Viktor Korchnoi leading the seniors’ tournament after round six
The Russian Chess Federation is organizing a number of events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the 6th World Champion Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (17 August 1911 – 5 May 1995).
Besides the grande event with the World’s top players and a strong open in Sankt Petersburg, the RCF is hosting a seniors’ tournament from 15th to 19th August in Suzdal-Vladimir Oblast. Legendary players from Botvinnik era compete in the round robin rapid tournament with the time control of 25min + 10 sec/move.
Former World Champion Boris Spassky was set to make an appearance but eventually GM Oleg Chernikov took his place.
After six rounds of play Viktor Korchnoi took a convincing lead with five points, full point and a half ahead of the group of players.
Chief arbiter is Yuri Averbakh. The prize fund is 14200 EUR.
Round 6 standings:
1. GM Viktor Korchnoi SUI 2553 – 5.0
2-4. GM Lajos Portisch HUN 2523, GM Evgeni Vasiukov RUS 2455 and IM Aleksander Nikitin RUS 2430 – 3.5
5-9. GM Oleg Chernikov RUS 2402, GM Wolfgang Uhlmann GER 2379, GM Borislav Ivkov SRB 2416, GM Igor Zaitsev RUS 2408 and IM Anatoly Bykhovsky RUS 2354 – 2.5
Swiercz Dariusz caught leader Robert Hovhannisyan in the tape and finished with 10.5 points. A superior tie-break gave the Polish Grandmaster the World Junior Champion title.
Swiercz Dariusz, with Gold medal, crowned World Junior Chess Champion 2011
Tournament leader Robert Hovhannisyan of Armenia settled for the Silver medal, as his final round draw pulled him down from the top spot. India’s International Master Sahaj Grover (9.5) from New Delhi, who scalped two successive GMs in the final two rounds, emerged a clear third. Sahaj won the bronze medal along with a Grandmaster Norm and restored pride for the hosts, India.
Woman Grandmaster Cori T Deysi, with 11 points, emerged the World Junior Girls champion. Cori owes a big thanks to India’s Padmini Rout, who defeated leader Olga Girya in the final round. Olga’s defeat enabled Cori to overtake the Russian, and emerge a clear winner. This is the first time a player from Peru has claimed the World Junior Girls title.
Cori T Deysi, with Gold medal, crowned World Junior Girls Chess Champion 2011
The second place and silver medal went to WGM Olga Girya of Russia at 10.5 points, while top seed Georgian Woman Grandmaster Nazi Paikidze, with 9.5 points, settled for bronze medal and the third spot.
The final round also saw two 13 game Norms being made, a Grandmaster Norm for India’s International Master Sahaj Grover and an International Master Norm for the FIDE Master from Brazil Barbosa Evandro Amorim. The 50 nation, 200 player event came to a grand conclusion on the Indian Independence day.
Olga Girya, Russia (Silver), Cori T Deysi, Peru (Gold), Nazi Paikidze, Georgia (Bronze)
(L to R) Mrs Nirmala Raja, RAMCO Group, World Junior Girls Champion 2011 Cori T Deysi (Peru), Mr P R Venketrama Raja, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, RAMCO Group, Mr D V Sundar, Vice President, FIDE, Mr R M Dongre, President, Asian Zone 3.7, Treasurer, All India Chess Federation
(L to R) IM Manuel Aaron, Mr P R Venketrama Raja, Vice Chairman & Managing Director, RAMCO Group, Mrs Nirmala Raja, RAMCO Group, World Junior Chess Champion 2011 Swiercz Dariusz (Poland), Mr D V Sundar, Vice President, FIDE, Mr R M Dongre, President, Asian Zone 3.7, Treasurer, All India Chess Federation
Yet another Super Open with a prize fund over 50 000 eur concluded in Baku. GM Sergei Zhigalko took clear first place with 7,0/9 and won one of the strongest opens for this summer. The 7th seeded Zhigalko started with 5,0/5 and calmly concluded 4 draws to the end to finish undefeated.
In the last check before the World Cup 2011, second and third place are for GM Dmitry Andreikin and GM Emil Sutovsky, both with 6,5/9. The top seeded GM Mamedyarov finished with 6,0/9 at 8th position, while the other rating favorites GM Vallejo and GM Dominguez are 15th and 16th.
GM Alexander Ipatov will be joining the list of the top 20 strongest juniors in the world on the September FIDE rating list. His current live ELO is bordering 2600 after a successful first part of the summer that brings him over 35 fresh points to his rating. To celebrate the future entrance in the list, GM Ipatov is holding a simul Monday at 19:00 CET at ChessFriends.
The qualification tournament is open for everyone on Sunday 14th, 19:00 CET. The time control is 5 min/game with 9 rounds. The first 6 players will qualify for the Simul with GM Ipatov, and the next 3 will be subsititutes.
The Simul itself will take place on Monday 15th, 19:00 CET. The time control is 30 min. for both sides. It will be broadcast live on the game server Chessfriends and the main page of Chessdom.
