Three draws in Bazna

All games in the third round of the Kings Tournament in Bazna ended in a draw and so Shirov, Ivanchuk and Gelfand kept their shared lead. Only Radjabov had serious winning chances, in his game against Shirov. Read more

Ivanchuk: “I have a question”

At the end of the last press conference on Sunday in León, when press officer Leontxo Garcia asked if there were any more questions, it was Vassily Ivanchuk who said: “I have a question.” In the second blitz game the players had reached the famous Rook and Knight versus Rook ending, which Carlsen tried in vain to win, for 53 moves. Ivanchuk asked why the arbiter did not interfere. Read more

Sokolov beats all, Fier leads by a point

Ivan Sokolov defeated all of his opponents in the first half of the Crown Group, and Alexandr Fier is leading by a point in the Open Group, where amongst others we find veteran GM Vlastimil Hort in second place. We’re talking about this year’s Essent Tournament in Hoogeveen. Read more

In the spirit of the rules?

Yesterday, Peter wrote an interesting article about the Turkish club competition. I was especially fascinated by the team-setup. Read more

Dutch chess player banned after using PocketFritz

Last Saturday, while playing a game for his club, a Dutch chess player got caught outside the playing hall, holding a PDA. On the screen, a chess position was visible. It appeared that the player had entered the actual position of the game into PocketFritz. His game was declared lost, and yesterday the player was punished severely by the competition manager of the Dutch Chess Federation: a ban till the end of the season 2009-2010. Read more