Even before the final round started, the current world’s youngest GM was already the sure winner. As promised, here’s the final standings and the gallery of pictures I took during the 11th and final round of the tournament.
Category: Games
A Short Photo Op with GM Wesley So
I just grabbed this opportunity to have a photo taken with the future chess superstar who will hopefully someday join the ranks of super GM’s like Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, and Vladimir Kramnik. I know that it may yet be far from reality, but who knows, being the youngest grandmaster in the world of chess, Filipino Wesley So has still a long way to go.
Bobby Fischer, 1943–2008
One of the world’s greatest chess geniuses, Bobby Fischer, has died at the age of 64. A spokesman for Fischer said the former world chess champion passed away in a Reykjavik hospital yesterday. The US-born former world chess champion, who became famous around the world for beating the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in 1972, had been seriously ill for some time. Rest in Peace, Bobby.
Bobby Fischer has always been one of my favorite players. Why he has been so different, let’s leave it up to him. After all, he’s just being Bobby. Continue reading Bobby Fischer, 1943–2008
World’s Youngest GM
Wesley So of the Philippines is currently the world’s youngest GM at the age of 14. He’s seventh youngest player to achieve the grandmaster status in chess.
Chess News
I remember posting it here regarding Chessbase as a Source of Chess News, but that it offers no rss/atom feed for its regular visitors.
I visited Chessbase today, and I noticed that feed icon at the far right side of the browser url bar of firefox. Yes, great news for chess fans. Now we can keep abreast of the latest chess news without visiting the site everyday.
India’s Great Chess Hope
Viswanathan Anand, the Indian current world champion in chess, wonders why Indians do not usually excel in sports. I think I know why.
Despite their population, which I think is already next to China, India may not have really excelled in Sports. Well, that’s based on the notion that the bigger the population, the more talents (in terms of numbers). That has been the case even in Philippines setting wherein the NCR always excel because of the abudance of talents in a large population.
Even in the 15th Asian Games in Doha in December last year, India placed 7th, next to China, Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Iran. Well, Philippines is a different issue, out of the context of this article.
Solving the Rubik’s Cube
Rubik’s Cube (commonly misspelled rubix, rubick’s or rubics cube) is a mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the “Magic Cube” by its inventor, this puzzle was renamed “Rubik’s Cube” by Ideal Toys in 1980 and also won the 1980 German “Game of the Year” (Spiel des Jahres) special award for Best Puzzle. It is said to be the world’s best-selling toy, with some 300,000,000 Rubik’s Cubes and imitations sold worldwide. – Wikipedia.
The Rubik’s Cube world championship was held in Budapest, Hungary last October 5 to 7, 2007. The overall winner was a 16-year old who averaged 12.46 seconds to solve the cube in five tries. Read the news.
Anand Reclaims the World Title
Vishwanathan Anand is the World Chess Champion after the World Championship 2007 in Mexico City. He is the fourth grandmaster to have reclaimed the crown, after Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Botvinnik and Anatoly Karpov. That is, however, granting that Garry Kasparov split from FIDE in 1993 and retired from active chess in 2005. Anand first won the FIDE crown in 2000.
The list of world champions according to FIDE’s is now updated with this development as follows:
| Name | Years | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Wilhelm Steinitz | 1886-1894 | Austria / United States |
| Emanuel Lasker | 1894–1921 | Prussia/Germany |
| José Raúl Capablanca | 1921–1927 | Cuba |
| Alexander Alekhine | 1927–1935 | Soviet Union (Russia) / France |
| Max Euwe | 1935–1937 | Netherlands |
| Alexander Alekhine | 1937–1946 | France |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 1948–1957 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Vasily Smyslov | 1957–1958 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 1958–1960 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Mikhail Tal | 1960–1961 | Soviet Union (Latvia) |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | 1961–1963 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Tigran Petrosian | 1963–1969 | Soviet Union (Armenia) |
| Boris Spassky | 1969–1972 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Robert J. Fischer | 1972–1975 | United States |
| Anatoly Karpov | 1975–1985 | Soviet Union (Russia) |
| Garry Kasparov | 1985–1993 | Soviet Union / Russia |
| Anatoly Karpov | 1993–1999 | Russia |
| Alexander Khalifman | 1999–2000 | Russia |
| Viswanathan Anand | 2000–2002 | India |
| Ruslan Ponomariov | 2002–2004 | Ukraine |
| Rustam Kasimdzhanov | 2004–2005 | Uzbekistan |
| Veselin Topalov | 2005–2006 | Bulgaria |
| Vladimir Kramnik | 2006–2007 | Russia |
| Viswanathan Anand | 2007–present | India |
Rows in italics represent the grey areas in the world chess history.
Viswanathan Anand became, for the first time, the undisputed World Chess Champion on September 29, 2007, after finishing the tournament with a score of 9/14, not losing a single game and a full point ahead of the second placer, Vladimir Kramnik.
To download the games in pgn and to view some pictures, visit chessbase.com.
Anand’s title, though, it appears, will be challenged again(!) next year sometime between May and September 2008 by no less than…. Vladimir Kramnik, in a best of 12 games one-on-one match. Why, read the wikipedia article.
For Kramnik’s part, I guess he’s better off playing a one-on-one match rather than playing in a round robin tournament. Just look at his 2000 match win agains Kasparov and the 2006 match against Topalov. Clear victories!
Gilbert Arenas Loves NBA Live 2008
I don’t know, but a good game should be a good game. On his blog, Gilbert Arenas has this to say:
Loving NBA LIVE
I played NBA LIVE ’08 against Kevin Durant and I lost bad. I sucked. It was the first time I played it though. I didn’t play ’07, I didn’t play ’06, I didn’t play ’05. After a while I thought that it wasn’t getting better so I became a 2K fan. But then the people at EA Sports came and told me they wanted to make the game better, I came on board because my first basketball game was NBA LIVE ’95. So once they started getting out of character it was like they weren’t progressing with the game so I became a 2K fan and then now I’m back to LIVE and I think all the 2K fans are going to come back to LIVE again because they’re going to see they made progress. It’s a lot smoother. It’s not as choppy as it used to be. It’s realer now. It’s not like, “Oh, this is fake. That doesn’t happen.” That’s all you used to say. You can’t say that now.
Well, what I say is let the veterans play it and let’s hear what they have to say. As for me, I’m starting to doubt EA Sports.
There are some trailer videos of the game in youtube. One example:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF5Evqm-Pco]
And it looked really good. However, videos like the ones below make me really think twice:
NBA Live 2008 – Go To Moves Trailer
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLWH99HLAwc]
O c’mon EA, you have always been into that. “Signature moves!” Haven’t you had enough? Haven’t you perfected that aspect yet. We need a revolutionary change especially in the gameplay settings!
Chessbase as a Source of Chess News
Chessbase is my favorite source of chess news. Perhaps, it is the leading news portal when it comes to current international chess news and events. But I don’t think it uses the latest technology of the internet.
Yeah, okay, I’m a bit disappointed. Consider this as my whine against that website. In as much as I would like to be informed of the latest chess news via my favorite feed reader, I couldn’t help myself because this site is not offering any web feed at all. It’s not even offering any newsletter service. I really wonder what they have in mind why they refused visitors and chess enthusiasts subscribing to their latest news. I actually emailed them once (a long time ago) asking why, and unfortunately, I have not received any response yet.
If a website’s objectives include traffic and reaching as many people as possible, they should offer web feed for syndication to its regular visitors. After all, what’s one creating a website for when it couldn’t even reach its intended audience and promote that valued traffic. Mind you, this site is even selling some products.