Sunday, January 18, 2009

Wijk R01: Top seeds Ivanchuk, Morozevich falter

17.01.2009 – Vassily Ivanchuk will be howling at the moon tonight. In an essentially drawn position, one move before the time control, the top seed in the A-Group overstepped and handed the point over to a pleasantly surprised Jan Smeets. Third seed Alexander Morozevich was taken to the cleaners by the former boy prodigy Sergey Karjakin. We bring you pictures, games and comments.


Results of round one
Group A: Round 1 - Sat. Jan. 17th
Daniël Stellwagen - Sergei Movsesian
1/2
Magnus Carlsen - Teymour Radjabov
1/2
Levon Aronian - Wang Yue
1/2
Vassily Ivanchuk - Jan Smeets
0-1
Sergei Karjakin - Alexender Morozevich
1-0
Loek van Wely - Leinier Dominguez
1/2
Gata Kamsky - Michael Adams
1/2
Group B: Round 1 - Sat. Jan. 17th
Hou Yifan - Rustam Kasimdzhanov
0-1
Krishnan Sasikiran - Erwin l'Ami
1/2
Dimitri Reinderman - Francisco Vallejo
0-1
Nigel Short - Jan Werle
1/2
Andrei Volokitin - Fabiano Caruana
1/2
Henrique Mecking - Zahar Efimenko
0-1
Alexander Motylev - David Navara
0-1

Group C: Round 1 - Sat. Jan. 17th
T. Hillarp Persson - Roeland Pruijssers
1/2
David Howell - Manuel Bosboom
0-1
Friso Nijboer - Wesley So
0-1
Oleg Romanishin - Ali Bitalzadeh
1-0
Anish Giri - Frank Holzke
1/2
Abhijeet Gupta - Dronavalli Harika
0-1
Eduardo Iturrizaga - M. Leon Hoyos
1-0

Official web site

Monday, January 5, 2009

GM Antonio posts 8th US win

Filipino grandmaster Rogelio “Joey” Antonio posted his eighth victory in the US chess circuit as he emerged as the overall champion in the recently concluded 2008 Los Angeles Chess Club Open Chess Championships at the Santa Monica Boulevard.

According to BilliardPhilippines.com, Antonio scored a total of 4.5 points in five outings in the event organized by US Chess Federation Life Senior Master and Chess Instructor Mick Bighamian.

Antonio bested competitors Ronald Morris, International Master Emory Tate, William Pennucci and RP and US Chess Master Almario Marlon Bernardino Jr., who is also a sportswriter for BilliardPhilippines.com.

Tate settled for second place (4 points) while Berandino scored third place (3 points).

The win served as Antonio’s “rebound” after he suffered a setback at the 2008 North American Open Chess Championships last December 29 at the Bally’s Casino Resort and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Antonio failed to convert the winning position against his match to fellow GM Yury Shulman in the penultimate round.

Carlsen and Svidler qualify for final in Gjøvik

Chess Festival in Gjøvik, Norway
The Aker Chess Challenge is being played in the main auditorium of Gjøvik cinema, under the same roof as Thon Hotel, where Simen Agdestein in 1991 played a 2-2 drawn match with classic time controls against the long reigning world champion Anatolij Karpov.

The event consists of a double-round robin tournament, followed by a bronze final and a final. That is a total of eight rounds, plus if necessary sudden death blitz games. Time controls are 25 minutes per game, with 5 seconds increment per move. The games have a running commentary for spectators in an adjoining auditorium, and are also being transmitted live on Playchess and by the official web site (link below).

Results of rounds 5 + 6 (and tiebreaks)
Round 5: Sunday, January 4th 2009, 14:20h
Magnus Carlsen 1-0 Peter Svidler
Kjetil Lie 0-1 Hikaru Nakamura
Round 6: Sunday, January 4th 2009, 15:40h
Peter Svidler 1-0 Kjetil Lie
Hikaru Nakamura ½-½ Magnus Carlsen

The GM Swiss Tournament in Gjøvik
A strong and challenging tournament with many grandmasters, at least six above 2600, is taking place as part of the Chess Festival in Gjøvik. It offers good opportunities for title norms of all types. The tournament was open for players with GM-, IM-, WGM-, WIM-, FM- or WFM-titles, and anyone else with an official FIDE rating of at least 2100 at registration. A limited number of players with rating below 2100 were included. The tournament is being played at the Thon Hotel Gjøvik.

The event is a nine round Swiss, one round a day except at the free day Saturday January 3rd, when it was possible to participate in the Open Norwegian Rapid-chess Championship. Time limits: 40 moves in two hours, then 20 moves in one hour, and finally 30 minutes for the rest of the game (total seven hours). Money prizes: numbers 1-15 get Euro 2000, 1500, 1000, 800, 600, 400, 300, 250, 200, 175, 150, 140, 130, 120, 100, plus 250 Euro to the best female player, to the best player with rating 2200-2299 and the best player with rating under 2200. In total 8615 Euro.

Standings after six rounds
# Player rating points seed performance
1 GM Sergei Tiviakov 2686 4.5 1 2625 (-3.30)
2 GM Vadim Malakhatko 2633 4.5 3 2642 (+1.40)
3 GM Oleg Korneev 2623 4.5 4 2500 (-6.70)
4 GM Geetha.N. Gopal 2548 4.5 8 2642 (+8.40)
5 GM Nick E De Firmian 2545 4.5 9 2635 (+8.30)
6 FM Kjetil Stokke 2334 4.5 22 2423 (+10.95)
7 GM Boris Savchenko 2648 4.0 2 2694 (+3.20)
8 GM Mateusz Bartel 2602 4.0 6 2553 (-2.00)
9 GM Kaido Kulaots 2556 4.0 7 2643 (+6.30)
10 GM Aloyzas Kveinys 2533 4.0 10 2614 (+6.30)
11 IM Jon Ludvig Hammer 2522 4.0 11 2532 (+3.00)
12 IM Anna Zozulia 2380 4.0 17 2334 (-3.60)
13 Nijat Azad Abasov 2363 4.0 18 2419 (+6.45)
14 WGM Zeinab Mamedjarova 2351 4.0 19 2379 (+4.50)
15 WIM Katarzyna Toma 2230 4.0 28 2220 (-1.05)
16 GM Mikheil Mchedlishvili 2615 3.5 5 2512 (-4.90)
17 IM Frode Elsness 2440 3.5 12 2427 (+0.60)
18 IM Sasha Kaplan 2425 3.5 13 2338 (-5.40)
19 IM Maxim L Devereaux 2415 3.5 14 2410 (+0.50)
20 IM Israel Caspi 2408 3.5 15 2350 (-2.30)
21 IM Eirik Gullaksen 2400 3.5 16 2376 (-1.05)
22 Daniel Jakobsen Kovachev 2227 3.5 29 2284 (+7.35)
23 Lasse Østebø Løvik 2167 3.5 41 2320 (+17.85)
24 Jon Kristian Haarr 2057 3.5 58 2325 (+30.75)
Official tournament site