Arad Open 2011, the largest Romanian swiss tournament of the year, is entering the second half as the 5th round was played Monday. The prize fund of 4500 Euro has attracted over 150 players, among them being the winner from the 2010 event GM Vlad-Cristian Jianu.
The tournament doesn’t miss the surprises as two of the favourites, Grandmasters Imre Balog (Hungary) and Petar Drenchev (Bulgaria), lost against the Romanian junior champions Stefan Tomici and Alexandru Pop. Round 5 standings are bellow.
The playing venue, Cultural Palace of Arad, usual place for classical music concerts, is very convenient for a chess event and many fans are coming daily to observe the games. The same hall hosts the children tournaments (U8 and U12), with over 70 players, some of them being the winners of medals at the strongest Romanian junior competitions.
The official opening of the tournament and also the first inaugural move was made by the Romanian Minister of Sports and Youth, Mrs.Doina Melinte, Olympic Champion in athletics in 1984, invited by the tournament organizer, IO Alin-Vivian Campeanu.
Mrs.Doina Melinte opening the tournament
The tournament website www.aradopen.com provides live games (five per round), photos and daily chronicles with interviews, all in a modern presentation.
World Women Chess Championship in Tirana, November
The Women’s World Chess Championship between Women World Champion Hou Yifan from China and the Challenger Humpy Koneru from India, will be held in Tirana, Albania in November 2011 for a prize fund of 200,000 euros.
The announcement came in a press release parallel to the information that Koneru’s compatriot Vishwanathan Anand will meet Boris Gelfand in Russia for the World Chess Championship 2012
The Russian Super Final will take place 8-15 August, 2011 with the participation of Kramnik, Morozevich, Karjakin, Timofeev, Grischuk, Svidler, Nepomniachtchi, and Galkin. It will be a round robin with time control 90 minutes for 40 moves plus 30 minutes to the end of the game, with time increment of 30 seconds per move.
For the past several years the status of the “strongest”, “most talanted”, “most progressing”, and “best” player in the Russian chess powerhouse has been in dispute. With the current shakeups after the Ngibo WTCC 2011 failure, Russian national team spots are wide open and this championship might point to the current form and readiness of individual players for the upcoming strong test – the European Team Chess Championship this autumn.
All of the current participants have something to prove. The team in Ngibo was without Kramnik, now he is up against the strongest players from there and has to show that his top form from Dortmund is a constant and he still deserves to be at the top board. Karjakin came to Russia with a single idea on his mind – to be the future leader of the team, and the Russian Super Final is the right place to demonstrate his ambition. Grischuk defeated Kramnik and is the best placed individual Russian player in the World Chess Championship 2012 cycle and comes determined to defend his status. Morozevich is back on the scene with good performance in Biel and was the only one to challenge Carlsen’s domination. Timofeev, Nepomniachtchi, Svidler, and Galkin are proven fighter, but they have to make a lot in this event to secure a spot for the ETCC.
GM Igor Kurnosov takes a clear first place with 8.5 points
The 2011 Politiken Cup was held from 30th July to 7th August in Lo Skolen, Denmark. 309 players competed and among them 26 Grandmasters, 14 International Masters, and 12 players rated above 2600 elo.
Russian GM Igor Kurnosov took a clear first place with 8.5 points from ten games. Half a point behind are five players sharing the 2nd place.
In each of the following sections by rating (min. 10 players per group): 1000-1500, 1501-1700, 1701-1900, 1901-2050, 2051-2200, 2201-2300, 2301-2400: 1. 3.000,- 2. 2.000,-.
7-15. GM Jon Ludvig Hammer NOR 2610, GM Robert Ruck HUN 2569, GM Michal Krasenkow POL 2607, IM Marc Tyler Arnold USA 2445, GM Leif Erland Johannessen NOR 2496, GM Richárd Rapport HUN 2545, IM Willy Hendriks NED 2415, WGM Anna Zatonskih USA 2522 and GM Marijan Petrov BUL 2534 – 7½ etc
Dyhemia Young left for Lubbock, Texas, with a black eye — compliments of a girl at her East Palo Alto group home — and returned the proud recipient of a chess scholarship worth $40,000.
Along the way, the 15-year-old from the wrong side of San Francisco, who could not have made it to a prestigious chess tournament without the kindness of strangers, became a nationally rated player.
“My journey here, it was tough, because I had a lot of situations going on at home,” she said tearfully after her first win, Game 3 of the six-game Susan Polgar Girls’ Invitational.
The tournament takes place each year at Texas Tech University, drawing the top-rated girl from each state. Polgar, the first woman to earn the title of grandmaster, also issues two “wild card” invitations to gifted players who haven’t traveled the pricey road of official competition.
Dyhemia, who has spent the last three years in and out of foster care, received one of the wild card bids. But when Adisa Banjoko, her chess mentor, called in June with the good news, Dyhemia had disappeared.
It took nearly a month and the help of a San Francisco police detective to locate Dyhemia; after a short stint in juvenile hall, she had ended up in the teen home.
