LA Times Chess Update

Vassily Ivanchuk ends slump
By Jack Peters, International Master
July 5, 2009

Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine drew his last two games to claim first prize in the Kings tournament in Bazna, Romania. Ivanchuk finished with an outstanding score of 7-3 in the double round robin.

Boris Gelfand of Israel took second prize at 6-4, followed by Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and Alexey Shirov of Spain at 5 1/2 -4 1/2 . Former U.S. champion Gata Kamsky and the Romanian representative, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, shared last place with winless 3-7 scores.

Ivanchuk, one of the most exciting and least consistent grandmasters, emphatically ended a slump that cost him more than 80 rating points since November. The poor result of Kamsky, one of the steadiest, was the greatest surprise of the tournament.

Candidates matches

Kamsky fared better when the World Chess Federation (FIDE) announced the rules for the Candidates matches which will select the challenger for the 2011 world championship. Kamsky, who lost a February match to Veselin Topalov to determine the current challenger to world champion Viswanathan Anand, will be seeded into the eight-player event.Others will be the loser of the Anand-Topalov match, the winner of November’s World Cup, the two top finishers in the 2008-09 Grand Prix, two players chosen by rating and one chosen by the organizer.

FIDE plans to assemble the eight players in one location during the last quarter of 2010. The players will contest three rounds of matches in a period of 23 days. The first two rounds will consist of four-game matches, and the third round will last six games. Ties will be broken with games of 25 minutes or quicker.

This plan improves on the various methods FIDE used to determine challengers since the mid-1990s. The substantial prize fund of 420,000 Euros (about $588,000), with a minimum of 30,000 Euros (about $42,000) to each first-round loser, sounds attractive. However, complications may arise. FIDE has not yet found an organizer for the final tournament of the Grand Prix or for the Anand-Topalov match, which is tentatively slotted for early 2010.

Here is the full article.