THE ANAND-TOPALOV match has been postponed. According to Fide, it will take place “not later than April 20, 2010” and bids for hosting this event have been invited. In 2011, there will be a Candidates tournament. The players will include GM Kamsky, the loser of the Anand-Topalov match, two players from the Grand Prix and one from the World Cup, two highest rated players not already qualified and a player nominated by the “organiser” (presumably sponsor). The winner will play the World Champion in 2011.
If all this comes to pass, there will be two title matches in 2010 and 2011. The postponement of Anand-Topalov along with the invitation of bids and the mysterious reference to an organiser for 2011 confuses the situation leads one to suspect a problem with the financing, definitely for Topalov-Anand and perhaps for 2011 as well WEP, which sponsored the Anand-Kramnik match, has already made a bid for the next cycle.
Grischuk won Linares on tiebreak ahead of Vassily Ivanchuk. Both scored +2 with Ivanchuk unbeaten and Grichuk suffering one loss to Carlsen. Carlsen was third with +1 and Anand, fourth with an even score. Grischuk won on the Linares-style tiebreaker (more decisive games) while Ivanchuk would have won on standard SB.
The Aeroflot cheating accusation continues to fester. Shakhriyar Mamedaryov has written a second open letter detailing his reasons for believing his sixth round opponent Igor Kurnosov was cheating. SM claims to have analysed all of Kurnosov’s games at Aeroflot and to have discovered a high adherence to the “first line chosen by Rybka” in the young Russian GM’s move. He also believes that Kurnosov’s refusal of a draw-offer on move 14 from a higher-rated opponent was in itself, suspicious!
For non-initiates, Rybka (“female fish” in most Slavic languages) is the strongest commercially available program. SM’s repeated assertion proves nothing. Strong players usually find the best moves and nothing in Kurnosov’s play was extraordinarily difficult to see by human standards. It’s also difficult to reproduce the same results SM claims because the same program will offer different assessments on different hardware when run in different timeframes. A positive outcome from this mess might be clearer guidelines for organisers to prevent cheating and also to prevent unwarranted accusations.
From the diagram, WHITE TO PLAY (Ivanchuk Vs Aronyan, Linares 2009) the Ukrainian star carried out an efficient demolition with 24.Ne4! Qe7 25.Nxf6+ Qxf6 26.Qe2 Rxc1 27.Rxc1 Qd6 28.Qe4. Qb4 29.Rc2 f5 30.Qe2 Qb7+ 31.Nc6! Re8 32.Kg1 Nf3+ 33.Qxf3 Re1+ 34.Kg2 Qb5 35.Rc4 (1-0).
Two points apart from the initial Ne4 fork. For one, 25. Nf5!! is fabulous with 25.- gxf5 26. Nxf6+ Qxf6 27. Bxe5 Rxc2 28. Bxf6 and a decisive mate threat. Second, 28.f4! Nd7 29.Nc6 wins easily.