 And then there were eight...
ICC Chess.FM has daily live coverage of the Candidates Matches
 No, not an Agatha Christie novel. Instead, it's the reality of match play chess in the Candidates Matches in Elista, as the field of 16 is now reduced to 8, with the final four winners going forward to join Vladimir Kramnik, Vishy Anand, Alexander Morozevich and Peter Svidler in Mexico City for the World Chess Championship tournament coming up in September.
The highlight of the previous set of matches was the epic top-seed pairing of Armenia's Levon Aronian and Norwegian wunderkind Magnus Carlsen, who battled each other almost to the wire before Aronian emerged victorious from the blitz tiebreaks.
After three games and the midpoint of the final set of matches, Peter Leko, Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk and Boris Gelfand all have the upper hand with wins against their respective opponents of Evgeny Bareev, Alexei Shirov, Sergei Rublevsky and Gata Kamsky.
JOHN B. HENDERSON |
  Video Game of the Day
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ICC Chess.FM video commentary
 Each day during the Candidates Matches in Elista,
ICC Chess.FM's crack commentary team of GMs Larry Christiansen,
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This service is FREE to members and non-members of
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Check it out now at ICC Chess.FM |
 Take the Ronen Challenge
Friday & Saturday, [20:00 EDT | 02:00 CET]
 Former
world under-16 junior champion GM Ronen Har-Zvi has a reputation of being
one of the toughest simultaneous masters on ICC.
Each Friday and Saturday, at 20:00 EDT, Ronen will take on 30 all- comers (restricted to 2150 Elo or below) in a series of twice weekly simuls (time control 45 20), with the winners receiving a 3-month membership extension and going forward to the second grand prize final on Saturday, 30 June 20:00 EDT, with a prize of a 1-year membership extension going to anyone who can beat Ronen in the final. Do you have what it takes for the Ronen Challenge?
Read
the full announcement
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John Watson Chess & Book Show
Tuesdays [21:00 EDT | 03:00 CET]
New
on ICC Chess.FM! Tune-in
for The John Watson Chess & Book Show on Tuesday, 11 June at 21:00 Server Time.
Each week, John's 90-minute show will be reviewing all the latest titles and discussing books with his guests
This week's guest is IM Jeremy
Silman, author of the new "Silman's Complete
Endgame Course from Beginner to Master". Jeremy,
winner of several past American, National & U.S.
Open tournaments, has written over 38 very well-received
books, including the modern instructional masterpiece "How
to Reassess Your Chess" (Expanded 3rd Edition),
it's popular sequel "The Reassess Your Chess Workbook",
and the best- selling "The Amateur's Mind".
This show will be made available
for 7-days ONDemand for members
Chess
FM page on our website
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  3 3 Blitz Championships Begin this Week!
 
From June 9th -14th, qualifiers will be held for the 2007 3 3 Championships! All
qualifiers will be 9 round swiss tourneys. The top 5 finishers
in each qualifier will join last year’s champion, dsc,
and the top 3 overall scorers who didn’t otherwise qualify
in this year’s final! There is also an u2000 section,
so come take your best shot and see if you can be this years 3 3
champion! Qualifier times are posted at the
following website
Thursday Thematic!
Do you enjoy playing chess starting with different
opening positions? Then the Thursday Thematic is for you! Every
Thursday at 21:00 server time, a 4-5 round swiss 15 0 tourney is
held in Slomato. Every week is a different position. Each
game in the tourney opens from a predetermined position of the
week. This week’s thematic will be the HALASZ GAMBIT
[1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. f4] -- ECO -- C21. “Finger
Thematic” for more details. |
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 Tourney
Tip of the Week:
Watch those dr-points! If
you accumulate 50, you’ll be banned from tournaments for a week,
and that’s no fun!
You gain dr-points when you are forfeited
from tourneys, so avoid behaviors such as latestarting,
disconnecting before a tourney is finished, and getting frustrated
and leaving the tourney on your own.
To check your dr-points, “tell tomato
finger”. You can reduce your dr-points by completing tourneys. It’s
more fun for everyone if you play more tourneys and stay until the
end! “Tell tomato help dr-pts” for more details.
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Games annotated by GM Ronen Har-Zvi
 Former
world under-16 junior champion GM Ronen Har-Zvi has a reputation
of being one of the toughest simul masters on ICC with whitewash
scores of 30-0 and 28-0 to his name.
Indiana-Jones (2321) - saluki (2013) [A04]
ICC 45 20 u Internet Chess Club (1), 26.05.2007
Black has played the opening in a careless
way, and got himself into a much worse position. I suppose
I could have played more solid and, instead of my last
move 17.d5, had played 17.Be3 with a won position. But I was
feeling a bit more adventurous.