Then there was the matter of money — nearly $3,000 was needed to send the high-school junior and a chaperone to the six-day event. After reading her story in The Times, generous donors sent thousands of dollars Dyhemia’s way.
Problem solved? Not so fast.
The night before her flight to Texas, Dyhemia was sitting in the group home studying for her driver’s license test with the help of a staff member. When the woman left the room, Dyhemia continued to drill herself. “Why don’t you just shut up?” one of the other girls said before charging Dyhemia and punching her in the face.
“It all stemmed from jealousy,” Sheila George, who heads the group home and accompanied Dyhemia to Texas, said in a phone interview from Lubbock. “Dyhemia came down here with all this in her soul and mind and heart. She had to get rid of all that junk.”
When the rattled girl and her worried chaperone stepped off the plane in Texas, they were greeted by Polgar and a cheering group of chess players — Dyhemia’s competitors and newfound friends.
As the tournament got underway, Dyhemia resigned her very first game — an attack of new-to-national-competition nerves. But Abdul Shakoor, a chess coach who had traveled to Lubbock to help his own daughter compete, took Dyhemia aside and showed her nuances of the game that, he said, “you can’t really prepare for unless you actually play” at the national level.
“With me being a single father and being raised in foster care myself, [Dyhemia's] story inspired me,” Shakoor said in a video posted on YouTube by Lisa Suhay, who runs an urban chess program in Virginia and has helped Dyhemia along the way.
“I felt like it was meant for my daughter, Diamond, to meet Dyhemia,” Shakoor said. “It’s bigger than chess.”
Dyhemia battled well in her second game, and won the third — her only victory. As the tournament wound down, she was philosophical.
“Without my supporters, I wouldn’t have been able to do it,” she told Polgar. “I’m happy to say that I … had fun playing all my games. At least my opponents can say I was a challenge to them.”
Not only did Dyhemia not win the championship, she didn’t even get the congeniality prize. But at the awards ceremony Friday, she ended up with something better — a scholarship to Texas Tech.
When Polgar announced her name, the roomful of girls began to cheer. Dyhemia got up from her seat to accept the certificate, looking stunned. She cried. She smiled. She could think of only one thing to say:
Ronnie Polaneczky: Chess prowess earns Vanita Young 40G scholarship
A TEXAS-SIZED CHEER to chess whiz Vanita Young, who just nabbed herself a $40,000 scholarship to Texas Tech University, following her brilliant performance at this week’s Susan Polgar Girls’ Invitational in Lubbock, Texas.
GO, Vanita!
Readers of my column will recall that I wrote in June how Vanita, a rising senior at the Walter D. Palmer Charter School, near 6th and Poplar streets, beat out 600 other girls from Pennsylvania to represent the state at the annual invitational, named for Polgar, the world’s first female chess grand master.
Up for grabs was $120,000 in scholarships to the three top winners of the five-day competition.
The tragedy was, Vanita couldn’t afford the $2,000 cost to send her and a chaperone to the event. Vanita’s background is heartbreaking, to say the least. Abandoned by her mom at age 2, orphaned by her dad’s death in 2007, she lives with her grandparents and money is tight. She uses chess (to which she was introduced by the After Schools Activities Partnership – ASAP) as a way to feel happy when the sadness of her circumstances overwhelm her.
When it looked as if money woes would keep her from the Polgar tournament, Vanita’s mentors at ASAP contacted me for help. I wrote Vanita’s story and – no surprise, given the legendary generosity of Daily News readers – the money was raised within 24 hours.
U.S. Rep. Bob Brady kicked in the $2,000, and other big-hearted Samaritans ponied up more than $1,600. (The extra money went into a new fund to support the very active chess program at Vanita’s high school, to help defray costs of tournament fees and travel.)
And this week in Texas, Vanita did not disappoint those who believed in her. She outperformed the girls in her age group and won a $40,000 scholarship to Texas Tech.
Vanita wants very much to attend the school – to study computer science and continue playing chess under the mentorship of Polgar herself.
“We are thrilled,” says Maria Walker, ASAP’s executive director. “No one is more deserving than Vanita.”
But without the kindness of Daily News readers, it’s safe to say she never would’ve gotten on the plane to Texas.
A T-shirt causes scandal at the British Chess Championship
The president of the English Chess Federation says he was barred from presenting prizes at the British chess championships in Sheffield because he was wearing a gay rights T-shirt.
CJ de Mooi, an actor and a regular on the BBC quiz show Eggheads, said he was left “shaking with fury” over objections to the shirt, which bore the slogan “Some people are gay, get over it”, used by gay rights group Stonewall.
De Mooi said he was approached by the championship arbiter, Lara Barnes, prior to the awards ceremony and urged to reconsider his outfit. “They then suggested that it might be better if I just presented prizes to the adults,” he said. “I refused. I was either going to present all the prizes or none at all.”
Barnes denied asking de Mooi to change his shirt, saying she had merely expressed reservations. “I didn’t think that promoting gay rights, which I thoroughly agree with, while presenting prizes to junior chess players was an appropriate thing,” she said. “Usually prize-givers for a national event would wear a suit and tie.”
