by John Lee Shaw




Najer Wins President's Cup, Baku

The President's Cup was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, May 9th-21st. As I reported last week, the main event was the Open section, a 9-round swiss, with a $7000 first prize, plus trophy. Top seeds were Vadim Milov and Ivan Sokolov with 2690, but the event also saw such players as Baadur Jobava, Nigel Short, Loek van Wely, and Alexander Beliavsky turning out, and veterans Viktor Korchnoi and Jan Timman.

At the last report, 7 rounds had been played, and Evgeny Najer led with 6.5 points. Najer had of course been on 6/6, an outstanding performance, but drew with Gadir Guseinov in round 7. Two rounds remained, then, and Najer would have two tough games to finish his tournament. In round 8 he would face one of the 'home' GM's, Farid Abbasov, and in the very last round, Georgian GM, Baadur Jobava. Najer held his nerve in these final stages, drawing both games though coming under heavy pressure. This gave him clear first place in the tournament.

Personally, I found this a nice event to observe, it was very hard fought to the end, and was wide open. One thing worth mentioning, and not shown in the scores given here, is that GM Viktor Korchnoi finished in 18th place with 6.0/9. At 73 years of age, that is some achievement!

Evgeny Najer, Winner of the main event, with his prizes.
Namely $7000 and a beautiful trophy.

Dutch GM's Loek van Wely and Jan Timman.

Baadur Jobava and Shakyryar Mamedyarov contesting the blitz event.
Mamedyarov won by a half point, Jobava second ...

You can have a bit of fun with your own caption for this one :-)

Zatonskih and Shulman become New US Champions

The United States of America has two new national champions, namely Anna Zatonskih for the women, and Yuri Shulman for the men. The Championships were held May 13-21 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 24 players competed for the men's title, with Alexander Shabalov defending champion. 10 players contested the women's title, that saw Irina Krush as defending champion. 9 rounds were played in each section.

Both sections proved hotly competitive, GM Shulman pipping GM Onischuk by a half point, with 7 points. Alexander Shabalov will be quite disappointed with his defence of the title, finishing on 4.5 points, 11th-14th place.

The women's title came down to tie-breaks, IM's Krush and Zatonskih both finishing on 7.5 points. It seemed that nothing could separate the two, with the rapid tie-break being drawn 2-2, forcing a sudden-death armageddon game. This was won by Zatonskih (I assume on time as white is better in the final position) who was black in the game, to take the title. This will have come to Zatonskih's relief to be honest, as she hung her queen with a huge blunder in the first game of the play-off and really had to dig deep in order to recover things.

The play-off format for the tournament has been criticised somewhat, with many feeling that to hold it on the same day as the final scheduled game is a bit much. Susan Polgar said on her blog, "I hope that the playoff can be played the next morning in the future. To have to play 5 playoff games after a full round 9 game is tough for anyone."  As someone who does not like settling big titles with such tie-breaks anyway, one would have to agree.

Regardless of the format, nothing should be taken away from Anna Zatonskih for winning the title. She had the same conditions as her opponent, and showed true grit in her battle to become a national champion of her country. Congratulations to her and Yuri Shulman!

• The annual Bosna tournament is currently being held in Sarajevo between May 23rd and June 2nd. Morozevich tops the field, which also includes Movsesian, I. Sokolov, and Timofeev. It will be played over 9 rounds, with rest days after rounds 5 and 8. Currently Morozevich leads with 3/4. [website]

• The King's Tournament 2008 is underway in Bazna, Romania between May 24th and June 3rd. It is played over 11 rounds, Khalifman is top seed. Other big names include Short, Beliavsky, and Timman. Time control is as follows: 40 moves in 90 minutes with 30 second increments. Thereafter players will receive an additional 30 minutes, with 30 second increments to complete the game. To be honest, I can not make head nor tail of the official website, but the ever knowledgable and reliable Mark Crowther of TWIC lists Nigel Short and Lajos Portisch leading with 2 points each.  [website]



Events Coming Up ...

• Peter Leko will play a rapid match against Magnus Carlsen, May 28th to June 1st. The match will be held in Miskolc, Hungary. It will consist of 8 games, 2 each day, with a rest day half way. [website]

• The 21st Magistral “Ciudad de León” will be held in Leon, Spain, May 29th to June 1st. Competing will be Vishy Anand, Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexey Shirov, and Francisco Vallejo-Pons. There will be 2 semi-finals played over the Friday and Saturday, with the final being on Sunday. Time control is g/20 +10s per move. [website]



and finally ... again ...

Will there be a Topalov vs Kamsky World Championship semi? Well, FIDE are still silent on the matter, having produced no updates since May 15th. Nor is there much more information to be found from the camp of either player. Well, that is not strictly accurate, Silvio Danailov recently gave an interview to ChessDom in which he was highly sceptical regarding Lviv, and went on to state that Topalov is willing to play anywhere apart from Russia, (for obvious reasons).

Meanwhile, speculation and opinion run wild, and this is of course a natural reaction and can't be criticised.

As this article goes live, the date is May 27th, and we are at the date that FIDE gave in the press release of May 5th as the point when both parties are expected to sign "their undertakings". It is only fair, in my opinion, that this is seen as the 'yes' or 'no' point of this match. Surely, after delay following delay, there can be no arguing with this date. Over the next 24 hours, there will either be a good announcement, bad announcement, or with FIDE's record, no announcement at all. To be quite honest, the fact that all is quiet as you read this should not be seen as a good sign.

So, once again, the crown of chess is drawn through the hedge, and the governing body is silent.



Thanks for joining me for this edition of the round-up. See you this time next week!