[chessmind] Dennis Monokroussos: Tournament snippets from here and there

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Posted by Dennis Monokroussos:
Tournament snippets from here and there
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1186473762.shtml


   In the [1]British Championship, Jacob Aagaard continues his tear,
   defeating Simon Williams to reach an audacious 6.5/7. Only Stewart
   Haslinger is even within a point, and he'll have Black against Aagaard
   in today's round 8. Aagaard, who has been writing and publishing some
   outstanding chess books the past few years, has had enough norms for
   his GM title for a while now but lacked the rating. If this keeps up,
   he'll have no trouble bringing his rating from its current mark of
   2467 to the needed 2500.
   Meanwhile, chilly things continue to happen to poor Magnus Carlsen and
   Nick De Firmian in the [2]Arctic Chess Challenge. After losing in
   round 1 to an 1800 (eek - no offense, 1800s!), you'd think he'd be in
   for an easy time. If he was paired in the 0-point group, he'd have an
   easy time of it, and even if he was paired with the half-pointers,
   you'd think Carlsen would have gotten pulled in with the full-pointers
   and NDF would receive a relatively weak opponent. No such luck!
   Apparently due to a color clash with the normal pairing, De Firmian
   was stuck playing...Carlsen. He lost, giving him an 0-2 start in a
   Swiss event, probably for the first time since he was a kid learning
   the game. (Of course he didn't "castle queenside"; he won in round 3.)
   Speaking of kids, Carlsen's first-round hiccup wasn't his last (though
   to be fair, his opponent played a terrific game, and may have even
   missed a win): in round 3 he gave up another half point, this time to
   2325-rated FM Karsten Larsen. Not a bad player, certainly, but still a
   big upset and a dent in Carlsen's mighty rating. In any case, there
   are six rounds left, and that's time enough for Carlsen to salvage the
   tournament and his rating.
   Two events I probably won't cover on the blog, but which both feature
   some interesting players are the [3]HZ Open in Vlissingen (the field
   includes Kasimdzhanov and Caruana) and the [4]5th Staunton Memorial
   (stars include Adams, van Wely, Tiviakov and Timman).
   Finally, in keeping with this blog's unofficial policy of noting all
   of Viktor Korchnoi's tournament appearances, he's at it again, playing
   in and leading the pretty strong [5]5th Gyorgy Marx Memorial in Paks,
   Hungary. The standings, after 2 of 10 rounds, are as follows:
   1. Korchnoi (2610) 1.5
   2-5. Balogh (2568), Berkes (2597), Hou Yifan (2523), Acs (2530) 1
   6. Harikrishna (2664) .5

References

   1. http://www.bcfservices.org.uk/livechess/british/2007/
   2. http://www.arcticchess.org/engindex.htm
   3. http://www.hztoernooi.nl/index_en.html
   4. http://howardstaunton.com/index.shtml
   5. http://www.ase.hu/marxgy/2007/index_eng.html