17...Rf8 But here, I was faced
with a dilemma: Obviosuly 18.Qe2 looks like the move for white, as
after 18...Rxf1 19.Kxf1 white is clearly better - but I was not so
happy about that position after 19. .. Na6. I remember thinking here
a lot, before finding a beautiful, very powerful idea... 18.dxe6+! [18.Qe2
Rxf1 19.Kxf1 Na6 20.dxc6+ Kc7 21.b4 Rf8+ 22.Kg2] 18...Kc7
19.Bf4!! Does this lose a piece? 19...g5
20.Bg3 Rxf3 21.Bxh4 Rxf1 22.Rxf1 gxh4 23.Rf7 Kd8
24.Rxh7 This was the position I had
to analyze carefull when deciding to play 18.dxe6 but, a full
piece down with no queens on the board, white is completely
won as black has no pieces in the game...NOT ONE! 24...a5 [After
24...Bf8 white simply marches his king up the board and pick up the h4
pawn, 25. Kh3-Kxh4-Kg4-h4-h5.] 25.Rh8+
Kc7 26.Re8 Bc5 27.Bf5! Preventing Kd7 after the pawn push e7;
the game is over now. 27...Kb7 28.e7 Ka7? Losing in 1
move, but the game was already over 29.Rc8! Bxe7 30.Rc7+ Ka6
31.Bc8# Second
time in my Simul games that the checkmating move Bc8 appears! Perhaps its
a theme for my online Simuls? 1-0
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Indiana-Jones (2321) - nevyn (1867) [A87]
ICC 20 35 u Internet Chess Club (1), 11.05.2007
I think this is a great example of how to play against
a master in a Simul - and I really do not know why I am sharing this with
the readers, some of whom might well play against me soon!:) This position
arose after black's 17th move in the Leningrad Dutch, where Black is keeping
the fight tense, without creating weakness and clear plans for white -
I find it difficult to play when playing 30 players at the same time, I
believe that in Simul having a slight advantage, but very simple play,
is better for the Simul giver than clear advantage but very complicated
one.
17...f4 Black is starting his typical
play on the kingside, and white goes wrong very, very fast. 18.exf4? Unnecessarily
removing the important pawn on e3, and surrendering the d4 square, and
weakening the a7-g1diagonal. 18...gxf4 19.Bxc5 fxg3 20.fxg3?
White continues in the same vain. I was a bit worried
after hxg3, than in the future Qh5 will be deciding for black, but this
was wrong thinking on my part. 20...dxc5 21.Ne6?? 21.dxc6
bxc 6 22.Nf3 was needed, where the position is probably not so clear, but
I clearly prefer black 21...Bxe6 22.dxe6 Qh5 Now the game
is over 23.h3 Nf2 24.Rd7 Nxh3+ 25.Bxh3 Qxh3 26.Ne2 Qxe6
26...Rf3 is stronger, but it does
not really matter 27.Rdd1? Qe3+ 28.Kh1 Qf3+ 29.Kg1 Qf2+ 30.Kh1
30... Rf6 And white resigns. Despite
this embarrassing defeat, this was only one of 4 games that I lost
in my month of May Take the Ronen Challenge Simul series out of
around 210 games - So, good job nevyn! 0-1
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ICC
Quiz #2240
submitted by JoshuaGreen
White mates in 2
To play this puzzle on the ICC type:
tell trainingbot number 2175
Then type: play trainingbot
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| ICC
Quiz #3004
submitted by eeek
White mates in 3
To play this puzzle on the ICC type:
tell trainingbot number 2180
Then type: play trainingbot
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Immortal Game, The - David Shenk
 In
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to its crucial importance in the birth of cognitive science and its
key role in the aesthetic of modernism in twentieth-century art,
to its twenty-first-century importance in the development of artificial
intelligence and use as a teaching tool in inner-city America, chess
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 Rybka
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Encyclopedia 2007 includes rich theoretical material on all the openings,
more than 8,000 annotations from GM Kalinin and 500,000 expert evaluations
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. Read
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Price $49.95 - Buy
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Informator 98
 Chess
Informant 98 brings together a thoroughly refined selection of 432
annotated games and 490 game fragments from the events held between
September 1st and December 31st, 2006. Chess Informant 98 brings
together a thoroughly refined selection of 432 annotated games and
490 game fragments from the events held between September 1st and
December 31st, 2006. Chess Informant 98 brings together a thoroughly
refined selection of 432 annotated games and 490 game fragments from
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usual selection of world class players annotate the games. Read
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Bob Wade: Tribute to a Chess Master - compiled and edited by Ray Cannon
Bob Wade OBE is the doyen of British chess. Arriving from New Zealand,
Wade swiftly made his mark on British chess, shining against the
home grown contingent both by virtue of the sharp attacks and astute
endgame skills.
Wade went on to earn the FIDE International Master title, the Commonwealth
Grandmaster title, compete in the World Championship Interzonal,
twice win the British Championships, take first prize in numerous
touraments and inflict defeat on such luminaries of the game as Korchnoi,
Olafsson, Benko, Portisch, Uhlmann, Penrose, Speelman and Ray Keene.
. Read
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Solution
to ICC Quiz #2240
submitted by JoshuaGreen
1.Nxe3!!
Kxe3 [1...Kd4 2.Re6#; 1...Ke5 2.Rc4#; 1...Kf4
2.Re7#] 2.Rb4#
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Solution
to ICC Quiz #3004
submitted by eeek
1.Qxg6+!!
hxg6 2.Bf6 any move 3.Rh8#
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