2012 London Chess Classic Round 2: Anand Escapes McShane with Draw

World champion Viswanathan Anand survived anxious moments before he salvaged a draw against Luke McShane of England in the second round of the London Chess Classic on Sunday. Having started with a bye, Anand had the advantage of playing white in the opener but the Indian ace could not find any real advantage and finally survived by the skin of the teeth to open his account.

World number one, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen registered himself as the highest-rated player ever in the history defeating second seed Levon Aronian of Armenia in a finely-crafted game.

Former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia made sure that Carlsen did not get a runaway lead in just two rounds and ground down Hikaru Nakamura of United States in a long drawn queen and pawns endgame. The other game between Judit Polgar of Hungary and Gawain Jones of England ended in an exciting draw.

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Kasparov Chess Exhibition, Lecture in Macau Today

Mr João Riquito poses beside the chess table conceived by Konstantin Bessmertny

Considered the “greatest chess master of all time”, Garry Kasparov is coming to Macau play a match against Xiong Junyang, a female Chinese chess master and two-time winner of the Chinese National Chess Championship in the junior category who resides in Macau.
The match is being organized by the “Riquito Advogados” solicitors’ office and is scheduled for December 2, at 2:30 pm in the STDM Auditorium, at the University Library of the University of Macau. The event is part of a series of activities as Mr João Riquito, who himself is a passionate chess player, believes “there are more interesting things to do than to deal with the law.” 

Thus the former World Chess Champion will not only come to play but also deliver a seminar on “The theory of decisions” the day before, on December 1st. This talk will take place at 11 am at the lawyers’ office; however, is only for members of the office and “a few selected guests.” 

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Asia's Biggest Chess Open in Kolkata December 3

In what is being billed as the strongest chess open in Asia, 36 Grandmasters and five women Grandmasters will be among 105 players from 16 countries taking part in the Rs.12 lakh Rose Valley Open International Chess Tournament to be played in Kolkata Dec 3-12. The field includes 13 Grandmasters who have FIDE ratings of over 2,600, Polish Radesk Wojtaszek (2,734) being the highest ranked player. Leading the Indian challenge will be former national chess champion Abhijeet Gupta.

The 25-year-old Super Grandmaster, a former world youth chess champion, has been one of the four seconds to world chess champion Viswanathan Anand during the Indian’s successful title defences in 2008 and 2010 and earlier this year.

Vietnam’s Le Quang Liem (2,705), Anton Koropov (2,702) of Ukraine, Netherlands player Sergei Tiviakov (2,663) are the second, third and fourth highest ranked GMs in the tourney to be staged at the Alekhine Chess Club, West Bengal sports minister Madan Mitra told a media meet here Sunday.

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Cat-astrophe Chess Video: Must Watch!

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Category-18 Chess in New Delhi with GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek as Top Seed

Former Indian national chess champion 

GM Parimarjan Negi with journalists.

The AIFC-AAI Chess Cup is being held in New Delhi, India from Dec 20-30, according to a press release. The six-player double round-robin format category-18 tournament will be played at the Airport Authority of India Club (AAI) here. his is the second edition of the AICF-AAI Cup, which was a category-17 event last year. The tournament was won by Fabiano Caruana of Italy in its inaugural edition and the player has subsequently moved into the top-10 of the FIDE world rankings.

All India Chess Federation (AICF) secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan said, "The list of players for this tournament is the best line up India have ever seen and we are expecting very tough competition in the ten days of the tournament."

This year's star attraction would be GM Radoslaw Wojtaszek of Poland. Wojtaszek is a top-50 player and would be looking to add valuable rating points to his tally. Leading the charge of challengers against him would be GM Anton Korobov of Ukraine, who boasts of a 2700+ rating and Russia's in-form player GM Evgeny Alekseev.

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Carlsen beats McShane, cracks all time high rating

World number one Magnus Carlsen of Norway cracked all-time high ratings, defeating Luke McShane of England in the first round of the London Chess Classic at the Olympia here.

The rating for Carlsen stood at 2851.2 points in the unofficial live rating portals which means that the Norwegian has cracked the all-time high rating record of 2851 held by former world champion and his former trainer Gary Kasparov of Russia.

On what turned out to be a perfect opener, all the four games in the nine-players round robin tournament ended decisively and the biggest upset was recorded by Hikaru Nakamura of United States who defeated World number two Levon Aronian with black pieces.

With Nakamura calling the shots, Vladimir Kramnik turned out to be another winner of the day at the expense of world's top woman player Judit Polgar of Hungary. The all-decisive-games record was kept intact by a late-benefitting Michael Adams of England against compatriot Gawain Jones. World champion Vishwanathan Anand had a rest day in the opener as he drew number one in the official drawing of lots.

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Anna Ushenina is New Women's World Chess Champion

After a 2-2 deadlock in the normal games, the stage was set for an exciting finale in Khanty Mansiysk, Russia and Ushenina came up triumph winning the second game under rapid time control after the first game had ended in a draw. The Ukrainian won 60000 USD for her efforts in the championship and gets to play the next World Championship against Yifan Hou of China next year as part of the new cycle in the women’s World Championship.

The 64-players championship ended in a tie-break much like the men’s World Championship earlier this year where Vishwanathan Anand won defeating Boris Gelfand of Israel in the rapid tie-break. The Indian challenge in the championship had lasted till the semi-finals where D Harika went down to Stefanova after an intense struggle.

Speaking about the match, Ushenina did not mince words while calling it a gruelling schedule. “The match was very interesting, but we were clearly tired and made many mistakes. In the third and fourth games we exchanged blows -- first I took the lead, then Antoaneta equalised the score. In the first tie-break game white stood better, but I held a draw. In the second game black was slightly worse, but Antoaneta was very short on time, defended inaccurately and gave me a chance to win,” said the new women’s world champion.

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