Sweden is now a regulated market, which means that as a player you can only play at casinos with a license. See all regulated casinos in Sweden by Mr casinova.
Women's World Team Chess Championship-2013 will be held in Astana, Kazakhstan from March 2nd to 13th in the format of a round robin with 10 participant teams. The main sensations so far are absence of Kosintseva sisters on the Russian roster and a symmetrical reply from their main rival - China will be playing without Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue. As a result, the competition will be much tougher: at least four teams will be in serious contention for gold.
List of teams sorted by average rating of top-4 players:
In the sum (shown above), the top row added to the middle row gives the bottom one. Working from top to bottom, remove one digit from each row, from any columns (closing the gaps) to leave three columns of digits, then a second digit from each row to leave two columns, and finally a third to leave one column so that a valid sum remains each time. What are the three sets of digits removed?
Pogonina.com offers you a selection of some of the most informative chess tweets from last week. All the fresh chess news in one short post:
What is Vitruvius?
Warming up for the Candidates Tournament
Reykjavik Open, a few 2700+ players participating
Don't be too hard on yourself next time!
Chess is closer to Applied Mathematics
Chessmaster-2013
Moschess.org: Alexandra Kosteniuk was awarded with a certificate of Honorary Sports Master
Short, yet priceless video
Karjakin won Aeroflot Rapid and Nepomniatchi - Aeroflot Blitz
Sergey Karjakin: Ian Nepomniatchi deserved victory today more than anyone else. As to clocks: there were many adventures during this tournament, including my own games :)
Ian Nepomniatchi: All is well that ends well :)
The "600+ mln chess players in the world" debate revisited
The most important decision usually go unnoticed
Have we missed some of the best tweets? You can contribute to our next top-10 stories chart by retweeting the post you like and adding @Pogonina to the message so that we can see it.
By candidate master Peter Zhdanov, editor of Pogonina.com
In this special weekly column we will be looking at the most unexpected upsets that happened last week. Players usually face opponents of a comparable level. Considerably less frequent are situations when a significantly lower-rated player succeeds in beating a much stronger adversary.
If you have ever won a game against someone rated 300 points or above of yourself, please send it to us for publication. Any additional information (a photo, annotations, etc.) will be appreciated.
Chess and hip-hop go hand in hand - ask the Hip-Hop Chess Federation. A recent RapGenius post titled "Top Ten Chess Lyrics in Hip-Hop" has inspired us to make a similar list of Russian rap songs. Obviously, the lyrics were translated literally from Russian, so don't be surprised about the lack of rhymes.
#10. This is between us, no leaks expected.
You went from queens to pawns, and I from pawns to queen.
That's how it goes, and there is no way back.
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
(Lionfeat. Guf Dances with wolves)
#9. Like roasted on coals, we are paying cash in rubles, real-life pawns will never become kings (Strizh, Artem Tatischevsky - Roasted on coals -in the video Black (hip-hop artists) defeat White (pop artists))
#8. I made my step like a grandmaster who gives a check ( Seryoga - Chalk of destiny)
#7. Outofcompetition, in rap I'm Bobby Fischer (St1m - Press the play button)
Pogonina.com offers you a selection of some of the most informative chess tweets from last week. All the fresh chess news in one short post:
Aeroflot Open, allegedly more dramatic and intensive this year
Alexandra Kosteniuk: The @aeroflot open qualifier is underway. You can follow the games live at russiachess.org
Grenke Classic super tournament
The question is whether chess will become part of the Olympics
Berik Belbagaev: On Tuesday the Summer Olympics program will lose one discipline. QQ-time for them.
Surprising outfit
Both GMs and amateurs love rapid chess
Alexander Evdokimov: Rapid chess is a fortunate format: one can stay in good chess form and get distracted from work for 2-3 days. A breath of fresh air.
A match of chess heavyweights is coming up
Fier on board
Savchenko, Romanko and other winners of Moscow Open
Chess Pro: Moscow Open. Final standings
Another Chess TV project underway?
Openings: there and back again
Have we missed some of the best tweets? You can contribute to our next top-10 stories chart by retweeting the post you like and adding @Pogonina to the message so that we can see it.
To address the most popular questions, concerns and misunderstandings, we wanted to provide a few brief comments.
1. Earnings and prize money are two different things. Many readers referred to the figures as "X makes Y per year" and commented on whether it is a lot ("I didn't know that one can make his living playing chess full-time"), or little ("if #10 in the world earns only..."). However, chess players have a variety of income sources apart from prize money - endorsements, coaching, writing books, giving simuls and so on. Check out the Making Money in Chess article for a larger list. Hence, in some cases there is a large gap between aggregate income and prize money.
2. It's about transparency of prize winnings and promoting chess as opposed to monitoring someone else's income. Taxes and expenses associated with hiring seconds/traveling/purchasing equipment were mentioned a few times. This is true, but the list was supposed to provide an estimate on the prize winnings. We are not trying to stick one's nose into the chess players' pockets and figure out how much cash they have made. It is their personal business.
3. Women's list. We haven't made up our minds yet on whether to create a separate list of female chess players with highest tournament earnings or not. Besides, thanks to the upcoming Women's World Chess Championship match, at least one women is expected to make it to the top-10 "open" list.
4. How accurate is the list? On the one hand, most appearance fees and certain prizes are being kept secret, so we can't be sure about anything. On the other hand, we have conducted a few interviews with top players and organizers that have helped shed light on the missing data. Another indicator of our rating list being reasonably accurate is that so far we haven't received any complaints from the featured (or non-featured) players. Of course, some of them might have overlooked the article or ignored it, but it's not likely.
Thanks for your feedback and advice on how to make the Chess Cash Kings rating list better!