Hou Yifan is a GM, not WGM.

Why is WC Anand not playing!?!?!

See our previous article (and comments) on Corus 2009 for the absence of Anand, Kramnik and Topalov.

Sal: I think Van Wely hadn't had such a bad year after all. He scored some nice wins in the Olympiad, including over Radjabov (in one of their epic King Indian clashes). As for Smeets and Stellwagen: in the last Dortmund, 2600ers Naiditsch and Gustafson showed some good results, even though they too had been nominated solely on basis of their nationality. In fact, Naiditsch even won Dortmund 2006. I therefore think that nominating 2600+ Dutch players isn't such a bad move after all.

Well it?Ǭ¥s logical that Corus wants to promote its local players, all the countries do. But about Van Wely, I just can?Ǭ¥t stand the guy. He beat Radjabov and he?Ǭ¥s already saying that Radjabov isn?Ǭ¥t even such a good player, and blablabla, apart from another bunch of lies about some other players... he?Ǭ¥s so full of himself. Well, Mr VW, I have news for you: "bad player" Radjabov, wether you like it or not, has kept his position for some time already in a section of the rating list that I very much doubt you will ever smell.

In october she did not have the title yet: At the 79th FIDE Congress, held on 16-26 November 2008 in Dresden, Germany, her GM title was approved making her the 25th Grandmaster of China.

Yes sup, that's obviously true, but strangely she's called a WGM on the FIDE October rating list. Someone here who knows more!?

Sal

It is a dutch tournament with mostly dutch spectators and a lot of dutch sponsors. There is no rule that they cannot invite who the like for their own tournament.

It is not politics it is just the people with the money decide who to invite. The corus tournament has a policy to invite 3 dutch players in the A group. This has 2 reasons
1) Give dutch chess players a change to play the strongest in the world
2) Marking wise .. the top local players are sure to get more attention in the dutch media then the number 20 of the work participating

So to quote Peter, what is wrong with inviting dutch players for a dutch tournament ?

What the heck is wrong with this matches picture? First, 2600 players on group A are all from Netherland, 2500+ players in Group B, while some 2600+ on group C? What's going on with this tournament. Politics? Gee, it's not even credible anymore.

Ehm, Sal, what is the problem exactly?

Heb ik het goed dat John van der Wiel voor het eerst in zeer lange tijd niet meedoet aan een van deze groepen?

@ Peter Visser...Het lijkt er wel op. Jammer! Ik snap ook niet waarom Tiviakov en Sokolov niet meedoen. Aan de andere kant: de B-groep is zo sterk. Deze lijkt een vowaardig toernooi op zich te zijn geworden.

Sal has a point. I'm visiting the Corus tournament every year for 2 or 3 days (I'm living 15 minutes by car from it). It's a very traditional tournament, but also a Dutch tournament. For the visitors, mainly Dutch, it's nice to see our best players perform in group A. Van Wely is in principle good enough to play in this group, but has had a bad year. Hence his week ELO rating at the moment. The other 2 are our hopes for the future. The question is, if this tournament is not to strong for them at this stage of their carreer. What can they gain here, except experience? They will be hunted down by all other players. I do not see the fun in that... It was probably better to put them in group B, where they could have a change for a good result.

On the other side: it would be boring to just sort all 42 players on ELO rating, and then divide them in 3 14 player groups. It's not even possible because the winner of group B plays in group A the year after, like the winner of group C goes to group B.

I expect a nice tournament again this year. Also nice to see that since we are missing some players out of the top 10, we can now see some other interesting players in group A.

It will be fun!

About the case Ivanchuck:

We, the chess fans-practitioners of the world, need Ivanchucks's geniality. We need more players like Ivanchuck in the tournaments; we, certainly, do not need the International Olimpic Committee,

Leon Hoyos from Mexico is actually a GM!

Glad to see Efimenko?Ǭ¥s playing in group B, this guy has improved so much lately I wouldn?Ǭ¥t be surprised to see 2700 in his ELO some time soon.

hello all...i'm gamechess from indonesia.happy know with you.this is a good article for me.i'm still learn and play chessgame.thanks

"40 moves in 2 hours, then 20 moves in 1 hour, followed by 15 minutes with 30 seconds per move increment to finish the game."

Cool, that's a reasonable time control, actually pretty close to perfect :)

Those are the standard classical time controls.