Sammour-Hasbun: ICC’s Cinderella Man

Who says lightening doesn’t strike twice? Last year’s Cinderella-story winner of the Internet Chess Club’s annual Dos Hermanas blitz tournament, Jorge Sammour-Hasbun (ICC NECF-InSchools), proved that lightening does indeed strike twice as he retained his title. full story »

Ivanchuk keeps Torre title

After he had won the prestigious blitz tournament in Moscow last month, Vassily Ivanchuk also prolonged his title with blitz games at the Torre Memorial in Mexico. Because that’s what the knockoutfase consisted of: blitz games – something we hadn’t figured out yet from the tournament website. Ivanchuk beat the Indian Harikrishna 3-1 in the final. full story »

Ivanchuk also takes World Blitz Ch

Vassily Ivanchuk’s last big goal in an already amazing year is of course winning the World Cup in Khanty-Mansyisk (first round next Saturday) but a nice foretaste is his title of world blitz champion, which he gained today in Moscow by winning an amazingly strong 20-player double round-robin tournament with 25.5 points out of 38 games. Second was Vishy Anand (24.5), who had an off-day yesterday but played like a world champ today, and third was last year’s winner Alexander Grischuk (23.5). full story »

Ivanchuk beats Leko after blitz playoff

Leko had returned from the grave, levelling a score of 5-3 in Ivanchuk’s favour after 8 games, to put the final score on 6-6. But in the end it was still Ivanchuk who went away with the victory after winning the blitz playoff 0,5-1,5. This weekend the two super grandmasters played a 12-game exhibition rapid match in the western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo. full story »

8th title for Kramnik in Dortmund

The standings stayed exactly the same after four more drawn games in the last round and so Kramnik won his 8th Dortmund title without much trouble. Five times he ended shared first and two times before he took clear first, this year for the third time. My early conclusion turned out right: we won’t remember this tournament very long. A lot of draws, a lot of games where almost nothing happened. Probably because there wasn’t an artist such as Shirov or Morozevich in the field, but also because the ones who qualified for Mexico were taking it easy and left their most important opening ideas to be used at the Wch. Though Leko did try to win yesterday, for 107 moves, and at some point had a winning rook ending against Mamedyarov. full story »

Kramnik leading by a point

After a beautiful win today Kramnik is now leading by a point in Dortmund. De deeply calculated temporary piece sacrifice the Russian went for with 29.a4 was just fantastic. Leko won too today, which is not an easy thing to do with Black against Gelfand, and the Hungarian once again confirmed that opposite coloured bishops aren’t that drawish with rooks on the board. Mamedyarov-Carlsen wasn’t very interesting but the other draw, Anand-Alekseev, was. Anand got a strong kingside attack and the way Alekseev defended was impressive. full story »

Round 4 games + Carlsen-N.N.

This round report has been, perhaps surprisingly, written in Amsterdam. Because I will play the Nova College Tournament 2007 I returned for a week, to continue the tour in Paris. I’ll report on Dortmund till the end, including two more videos I still have. Twice Carlsen today: his round 4 game of yesterday and a game of his from Monday’s blitz exhibition. The world champion was too strong for him yesterday, the other one went somewhat better… full story »

Round 3 games & Anand-N.N.

After all games in round 3 have finished in unexciting draws, I don’t think Dortmund 2007 is the kind of tournament we will always gonna remember. Still, I was having fun today in the press room, editing more of yesterday’s blitz games and interviewing the legendary Vlastimil Hort in between (more of that later). full story »

Dortmund Blitz Exhibition

So while no round was scheduled for yesterday, the players weren’t resting at all. As has become traditional, I think, all participants of the Chess Meeting played blitz games against amateurs, in the Dortmund town hall. The super grandmasters had two minutes on the clock and the local artists had five minutes thinking time to spend. ChessVibes was there filming it all, and presents the first video today. Soon we will publish some longer fragments of games by Kramnik, Anand, Leko and Carlsen. full story »

Shirov wins Villa de Cañada de Calatrava

At the Festival Villa de Cañada de Calatrava Alexei Shirov has won the rapid tournament. The first prize was for him because his tiebreak was better than Daniel Fridman’s, Ivan Sokolov’s and Boris Gelfand’s, who also finished on 7,5 out of 9. So it was a very exciting tournament, where people like Polgar, Mamedyarov and Anand ended shared fifth. Shirov deserved the title considering his magnificently artful play, which reaffirmed his claim to the title Fire on Board. full story »

