When announce his cooperation with Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen made his aim obvious to become the world’s number one in the near future. In Nanjing the Norwegian is still on agenda with a subsequent victory, this time over the present number one, Veselin Topalov. Again it’s a six-player, twice round-robin with this year Veselin Topalov (2813), Magnus Carlsen (2772), Peter Leko (2762), Teimour Radjabov (2757), Dmitry Jakovenko (2742) and Wang Yue (2736) playing for a € 250,000 prize support.

Fully profit from his lot number 1, which forever gives two white games at the begin of a round-robin, Magnus Carlsen increased his guide to a full point with another smooth succeed, against Veselin Topalov. The Bulgarian sacrifice a hock for which he never in fact saw true compensation and in an attempt to find counterplay over the f-file, his kingside was damaged too much. Carlsen has become a very efficient and precise player in positions where he’s deliberately winning, leaving his challenger not a single possibility to get back into the game.

Last Sunday he become the youngest player ever to win the Dutch contest. The Dutch chess prospect has welcomed and embraces Russian born Anish Giri and the 15-year-old super-talent, who previously made appearance on Dutch national TV.

The Dutch title fight took place on Sep 12-20 in Haaksbergen, The Netherlands. After writing about the removal of Tiviakov and the exciting 7th round, we still allocated you a last report. In the last but one round GM Anish Giri defeated GM Karel van der Weide and so all he wanted in his last-round game against GM Dimitri Reinderman was a draw, which he manage easily. In the women’s part Peng Zhaoqin won her 11th title, as believably as always.

Final Standings

1. GM Giri,Anish

2. GM Nijboer,frisco

3. GM Ernst,Spike

4. GM Reinderman,Dimitri

5. IM Cuijpers,Frans

6. GM Swinkels,robin

7. FM Miedema,roi

8. GM Van der weide,karel

9.IM Bitalzadesh,ali

10. Gm Tiviakov,sergei

The first day of the match between the two legends in Valencia evoke mixed approach all over, but did put Garry Kasparov in the lead by a contented margin of 2-0. Before saying anything about the real match, let’s not forget what’s being famous here this week the birth of current chess in the 15^th century in Valencia. To honor this event, five lectures were individual held today as part of the festivities. The presentation, however, were now and then quite hard to follow for the spectactors. This was in part due to the high scientific level of some of the lectures, which could barely be followed by the live translator, let alone by the frequently inexperienced audience, but also by the amateurish setup of some of the presentations.

In our view, the most attractive address was given by Ulrich Schaedler from Switzerland, who explain various aspect of the Book of Games manuscript of Alphonse X – a manuscript, it should be noted, that has nothing to do with Valencia at all. After these lectures, the completely packed auditorium of the Palau de les Arts was lastly ready for the first game between Karpov and Kasparov. As it twisted out at the last instant, it was essential to reserve seats beforehand, which resulted in almost all press being banned to the last rows of the aula after the first five minutes of the game. Also, the press room was quite far from the playing hall, which banned an easy live transmission of the games.

After Sulaiman Al-Fahim had briefly announce the players, the first move was finally played with arbiter Geurt Gijssen watching the events from close range. Karpov being white, his first move wasn’t too hard to forecast 1.d4. Kasparov, not too astonishingly either, opted for his beloved Grünfeld Defence, right away reminding us all of the many classic games the two K’s played in this opening.

An attractive positional center game position appears on the board, where Karpov tried to treat the position by small means while Kasparov was looking for activity. The complications sent Karpov into thinking too much thinking, as it twisted out, because just when things in progress to heat up, he overstep the time boundary as early as move 24, in an unclear position. This was a enormous disappointment for everyone, including Karpov, who seem surprised himself as well about what had just happen.

Karpov in fact played 6Bd6 and 8Ne7, but after 9.Bd3 he went for 9…Nd7 which gave him a somewhat passive position. When we asked him whether Karpov’s choice of difference had surprised him, Kasparov replied that Karpov almost certainly wanted to play a hard game but he didn’t refer to their game played in London in 1986. The interpretor couldn’t keep up with Kasparov’s brook of variations, which enthused Kasprov to remark that the chess moves aren’t vital anyway. In any case, the succeed gave Kasparov a very relaxed 2-0 lead in their rapid games, and we gravely doubt if Karpov will be able to overcome this painful match.

The Inventi Chess contest takes place from 18-26 September and features an fascinating line-up as well as top seed Etienne Bacrot, veteran Jan Timman, and top women’s players Anna Muzychuk (pictured, left) and Antoaneta Stefanova .

The full line-up:

1. Etienne Bacrot
2. Gabriel Sargassian
3. Emil Sutovsky
4. Krishnan Sasikiran
5. Bartosz Socko
6. David Howell
7. Jan Timman
8. Anna Muzychuk
9. Antoaneta Stefanova
10. Bart Michiels

This afternoon, there was a first press meeting with over a hundred reporters attending. The 12th and 13th World winner answered some question and talked about their approach about the upcoming rapid and blitz events. Not only Garry Kasparov and Anatoli Karpov were there at the press conference, but also Valencian chess historian Antonio Jose Garzon and multimillionaire businessman Sulaiman Al-Fahim, proprietor of the soccer club Portsmouth. Despite the very attractive historical context of Valencia as the birthplace of modern chess, on which we newly reported, almost all questions were directed to the former rivals. It was obvious that Kasparov was the most anxious of the two, particularly at the beginning.

Things happening to get attractive when a reporter of the Russian state television asked a question and Kasparov announced that he would answer both in English and Russian, so that spectators could compare the dissimilarity in versions between the state-controlled network station and objective press.

Dutch arbiter Geurt Gijssen, who was referee during the K-K matches in 1987 and 1990, perform the drawing of lots. In agreement with the theory that modern chess began with the new rules for moving the queen, the organizer had appropriately used a black and white queen as lots, but unhappily this nice subtlety was lost when a misinformed Gijssen announce the players would draw two kings.

Also notable was Karpov criticizing FIDE and the Russian chess federation for recent decisions concerning the World Championship cycle. The Q & A finished with a quite embarassing question to Sulaiman Al-Fahim, who was ask whether his club Manchester City was involved in buying Spanish soccer star David Villa. Sulaiman Al-Fahim pointed out that perhaps the reporter should ask the owner of Man City, rather than the owner of Portsmouth.