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Game 1 of the Anand-Topalov World Chess Chamionship match will begin on 24.04.2010 at 17.00 EEST (14.00 UTC).
Video from the Opening Ceremony by GM Robert Fontaine
The majority of Pogonina.com visitors considers Anand to be a strong favorite. However, the events that happened during the last few days may have change people's opinion. What do you think now?
Who will win in the Anand - Topalov match?
Anand
1044
64.1%
Topalov
436
26.8%
I don't know
83
5.1%
The match won't happen
66
4.1%
Number of Voters
: 1629
While I admire Topalov's aggressive style, Anand seems to be a more well-rounded player. Home turf might be able to compensate for this by motivating Veselin...or, on the contrary, put too much pressure on him! It's hard to evaluate the chances now, but it feels like a very close fight. Let's hope the chess match is going to be exciting and courteous!
We have a special guest today at "Your tactics at Pogonina.com" - FM Dmitry Biryukov.
Name: Dmitry Biryukov Age: 24 Country: Russia City: Saratov Chess level: FM, FIDE 2379 Education: MA in Marketing from Saratov State Socio-Economic University Occupation:chess hustler Hobbies: reading books by V. Megre, chess, bard songs
Dmitry often plays chess for stakes at parks and prefers blitz to standard time controls. He describes his style as aggressive and creative, and considers himself to be "#1 in chess creativity ahead of Anand". FM Biryukov also claims having created a new chess theory. Its main principle is the following: as White one should play only 1.e4 ("it is winning!" - sic) and as Black - 1...d6 ("it draws!" - sic). Dmitry is considered to be a weird chess celebrity at Russian chess forums where he is constantly advocating his approach to chess and life in general (no smoking, no alcohol, no TV, stay away from the civilization, etc.). He has also co-authored two chess books, both released in 2009.
Here is a problem from Dmitry's game played at the prestigeous Moscow Open (A) tournament in 2009:
Dmitry Biryukov (2357) - Vladimir Osmolny (2306) White to move
P.S. Becoming a featured guest at Pogonina.com is easy - just contact us!
While surfing the Internet I stumbled upon a funny website called Amazon Chess. It seemed so entertaining to me that I decided to write a short review of the game.
Description
In this chess game amazons (blonde and brunette) are fighting each other on different terrains. Each chess piece is represented by an attractive semi-nude and fierce-looking girl.
The good
Nice girls
Two languages: English and Russian
Free download
The bad
Hard to register it correctly, they have the same serial number for all the customers
Computer takes a lot of time when set on Hard
Very few terrains
Pieces dont interact with each other (like in Love Chess and other games of this type)
Its malfunctioning when run on Vista, e.g. changing the size of the screen there and back again
Summary
Not the game you want to play each day, but quite entertaining for a one-time experience.
Judit Polgar, the strongest female player of all time
While people interested in chess pay a lot of attention to members of the 2700+ club among male chess players, many of them are not aware that there are fewer women who have crossed the 2500 threshold than men who have entered the 2700+ club. To fix this, we decided to compile a list of female chess players who have been rated over 2500 at some point.
Of course, one can't directly compare ratings obtained at different time periods (i.e. FIDE 2500 in 2000 is not the same as FIDE 2500 in 2010), but we will leave that discussion aside for now.
Name
Highest FIDE rating
Date
Judit Polgar
2735
Jul 2005
Koneru Humpy
2623
Jul 2009
Hou Yifan
2589
May 2010
Susan Polgar
2577
Jan 2005
Xie Jun
2574
Jan 2008
Antoaneta Stefanova
2560
Jan 2003
Alisa Galliamova
2554
Jan 2001
Nadezhda Kosintseva
2554
Mar 2010
Maia Chiburdanidze
2550
Oct 2000
Pia Cramling
2550
Oct 2008
Zhu Chen
2548
Jan 2008
Nana Dzagnidze
2547
Nov 2009
Xu Zhao
2544
Jul 2009
Anna Muzychuk
2542
Jul 2009
Alexandra Kosteniuk
2540
Apr 2006
Tatiana Kosintseva
2539
Jul 2009
Marie Sebag
2533
Oct 2008
Kateryna Lahno
2518
Mar 2010
Xu Yuhua
2517
Apr 2006
Elina Danielian
2513
Oct 2008
Viktoria Cmilyte
2512
Oct 2008
Ju Wenjun
2512
Jan 2010
Ekaterina Kovalevskaya
2507
Jul 2001
Arakhamia Grant
2506
Jul 2009
Monika Socko
2505
Apr 2008
Lilit Mkrtchian
2503
Jan 2010
Svetlana Matveeva
2502
Jan 2004
Anna Ushenina
2502
Jul 2007
Qin Kanying
2501
Jul 2000
Sofia Polgar
2501
Jul 2000
Natalia Pogonina
2501
Apr 2009
Hoanh Thanh Trang
2501
Jul 2009
Lela Javakhishvili
2500
Mar 2010
A quick summary: historically only Judit Polgar crossed the 2700 barrier, Koneru Humpy managed to get over 2600, while 31 more women made it past 2500.
We do hope that the situation is going to improve, and more female chess players will be competing on par with men in the future!
This position is from a 5-minute blitz game that I played today. As you can see, it is quite complicated. During the game I didn't know that White has only one good move here, but still managed to find it. Can you spot it in blitz mode?
There are two more paintings of me by Anibal here. The only thing I don't quite appreciate is that he is offering them for sale, but the pictures are nonetheless admirable.
Who will win in the Anand - Topalov match?
