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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
General Guidelines
---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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The Tradewise Gibraltar Masters takes place January 23 to February 2, 2017.
Official Announcement
The organisers of the 15th Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival proudly announce the eight leading players of the 2017 Masters. In what promises to be the strongest Open ever held, the Caleta Hotel will once again host a stellar line-up, with players of all standards and from an estimated 50+ countries competing for a total prize fund of £190,000.
The eight GMs who have accepted invitations so far:
Fabiano Caruana
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
Hikaru Nakamura
Veselin Topalov
Michael Adams
Boris Gelfand Vassily Ivanchuk
Hou Yifan
Recall that in 2016 there were 257 participants in the Masters. Nakamura and MVL tied for first with 8.0 points out of 10. Nakamura won a five game speed playoff 3-2 and the title.
1 Caruana, Fabiano USA 2827
2 Vachier-Lagrave, M. FRA 2796
3 Nakamura, Hikaru USA 2785
4 Ivanchuk, Vassily UKR 2752
5 Adams, Michael ENG 2751
6 Svidler, Peter RUS 2748
7 Topalov, Veselin BUL 2739
8 Yu, Yangyi CHN 2738
9 Vitiugov, Nikita RUS 2724
10 Gelfand, Boris ISR 2721
11 Naiditsch, Arkadij AZE 2702
12 Matlakov, Maxim RUS 2701
13 Cheparinov, Ivan BUL 2689
14 Kovalenko, Igor LAT 2684
15 Zvjaginsev, Vadim RUS 2679
16 Short, Nigel D ENG 2675
17 Shankland, Samuel USA 2674
18 Fressinet, Laurent FRA 2660
19 Ganguly, Shekhar IND 2657
20 Salem, A.R. Saleh UAE 2656
21 Howell, David W L ENG 2655
22 Iturrizaga B, Ed. VEN 2652
23 Piorun, Kacper POL 2651
24 Hou, Yifan CHN 2651
25 Anton Guijarro, D. ESP 2650
In Gibraltar the average day temperature in January and February of 16°C, 10 hours of daylight at least, moderate winds, low rainfall, warm sea temperatures, beautiful scenery and one of the strongest and best organised tournaments in the world. Paradise!
The commentators are Jovanka Houska and Simon Williams. Jovanka is a 36-year-old English chess player, both IM and WGM and six times British Women’s Chess Champion. Her family origin is Czech and she uses her maiden name. She has a law degree and also writes on chess with a few opening books published.
She is now more famous for writing raunchy chess fiction in a book entitled “The Mating Game”.
Simon Williams styles himself as the Ginger G.M. so I won’t offend him by saying that he resembles Ron Weasley of the Harry Potter books in both appearance and speech.
One of the first things they discuss is the game Kobo-Ju because White’s white bishop is missing and the pawns at e2 and g2 have not been moved. It is a simple problem in retrograde analysis. The most popular books with retrograde problems are Raymond Smullyan books Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Nights.
The Kobo-Ju game finishes because Ju Wenjun as Black traps Kobo’s queen in the centre. Ori Kobo is an Israeli IM. He played Vassily Ivanchuk yesterday. Vassily didn’t realize it, but in recording the game he left the space for move 24 blank. When he thought he had made the time control with 40 moves, he had, in fact, just played 39 and lost on time. He had a winning position but Kobo picked up the point. Today he was beaten by Ju, dropping his queen.
Gibraltar has a huge attendance but not enough digital boards it seems. Therefore, today, Ivanchuk, because of his loss, is playing on a lower board and we can’t see the moves. When he is finished, he and his opponent will give their score sheets up, they will be transcribed and we will finally get a copy of the game.
The top grandmasters are not having their way in this tournament. There are twelve with ratings above 2700 but none of them are winning all their games. At this time in Round Three, Nakamura has drawn, Svidler has drawn, Caruana and MVL have won but had draws in the previous round. Hou Yifan and Anna Muzychuk have drawn. The Women’s World Championship starts of February 10; Anna will be there but Hou Yifan is not participating.
Nigel Short beats another Anna, Zatonskih from the USA. Zatonskih is a four-time U.S. Women's Champion, as well as a former Ukrainian Women's Champion.
Tania Sachdev has a long prerecorded interview with Boris Gelfand. She is a very good interviewer and knows her chess history and personalities. I am impressed with the work that both Jovanka and Tania are doing and put them up there with my top ten men commentators.
It seems that Boris’s two children are eager to hear, when he returns home, not about the chess on Gibraltar but the activity of the apes!
Boris is in the endgame against Almagro of Spain. Boris has two bishops and pawn against White’s two pawns and a bishop. Supposedly Boris has a won game but I guess it could get down to his trying to mate with two bishops. I can’t remember the last time I saw this in practice.
Round 3, Jan. 26, 2017
Almagro Llamas, Pablo – Gelfand, Boris
D02 Queen’s Pawn game
There was a power failure on The Rock the other day. Today, the pairings still have not appeared and the thought is that they have again had a power failure and communications are down.
In any case, here are the Canadian games from Round Two:
Round 2, Jan. 25, 2017
Kozak, Adam – Spraggett, Kevin
E38 Nimzo-Indian, Classical
- I don't know if I sound like an idiot but how come there aren't enough digital boards?
- Ivanchuk’s game isn’t being broadcast today, in the name of goodness.
- Do you know how expensive digital boards are? 125 of the things would stretch most budgets.
- Yes, actually I do, I work in eCommerce so know the price of most things. Even if I didn't know the price I would find a tournament where a many-times Candidate's games isn't broadcast live to be absurd. Surely they could be hired at a minimal cost?
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