Vassily Ivanchuk chose a complex line of the King's Indian against Teimour Rajdabov and took full advantage of a major blunder of 27...g5? when it came. This was the last game to finish. Ponomariov agreed a quick draw with Gashimov. Polgar as black forced a draw with Svidler. David Navara comments on his reasonably comfortable draw as black against Alexander Grischuk.

A familiar pattern seems to be emerging. Round 6 I was paired with Black against the Hungarian GM Lazlo Gonda. He’s a rather solid player, often happy with 1.Nf3, 2.c4 positions so I knew it’d be tough to get the whole point. I tried a new opening but he came up with a clever move [...]

IM Malcolm Pein takes a look at Peter Svidler's fantastic finish against Gata Kamsky and the end of Judit Polgar's 2nd game against Leinier Dominguez Perez from Round 4 of the World Cup.

Yesterday there were only three draws out of 20 games, today it only took four games to produce the same quantity. Two of them (Svidler-Polgar and Ponomariov-Gashimov) were so short that one suspects the players just wanted a day off. (Or maybe two days off - let's see what happens tomorrow.) The third (Grischuk-Navara) was also short by conventional standards, but while it wasn't exactly a...

Το πλήρες κείμενο της εισήγησης που καταθέτει για το θέμα των διασυλλογικών αγώνων ο Βαγγέλης Βιδάλης και που προβλέπεται να συζητηθεί στο Δ.Σ. της ΕΣΟ την Κυριακή 11/9: Οπως ίσως γνωρίζετε, την Κυριακή 11 Σεπτεμβρίου...

Όπως κάθε χρόνο, έτσι και φέτος το σκάκι θα έχει παρουσία στο Φεστιβάλ της ΚΝΕ (15-16-17 Σεπτέμβρη, πάρκο Τρίτση στο Ίλιον). .Συγκεκριμένα, το πρόγραμα των σκακιστικών εκδηλώσεων έχει ως εξής: Παρασκευή 16/9 20.00: Επίδειξη...

Ανοικτή Σκακιστική Γιορτή για παιδιά και ενήλικες Διοργανωτές: Δήμος Θεσ/νίκης. Αντιδημαρχία Αθλητισμού, Νεολαίας, Εθελοντών Σκακιστικοί Σύλλογοι Δήμου Θεσσαλονίκης Τόπος: Ανοικτοί Χώροι Νέου Δημαρχείου Χρόνος:   ...

Everybody has had a bad tournament at some time in their careers and sometimes it can be very bad indeed. But how should someone recover so that it turns out better next time? First of all I think it’s important to be objective about what might have gone wrong and respectful toward father random; one [...]

Tension doing what it does to the human brain, the chess in these events is rarely what you come for. Yesterday's spectacular Svidler combo against Kamsky is now the only KO game I can remember, give or take. But they do delivery drama in spades. The ups and downs of the tiebreaks bring thrills and spills and it's the rare game that is won start to finish. Only three of eight fourth round matches...

The favourites made it through to the quarter finals of the World Cup but there were obviously some tired bodies out there in a round with more than its fair share of errors. Judit Polgar against Leinier Dominguez featured the closest matched players and they mixed the good with the bad before Polgar won an attractive blitz game in the Sicilian. Ruslan Ponomariov lost two games in a row against...

As most if not all of you are aware, Peter Svidler won a nice game against Gata Kamsky a day or two ago (depending on your time zone), complete with a spectacular winning game bound for future anthologies. For that reason alone the game deserves publicity, but it's a rich game even aside from its classic coup de grace. Accordingly, I give the game a close look in my ChessVideos show this week...

In the second tiebreak game of the fourth round match between Vladimir Potkin and Alexander Grischuk from the World Cup, Potkin voluntarily entered the following king and pawn ending: (Potkin-Grischuk, round 4.4. Position after 39.Kxe1.) It seemed lost to me before I knew the result or checked with an engine. He did indeed lose, and the one part of it I did check with an engine before writing my...

Rustam Kasimdzhanov's Beat the Slav the Classical Way (ChessBase 2011). 72 minutes. €9.90/$13.75. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.   ChessBase has recently started a new “60 Minutes” video series. This has nothing to do with the long-running American news program, but offers a reasonably quick look by a strong players on some topic or other. Most of the programs thus far...

Have a look here, where ChessBase's favorite statistician Jeff Sonas claims that at the top the percentage of draws has only risen very slightly since the 1960s and has held even steadier for master chess in general. Further, the percentage of short draws (ones agreed to before move 25) has declined considerably since the 1980s, and that pre-dates the Sofia/Corsica rules. As I've said a million...