Javier Posted November 29, 2007 Report Share Posted November 29, 2007 Javier: Don't miss the opportunity to read Speelman's great comments on a recent game of Kramnik: I reported last week, on Veselin Topalov's impressive victory at the 'Chess Champions League - Playing for a Better World' tournament in Vitoria Gasteiz in Spain. Since his defeat in the highly acrimonious Unification Match against Vladimir Kramnik just over a year ago, Topalov's career has been overshadowed by its almost equally messy aftermath, which has to some extent polarised the chess world (for the record I'm very much on Kramnik's side). And the trend continued even in Topalov's hour of triumph as Kramnik himself pulled out an even more impressive performance, at the Mikhail Tal Memorial Chess Tournament in Moscow. Tal (1936-92 and World Chess Champion from 1960-1) was, of course, one of the greatest attacking chess geniuses of all time. Various tournaments have been held in his memory including a real 'super tournament' a year ago in Moscow, with just a single 'weakie' under 2700: Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen. has, of course, now breached that barrier and was back in action in an event in which the organisers had raised the bar even higher, moving the average up to 2741 - only the top nine in the world are rated this or above. The list was headed by the current world numbers two and three: Vassily Ivanchuk and Kramnik and the bottom seed was the world number 19, Dmitri Jakovenko. In the first round on Saturday 10 November, Carlsen had the potentially treacherous pairing of Black against Kramnik. In their previous game... View the full article Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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