IM Elizabeth Pähtz has been very active with matches lately. In early July, she made it all the way to the final at the Women’s World Chess Cup against me (she lost .5 – 1.5). Later that month, Pähtz played a 6-game match against American IM Irina Krush and lost 2.5 – 3.5. Now, she is in a match against Russian Kosteniuk (2-2 tie after 4 games) in Mainz.
Results of other matches in Mainz:
Naiditsch – Harikrishna 3.5 – 0.5
Hort – Portisch 2.5 – 1.5
Anand simul 35 – 5 (+31=8-1) 
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
What does
’35 – 5 (+31=8-1)’ mean ?
– Vinay
Out of 35 points, he’s down by 5 – losing 1 point for the loss, and 1/2 point for each of the 8 draws.
I’d love to see the moves of the one he lost!
Speaking of Lizzy Paehtz, I say ‘power to her’. Yes, she’s lost a few notable matches in the past year or so (and there WAS that incident years back when her failure at the European title brought tears – reminding me of Martina Hingis in her teens), but you’ve got to get tougher and tougher; the losses seem to do it for people.
Look at K. Lahno now – rising to the top after toughing it out with losses against top players for a year or so!
Remember Topolov from about 6 years back? Check the old crosstables and see how many times he finished dead LAST! Lots of other players registered brilliancies by beating the guy; NOW look at him.
And that may be it for all, or at least most of us. After years and years of watching my rating stay exactly the same, I’m thinkin’ that my only real course to improvement is to play against lots of tougher players; mainly, get my ass-kicked over and over again. Apparently learning from the losses is a great way to improve; if my ‘ego’ can just stand the repeated BRUISING!
Dan G.
meant to say 40 points, since he played 40 games (31 wins, 8 draws, 1 loss).
(couldn’t spell Pahtz right, since I don’t know how to get an umlaut)
d
http:// http://www.ChessTigers.de has now some downloadable .PGN files for their 2006/08 events.
They use a few DGT auto-sensor boards for their top games. In 2005 the DGT boards were enhanced to understand the setups and castlings of chess960. It worked pretty well last year.
I noticed tho that for chess960, DGT is emitting the FEN (position) portion of the PGN files using the old KQkq style of castling rights notation, instead of the newer BFbf style that works for chess960 and thus also for traditional “chess1” (those letters B & F are for the start columns of the two rooks in the particular Round 1 setup). Fritz9 is chess960 enabled, but it needs BFbf style (easily edited by hand).
Unfortunately, the .PGN of the Round 1 chess960 game between A. Kosteniuk and E. Paetz is flawed, it shows White castling O-O-O on her moves 11 & 13.
Gene Milener
http://CastleLong.com/
Great comeback by Hari, winning the match by winning the 4 last games!
Takes time to adapt to Chess960…
Re: Topalov’s performance, doesn’t that just reflect the improvement in Fritz’s strength over the years? 😉
Just out of curiosity: why is Pähtz called ‘Elisabeth’ and Krush called ‘Irina’, while Kosteniuk’s name is given as ‘Russian’?
Now, Elizaberg Paehtz have to go to Wellington for the NATO Chess Championship ! This tournament begin on monday augustus 21th !
More information on http://www.natochess.org or after the tournament pictures and report on http://www.echecs-photos.be !
It isn’t ‘Russian Kosteniuk’ (sometimes called Alexandra), it is a little-known player Ruslan Kosteniuk, an FM from Minsk.