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"I want to be treated like a world champion!"
06.02.2002
– "I am ready to participate in Linares if the organizers would change their
attitude to me as a world champion!" This was the core of a press conference
given by the FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov on February 6, 2002. Apparently
Ponomariov, who faces a million dollar lawsuit, wants to renegotiate the appearance
fee (or have a special flag on the chess table). The Donetsk Chess Federation
circulated a press release and an email letter received from Linares. The documents
are available in lucid English here.
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Giant Aeroflot tournament
05.02.2002
– Did you know? Yesterday a giant open chess tournament started in Moscow, in
a spectacular venue – the Rossiya
Hotel – and with a really princely prize sum: $150,000 with $25,000 going
to the winner of the first prize. Any wonder that GMs have turned up in droves
from all parts of the current and earlier republics. You can find schedules,
news, results and standings, all in English, at the official
Aeroflot-Open site.
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Junior7 wins prestigious CCT4 computer tournament
05.02.2002
– Last weekend the members of the ICD Computer Chess Club organized their fourth tournament, a 46 player event with 11 rounds. The clear winner was World Champion Deep Junior 7, written by Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky from Israel, with 9/11 points. Most programs were operated by their authors which gives the tournament high prestige.
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Beating the opponents and beating the clocks
05.02.2002
– One of the most difficult forms of chess is the clock simul. The opponents
of the master each have a clock, and the simultaneous master get exactly the
same time as his adversaries – just once for all the games. Sounds horribly
unfair, but a world class GM can handle a strong chess club in this way. Peter
Svidler, semi-finaliste at the FIDE world championship, took on 11 opponents
from the Frankfurt West chess club. You will find a report and the games (some
annotated by the players) here.
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Squaring up to Lennox Lewis
05.02.2002
– Everyone knows that Lennox Lewis is the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion
of the world, but also an obsessive chessplayer. Last week Lewis might have lost the chance
to defend his title against Mike Tyson (after the former champion was stripped
of his licence for trying to eat Lennox's leg at a press conference), so instead
he decided to accept the challenge of a Telegraph editor Dominic
Lawson to a battle over the 64 squares of the chessboard. You will find a vivid
description of the two-game match here.
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Sosonko's summary
04.02.2002
– Genna Sosonko hails from Leningrad, in 1972 he moved to Holland and soon became
a world-class GM. Today at 58 he has severely restricted his active play, chosing
instead to devote himself to a new literary career. In a special, highly instructive
interview Genna characterises the players of the recent Corus
tournament in Wijk aan Zee. You will find his summary here.
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Ponomariov faces one million dollar lawsuit
03.02.2002
– The second big event in this year, Linares 2002, has a remarkably strong field, with Kasparov, Anand, Adams, Ivanchuk, Shirov and Vallejo Pons. Originally the seventh player was Ruslan Ponomariov, but the newly crowned FIDE world champion seems to have changed his mind and cancelled his appearence. Now he faces an expensive lawsuit for breach of contract.
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ChessBase Player of the Year award
01.02.2002
– Originally we intended calling this the "Man of the Year Award", with the term "man" adhering to the common English usage of meaning man, woman or gender-challenged. In fact we also open our award nomination to include electronic chessplaying entities, whom we certainly do not wish to discriminate against. Well, cast your votes, you can win a special prize by electing the ChessBase player of the year
here
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I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core!
31.01.2002
– Bobby Fischer has given another interview, the first after the deeply disturbing remarks we heard from him on September 12 last year. This time he talks much more about chess, although the tirades of hate against Americans and Jewish people still comes through at full blast. But mainly we learn that he has turned his back on the "old chess" and will only play Fischer Random. You will find some excerpts and the full audio files in MP3 format
here.
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Bareev wins Wijk aan Zee
27.01.2002
– Russian GM Evgeny Bareev is prone to being the victim to the odd miniature
or two – particularly with the French Defence. If he doesn't lose in under
twenty moves, so the joke goes, he's unbeatable. In round 11 of the Corus tournament
in Wijk he went down in 19 moves to Khalifman. But still this embarrassing defeat
did not prevent him from taking the tournament with 9/13 and a performance 2831.
Read all about it in the final "Double Dutch" report on our Wijk
aan Zee page.
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Book, books and more boeks
26.01.2002
– With Bareev and Grischuk comfortably in the lead, followed by Adams and Morozevich,
our correspondent John Henderson takes the free day off to visit one of the
most remarkable collections of chess books in the world. The Royal Dutch Library
is just two minutes from the main station of Den Haag, and is something that
should not be missed if you ever visit the Netherlands. Read all about it –
and get the games and results from the Corus tournament on our Wijk
aan Zee page.
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Einstein takes over Brain Games and Kramnik
25.01.2002
– It was announced today that the Einstein Group plc in England has taken over the rights previously held by the Brain Games Network for the Man v Machine event in Bahrain, the Dortmund qualifier and 2003 Chess Championship match against Vladimir Kramnik. The group was founded in 1999 and is a multimedia Group including a satellite channel on Sky Digital.
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