THE WEEK IN CHESS 676 22nd October 2007 by Mark Crowther

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1) Introduction

My thanks to David Ayza, Gerald Schendel, Geurt Gijssen, Patricia Claros Aguilar, Zenón Franco Ocampos, Luiz Roberto Da Costa Jr, Stefan Loeffler, David Ayza, Ales Drinovec, Laura Gallardo, Miklos Orso, Anton Mihailov, John Saunders, Yuri Garrett, Dario Mione, Rolf Benz, Joaquim De Deus Fº and everyone else who helped with the issue.

Another very nice week of tournaments. The Essent tournament finished with victory for Shakhriyar Mamedyarov who was half a point clear of Loek van Wely who in turn was half a point clear of Ruslan Ponomariov. All gained ratings points as World Junior Champion Zaven Andriasian couldn't get off the mark in the same week he lost the title as the U20 event concluded in Yerevan. Its nice to give young juniors a go but clearly his lack of experience told. The Bilbao Blindfold Chess World Cup was an interesting if overtitled event (I haven't done anything like a scientific study but my feeling from the Amber Blindfold is that Morozevich and Kramnik are the best two blindfold players). Anyhow in a Category XIX field Bu Xiangzhi just ran away with it. Linex - Magic became Spanish Champions the week after becoming European Champions and the strongest league in the world got under way, the Bundesliga. All good stuff!

Hope you enjoy this issue.

Mark

2) Essent Chess Tournament

The 11th edition of the Essent Chess Tournament took place 12th-20th October 2007. The location is the city of Hoogeveen. Just like last year there are several competitions: a Crown Group, a strong Essent Open, an Amateur Tournament and an event for youth. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov won the event with 4.5/6 half a point clear of Loek van Wely who beat 3rd placed Ruslan Ponomariov all three gained rating points because unfortunately bottom rated Zaven Andriasian (last year's World Junior Champion) was completely overfaced by the field and didn't score. Eltaj Safarli won the Open tournament.

Official site: http://www.essentchess.nl/ tournament info: http://www.essentchess.nl/info_eng.htm

3) Bilbao Blindfold Chess World Cup

The Bilbao Blindfold Chess World Cup took place 16th-20th October 2007. Bu Xiangzhi was the clear winner with 6 wins, three draws and only the one loss. The event had 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, in fact it only once made any difference to the normal standings throughout the entire event (I updated them every day and just had to change the scores), in the final table where Karjakin took 2nd place from Carlsen and I don't think this scoring system makes any difference to the player's attitude. They also used the Sofia draw rules (ie no draws until the position is dead drawn) these rules of course have proved useful and must be particularly stressful in blindfold chess!

Official site: http://www.ajedrezbilbao.com/

(3 points for a win, 1 for a draw)

4) Casino de Barcelona

The Casino de Barcelona tournament takes place 18th-26th October 2007.

Official site: http://www.escacs.cat/ciutat07/

5) IV Calvià Chess Festival

The IV Calvià Chess Festival takes place in Calvià, Mallorca (Spain) 6th-24th October 2007. Event including an International, Blitz, Senior, Amateur & Under-16 tournaments and the CECLUB Spanish Team Championship finals. Note that some Senior (over 55) players are playing in that event in the afternoon and the main open in the evening (amongst others Sveshnikov and Andersson).

Details: http://www.calviafestival.com/

6) Spanish CECLUB Finals

Linex - Magic claimed the Spanish CECLUB title in a playoff against four other teams in Calvia October 20th-21st 2007. This after winning the European Club Cup the week before.

7) Bundesliga

The German Bundesliga for 2007-8 takes place 19th October 2007 - 20th April 2008. The first games were on Friday 19th October as part of the special round 7 - fixtures from this round are played before various weekend programs.

Stefan Loeffler reports: Apart from Baden-Baden which is nearly 100 rating points stronger than its nearest competitors about every other team can beat everybody else in the German Bundesliga. And it´s a high-level affair, too. The average Bundesliga player is rated 2560 these days. The biggest upset of the first week-end, which has been played October 19-21, was caused by Erfurt. The nominally weakest team punished Remagen, the fifth of last season, for leaving out Ivanchuk in their saturday match. Only two out of the sixteen teams haven´t conceded any match points yet: Baden-Baden and Werder Bremen (yes, the chess chapter of the football club). The next rounds will be played on November 23rd-25th 2007.

Official site: http://www.schachbundesliga.de/ further coverage: http://www.schach.com and also at the national Federation site at: http://www.schachbund.de

Detailed results

8) World Juniors

The World Juniors and Girls Chess Championships took place in Yerevan, October 2nd-17th 2007. The event was won by Ahmed Adly of Egypt with 10/13 half a point clear of Ivan Popov of Russia and a further half point clear of ELO favourite Wang Hao. Jon Speelman gave an interesting explanation as to Adly's loss in the first round in his Observer column. Adly like Wang Hao played in the Isle of Man before the event but as Speelman explained "he's sponsored by Egypt Air and has to use their planes, [so his route] was not Douglas-London-Yerevan but Douglas-London-Cairo-Moscow-Yerevan over the course of two days!" Adly won 10 and lost three games including both against his closest rivals. 18 year old Wang Hao recently beat Nigel Short and was top seed for the event but in spite of being undefeated he was derailed by too many draws and black in three of the last four rounds when the prizes are really sorted out can't have helped much (although he did beat Wesley So and the winner Adly in rounds 8 and 9 when he had two whites). 14 year old Wesley So started well in the event before losing to Adly and Wang Hao in the middle. This isn't quite the prestigious title it used to be (players in the past who have won the event (and indeed made a special effort to do so) included Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov and Anand. Even recently Aronian and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov have won it but the top 7 U20 players were missing (Teimour Radjabov, Magnus Carlsen, Wang Yue, Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Evgeny Tomashevsky and Borki Predojevic). Of all the Junior events it still has the greatest status and I'm sure we'll see a number of these players as strong professionals.

Official site: http://www.armchess.am/WJGCC07/wjgcc.html

9) II Patrimonio de la Humanidad Open

The II Patrimonio de la Humanidad Open takes place in Alcala de Henares 7th-15th October 2007. Oleg Korneev and Pablo Almagro Llamas finishyed on 7.5/9. Games from the final three rounds are currently not available.

Official site: http://www.ajedrezalcala.com/

10) Corfu International Chess Festival

The Corfu International Chess Festival took place 1st-10th October 2007. There was a category VII all-play-all won by Aleksandr Karpatchev and an open which saw Arkadij Rotstein and Felix Levin finish on 8.5/9.

Official site: http://www.chessorg.de/corfou.htm

11) 7th Winterthur Chess Week

The 7th Winterthur Chess Week took place October 5th-13th, 2007. Rainer Buhmann edged out Vadim Malakhatko on tie-break after both finished on 7.5/9. Fabiano Caruana was a point further behind.

Official site: http://www.svwinterthur.ch/schachwoche/indexEngl.html