The top players live again

Nothing to do during this Easter Weekend? Then I have good news for you. At this very moment many top chess players are playing a rapid tournament in Spain, and the games can be followed live. I’m talking about the Festival Villa de Cañada de Calatrava. On the participants list we see names such as Anand (he’s quite high on the new FIDE list), Mamedyarov (how good would he be in rapid?), Gelfand (who’s openings are still top-notch as we saw in Monaco), Ivanchuk (his play is still top-notch as we saw in Monaco), J. Polgar (wow, we haven’t seen her play since… Hoogeveen?), Grischuk (wow, we haven’t seen him play for ages) Bacrot (o yes, he’s quite strong too), Shirov (always great to watch) Sasikiran (isn’t he playing Sofia?), Milov (one of those players you always hear winnig opens in far away countries) and… Karpov! (no introduction needed). full story »

Jorge Sammour-Hasbun surprising winner Dos Hermanas

Jorge Sammour-Hasbun became the surprising winner of the ICC Dos Hermanas online tournament. Who? Many were wondering that of course. Sammour-Hasbun has been away from the game for ten years, but at some point he was a true prodigy. He won the world championship under 10 in 1988 and later also the Wch under 12, when his name was still Jorge Zamora. Jorge’s family emigrated from Palestina to America and there, at the age of 15 he already had a USCF rating of 2500. Amongst others he beat Gata Kamsky in those days. full story »

Dos Hermanas heading for the finals

In the Dos Hermanas internet tournament on ICC there haven’t been any surprises yet. Most top players, with the exception of Ivan Cheparinov and Ian Nepomniachtchi, have qualified. Among those players are: GM Hikaru Nakamura, GM Tigran Petrosian, GM Shahriyar Mamedyarov, GM Zhang Zhong, GM Gata Kamsky and GM Daniel Fridman. They might get good company tonight, as it looks like Magnus Carlsen, probably right from his hotel room in Monaco (where he enjoys a restday), will play one of the final qualifiers tonight! full story »

Eight edition of Dos Hermanas starts tonight

The world’s biggest internet tournament will have its eigth edition starting tonight. The tournament, which was won last year by GM Fabian Doettling (before e.g. Carlsen and Kamsky) traditionally exists of twelve seperate twelve-round Swiss qualifiers using the Fischer System playing rate: 4 minutes + 1 seconds. The 12 qualifier winners plus the 20 best scores qualify to the 32 KO final. All qualifiers are open for everyone, you only have to sign-up for a free trial-account(!). The tournament has a prize-fund of 7700 EUR and the winner takes EUR 1800. full story »

Last series of videos

Hereby the last series of videos. There’s much to enjoy again, like artistic reporting, classical flagging, Smerdon who just drops a bishop in one game and murderously wins the next, Lammens’ energy and of course the tournament’s apotheosis: Vissertje-Van der Weide. Oh no, that was afterwards, of course I mean Peelen-Smerdon. full story »

More videos!

As said before, I could collect a large quantity of good video material last Saturday. Today we experience the tournament online till and including round 9. A loss by Manuel Bosboom or Hans Ree playing: have fun with these rare pieces of material. full story »

(Photo) report

Update: more photos at ChessVista!

The whole Chessvibes team is looking back at a very succesful first tournament. Everything went quite smoothly and there barely occured any incidents. The justified winner was David Smerdon, who is said to be one of the strongest blitz players on ICC. In his speech afterwards, he said he thought the Dutch players were so nice and decent. In Australia many more pieces would have fallen on the ground and more incidents would have occurred! full story »

First videos Chessvibes Blitz Tournament!

There appeared to be more than 70 minutes of footage on tape. Quit some editing has still to be done, but now we’ll present the first few videos of yesterday’s Chessvibes Blitz Tournament. One with fragments from all Saturday, and then a few games from the first five rounds. More videos will follow, as well as a small report with photos. full story »

David Smerdon wins first Chessvibes Blitz Tournament

David Smerdon has won the first Chessvibes Blitz Tournament. Just put my equipment (printer, camera etc.) at home and put the full finals standings online. Now I quickly head back into town; tomorrow more. Much more. Like lots of videos.

10 February: first Chessvibes Blitz Tournament

To celebrate the first birthday of doggers-schaak.nl and the introduction of chessvibes.com, we’re organizing a blitz tournament. It will be held on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 (the day when at first the Dutch Ch Blitz in Dordrecht was planned) in Sporthal De Pijp in Amsterdam. The entry starts now! full story »

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