40th highest rated player in the world. In 1996 Kamsky challenged Anatoly Karpov in a 20 game match for the FIDE championship losing +3 =9 -6. In… Read more →
2014 Candidates Preview
Today I’m going to be running through the list of candidates and what I perceive to be their respective chances for winning the tournament. Last year it was fairly easy to determine who would be the next challenger; Magnus Carlsen was a clear favorite and Levon Aronian was the number two choice. For a while that seemed to be playing… Read more →
Interview – GM Jesse Kraai
Greetings everyone, this week we have a very special guest: Grandmaster Jesse Kraai author of the new book Lisa (which you should all check out). I wanted to wait until after I had read Lisa before posting this. Unfortunately due to some timing issues I didn’t get a chance to read it all the way through. Not to worry though,… Read more →
2013 World Cup Opening Survey
If you’re looking for a new opening you’ve come to the right place! I warned you all that this was coming, this will be a bit dryer than my usual chess posting. I intend to do some fairly in depth research on the openings that were played during the 2013 World Cup so we amateurs can get an idea as… Read more →
Top 5 Blunders from the 2013 World Cup
Now that we’ve all had some time to reflect and move on with our lives I decided to take a look back at some memorable blunders from the 2013 World Cup in Tromso, Norway. This all got started when I lost a game to an opponent where I was clearly better (+5 for you computers out there) and subsequently completely… Read more →
2013 Chess World Cup (Round 5)
As the fourth round wraps up I would like to just take a moment here and say that the second game of the first tiebreaks between Morozevich and Tomashevsky was one of the most exciting and nerve wracking games I have ever seen. The game started off slowly with each side doing the cat and mouse. Finally after a slip… Read more →
2013 Chess World Cup (Round 4)
Greetings everyone, Round 3 has come to a close and we are now in the sweet sixteen. The fourth round should be full of intrigue as we watch the best players in the world duke it out. Worth checking out are the interviews between Nakamura and Kamsky with Polgar. You can sense a certain disdain and a desire to keep… Read more →
2013 Chess World Cup (Round 3)
Round two has completed and the third round is going to commence this weekend. In this fast paced event it’s been tough to keep up with all the action going on. Here are some of the more shocking developments from the second round: Read more →