Akopian succesful too
After the nice (shared) victory of Levon Aronian in Wijk aan Zee, his compatriot Vladimir Akopian started the year 2007 successfully as well. He took clear first place at the tournament in Gibraltar (7,5 out of 9) after a quick victory over Kuzubov in the last round. Areshchenko, Nakamura and Sutovsky didn’t do badly either with 7 out of 9.
Because of the poll on the draw offer it’s relevant to remark that the tournament also used a special rule to prevent quick draws:
“Draws by mutual agreement in under 40 moves are not allowed without the agreement of the arbiter. No pre-arranged/tacit agreements to draw allowed (of any length, by repetition or otherwise). Genuine draws by repetition or stalemate are acceptable.”
The two leaders of the field didn’t really have to take this one into account in their last round game. Things went wrong quickly with Black and so the tournament organizers could witness the desired blood on the chessboard sooner than expected.
hmmmm,
can you please publish the info about short, the false info in chessbase, the shorts reply.
Thank you, will be interesting to see what you think
So far we haven’t paid much attention to the topical subject of cheating; I guess we were too busy covering the positive aspects of chess. (During his press conference we did ask Loek van Wely about his opinion of the German article, by the way: and we also asked Karpov about it.)
Both Kramnik and Topalov have been accused of cheating, but nobody has seen clear evidence yet. Therefore we decided that, until something changes, we’ll stick to writing about great players and great games.
The whole Short story isn’t very interesting in my opinion. (The way Chessbase covered it, was inaccurate, but they’ve corrected it now.) It does raise a question though: are there more strong players who’d like to see an official, independent investigation? (We might do a poll on that one!)
Hoe zou de korte remise van Sokolov in (ik dacht) de vijfde ronde te rijmen zijn met de remiseregel? Het was weliswaar herhaling van zetten, maar volgens mij een overbekend openingsvariantje. Valt dat nog onder ‘genuine draws by repetition’?
Thank you for continue posting chess news, and not soap-opera stuff!
I think it is not something we should be interested in, the Short story and the Topalov (or Kramnik) accusations. They are meaningless and harmful unless there is actual irrefutable proof.
Participating in rumour and innuendo simply blurs the distinction between lies and truth - both communicate equally well. The difference is, once a reputation has been assaulted, truthfully or not, it is very difficult to earn it back.
Johan Hut - Please write in English. Thank you!
Bravo Akopian,
cheinq el kaskatsum!
Lusine ev Armen