US vs. Georgia at the 2004 Olympiad in Calvia
The Women’s World Championship started yesterday in Nalchik, Russia with 11 players missing (6 Georgians and 5 from France, USA, Holland, Russia, and Peru):
GM Marie Sebag 2529
GM Maia Chiburdanidze 2489
IM Irina Krush 2470
IM Lela Javakhishvili 2461
IM Ekaterina Korbut 2459
IM Maia Lomineishvili 2414
IM Nino Khurtsidze 2413
IM Sopiko Khukhashvili 2408
IM Tea Bosboom Lanchava 2358
IM Sopio Gvetadze 2355
WIM Karen Zapata 2180
Better with age?
Ivanchuk is approaching 40 but he is having one of the best years of his life. His latest triumph was at the Tal Memorial in Moscow where he won the super event by a full point.
NH Chess
The Experience vs Rising Stars experiment has turned out to be very lopsided, even with the Experience winning for the first time yesterday. I hope better matchups will be formed in future years.
It is Saturday Open Forum. What would you like to discuss?
I hope Ivanchuk can surpass Anand to be #1 after Bilbao next week.
Women’s World Championship
It’s pity that Georgina’s chess players don’t participate in such good tournament. But the situation is very complex. Maybe some of them would like to play but their chess federation didn’t allowed it because political reasons, they evaluated that boycott on such big event could be used in political fight. In this case I agree with President Ilyumzhinov – it wouldn’t mix chess with politic. Chess has universal values and it’s values are more importan than some political ideas. That,s the reason chess lives thousand years, at least, more than any political idea or some state.
As we could see from the start of that Championship, that boycott didn’t get it’s goal.
I’m sorry when I see like in this case that some chess players are only pawns in political games. They would be above any politic and take patern of behaviour of some chess legends like Keres, and Spassky. Spassky was not used in daily politic. Those sacrified queens didn’t get any mate for Ilyumzhinov or Russia. Boycott was obviously bad move. By the way, it’s not good for chess in their country and it’s against unity of chess world.
Wang Hue and Cheparinov did not belong in the Rising Stars team.
They should have invited Junior players like Hou Yifan, Wesley So, Negi, etc. By next year they will likely be too strong for the veterans.
Susan,
You should consider redesigning this site as a portal to the World of Chess.
Calling it a blog does not really fit the site content. Lot of companies are now blocking access to blogs and social networking sites.
polo,
I love chess and I follow chess news quite a bit. I was quite frustrated with the slow and inefficient system of getting the chess news out to the fans worldwide. That is why I decided to do this 3 years ago.
The problem is I have very limited computer experience and knowledge. I would not know how to build a chess website or update news like I do on this blog.
Best wishes,
Susan Polgar
Susan,
The tools for maintaining a web site are now quite user friendly. Once the site is set up it won’t be any different than maintaining this blog.
May be there is a volunteer out there that could assist you with setting up the site.
Keep up the good work.
Paul
40? I thought Chucky was 50!
Peter Harris said:
I am hoping to visit several rounds of the SPICE International when it’s held. There are a couple of items of interest to me.
This is proudly and rightly billed as the highest-category event ever held in the United States. The participants are all Grandmasters. But that brings me to my item of interest. Should the United States hold some tournaments (like last year’s SPICE Cup) with IM’s and FM’s going for GM norms? I was very itnerested last year in seeing if anyone would challenge for a new title. (Alas, none of them made it.)
Also, are nine-round tournaments going to be the norm throughout the United States? I used to hear of 12- or 16-player tournaments, and Fischer advocated even longer ones because of decreasing the impact of one loss on one player’s performance (specifically his own). If I remember right, FIDE requires that a player get at least two title norms in a span of 25 games. That would mean you would need three nine-round tournaments to get a title. There was carping in 1978 when Nona Gaprindashvili was awarded the GM title when she had something like two norms in short tournaments, totalling about 20 games. Would she have gotten the third norm if she had gotten more invitations — or not?
As a returnee to the American chess scene in 2004 after a self-imposed 11-year exile, I have many such questions. As a player who is rapidly nearing the time when I can enter the U.S. Senior Open, I also wonder about tournament chess in America and whether I can still play if everyone is passing me with Fritz and search engines. I’m hoping to teach my students to play for fun and use the lessons for advancement elsewhere. There were almost no scholastic events when I was a boy, and I was used to playing against grownups routinely. So I am trying to accommodate to what can be a severe case of culture shock.