4NCL Hit by Petrol Crisis?

There's a 4NCL (British Team League) weekend coming up and Britain is in the grip of a petrol crisis (either that or it's a government ruse to take our minds off their half-witted budget measures, pensions rip-offs, NHS destruction and general mismanagement of the country).

Organiser of top-level chess events in Liverpool, Prof. David Robertson, wrote on his Facebook page: "Isn't there a sizeable risk that those who reach Hinckley Island on Saturday will be trapped there forever? Didn't Sartre write 'Huis Clos' with this in mind?"

A frightening thought. As Sartre might have written in similar circumstances, "l'enfer, c'est les autres joueurs d'echecs"...

Chess Links

Note that the old bcmchess.co.uk domain now points to www.chess.co.uk

If anyone is missing the chess links page, note that it can be found in two places;

One is at the main chess.co.uk site here: www.chess.co.uk/links.html

And also at my personal website, here: www.saund.co.uk/chesslinks.html

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 8

After beating Judit Polgar yesterday, Women's World Champion Hou Yifan of China followed it up by taking another 2700 rated scalp this afternoon. Amazing stuff! The game was very complicated, but she played some very enterprising, risk-taking chess. There was a definite touch of the Mikhail Tal about it.

That said, the Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem seemed to be at least drawing the game when he played the incomprehensible 37...Bc5??, taking this all-important defensive piece off the long diagonal when 37...Rf7 was the obvious move. I guess he was in time trouble. Hou Yifan took her chance with aplomb and she could well be sharing the lead tonight when the other games finish.

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess, Round 7 - 30 Jan 2012

An historic moment at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival as the world's greatest ever woman player Judit Polgar sits down to play women's world champion Hou Yifan for the first time. Latest: Hou Yifan won the game - see the score below. Judit seemed well below par but Hou Yifan took her chance brilliantly.

Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival, Round 3

Nigel Short loves Gibraltar. He has won here a couple of times and the worst he has done is finishing second equal. Last year he had a phenomenal result on the Rock, finishing second to Ivanchuk (who scored an even more phenomenal success).

In round three he was paired with the world no.14. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov. Nigel played the Azerbaijani super-GM at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad and gave him a good drubbing. One imagines that Mamedyarov would have been thirsting for revenge today. Instead, he received another good drubbing! Resignation at the end is slightly premature, if only because many spectators might not have understood why, but there is little doubt that Nigel would have finished the job.

Comments below are based on Nigel Short's comments after the game.

Official Live Games: http://www.livestream.com/gibchess2012

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Aronian Shows The Way

Levon Aronian is in seemingly irresistible form in Wijk aan Zee at the moment and he leads the field by a full point with three rounds remaining. His tenth round win with Black against home player Anish Giri had a little bit of everything. Some sharp and enterprising opening theory (courtesy of an Armenian colleague), an exchange sacrifice (inspired, no doubt, by his great Armenian predecessor Tigran Petrosian), confident, patient middlegame technique, topped off with an improbably beautiful knight sacrifice to set up mate.

It seems a long time ago now that we were talking about the possibility of Magnus Carlsen overtaking Garry Kasparov's record rating of 2851 in Wijk. The way Levon Aronian is playing, there is probably a slightly better chance of Levon Aronian overtaking Carlsen at the top of the present rating list by the end of the tournament.

Levon Aronian (photo Fred Lucas)

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, Round 10: Missed Opportunity

An amusing finale from this afternoon's games at Wijk aan Zee...