Exciting start Tal Memorial
18 August 2008 21:45 PM CET | Last modified: 0:56 | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
On the first day of the Tal Memorial, the players showed tremendous fighting spirit. In an excellent first round in Moscow, Kramnik, Morozevich and Ivanchuk won their White games.
The traditional chess festival “M. Tal Memorial” takes place 17-31 August at the GUM Exhibition Hall, located very close to the Red Square, in Moscow, Russia.
It consists of two parts: a classical chess round robin tournament of ten top GMs, viz. Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Alekseev, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexei Shirov, Gata Kamsky, Ruslan Ponomariov, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Peter Leko and Boris Gelfand.
Photo © Mark Gluhovsky
And then there’s the Tal Cup Blitz tournament (qualification August 27 and 28, final August 29 and 30) with e.g. Magnus Carlsen and Anatoly Karpov.
The classical tournament is played with the FIDE time control, i.e. 2 hours for the first 40 moves, 1 hour for the next 20 moves and another 15 minutes for the rest of the game with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting with move 61.
Alexander Morozevich at the drawing of lots | Photo © Mark Gluhovsky
Kramnik - Shirov 1-0
Morozevich - Alekseev 1-0
Ivanchuk - Kamsky 1-0
Leko - Mamedyarov ½-½
Ponomariov - Gelfand ½-½
Tal Memorial Round 1 Standings
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | |||||
| 1. | Ivanchuk, Vassily | 2781 | UKR | +720 | * | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | 1 | . |
| 2. | Kramnik, Vladimir | 2788 | RUS | +753 | . | * | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | 1 |
| 3. | Morozevich, Alexander | 2788 | RUS | +742 | . | . | * | . | . | . | . | 1 | . | . |
| 4. | Gelfand, Boris | 2720 | ISR | -1 | . | . | . | * | . | . | ½ | . | . | . |
| 5. | Leko, Peter | 2741 | HUN | +1 | . | . | . | . | * | ½ | . | . | . | . |
| 6. | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | 2742 | AZE | -2 | . | . | . | . | ½ | * | . | . | . | . |
| 7. | Ponomariov, Ruslan | 2718 | UKR | +2 | . | . | . | ½ | . | . | * | . | . | . |
| 8. | Alekseev, Evgeny | 2708 | RUS | -753 | . | . | 0 | . | . | . | . | * | . | . |
| 9. | Kamsky, Gata | 2723 | USA | -742 | 0 | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | * | . |
| 10. | Shirov, Alexei | 2741 | ESP | -720 | . | 0 | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | * |
Vladimir Kramnik - Alexei Shirov with the Red Square outside in the background | Photo © Mark Gluhovsky
Vassily Ivanchuk showing his win in the press room | Photo © Mark Gluhovsky
The Europe-Echecs video team travelled from Sochi to Moscow and will cover the Tal Memorial as well:
Links:
The video reports by Europe-Echecs are just splendid!!! GREAT!
Sochi coverage was amazing, and i’m pleased this tourney is also covered with video articles every day!
I hope more chessevents will get coverage like this! It’s a good thing for the public.
Keep up the great work, GM Fontaine!
Thank you for the great reports
Theo
I especially like Chucky’s win! Simply awesome!
Yeah………… Kamsky was totally crushed……………… Unbelievable…………. Chucky strangled him………….
poor Shirov, when was the last time he had a good game against the very best?
Shirov was excellent in Elista 2007 and in this year’s Morelia part of the Morelia/Linares.
The English edition of the tournament website is outdated. I can’t read the russian language :-[
does the tournament website show the games online?
Kramnik’s win was very nice, but Shirov fought bravely.