International Round Up 19/01/10

[LozCooper]

International Round Up 19/01/10

Corus Wijk aan Zee 2010
http://www.coruschess.com

Nigel Short is playing in the A Group which includes Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik and is currently on 0.5/3 after a draw with black against Anand in round 2 but losses to Loek Van Wely in round 1 with black and a loss to Hikaru Nakamura with white in round 3. Alexei Shirov leads the A group with 3/3, half ahead of Carlsen & Nakamura.
David Howell is in the B Group and is is on 1.5/3 after hard fought draws with GMs Parimarjan Negi, Pentala Harikrishna and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu.. Hua Ni & Anish Giri lead with 2.5/3, half a point ahead of Arkadij Naiditsch.
Live coverage of all 21 games in Groups A, B and C is available at http://www.coruschess.com/livegames.php.

4NCL
http://www.4ncl.co.uk/

The second weekend took place from 16-17 January at the Barcelo Hotel, Hinckley Island. The highlight of the weekend (other than the seven hour ECF meeting of course) was the match where Wood Green/Hilsmark Kingfisher took on Pride & Prejudice. After a titantic struggle the match ended 4-4 when Mark Hebden salvaged an unlikely half from his game against Alexander Baburin despite defending rook & knight against rook, knight & g+h pawns. Especially pleasing from an English perspective was the win with black for Mickey Adams against Etienne Bacrot on board 1. It's great to see Mickey continuing his good form from the London Chess Classic and I hope to see him back over 2700 on the next FIDE list. Harriet Hunt also won for P&P in a time scramble with Keti Arakhamia-Grant on board 8. In reply WGHK won on boards 2 and 7 with Jon Ludvig Hammer winning with black against Stewart Haslinger and Nick Pert grinding out a win against Florian Grafl. Boards 3-6 were drawn, board 4 being the most dramatic as already mentioned above. This leaves the league wide open with the likelihood of these two teams trying to rack up game points to outscore the other. Of course Barbican and Guildford may still yet have a say in the destination of the title, as may Wood Green 2.
The full results from rounds 3 and 4 in all three Divisions are available on the website and the games from the weekend should be available soon. The current league format splits Divisions 1 and 2 into two groups of 8. After 7 rounds the top 4 from each group form the top group and the bottom 4 form a relegation group. This effectively means a team can avoid relegation in the first 7 rounds by strengthening their teams sufficiently to break into the top group. It also means that teams wishing to qualify for Europe have to be in the top 4 after 7 rounds to give themselves a chance. Qualification is open to the three highest placed teams from England who wish to take up the place provided they finish in the top half of the league.

Prague Open
http://chess-results.com/tnr29109.aspx? ... 000&snr=40
Anya Corke finished on 5/9 with a rating performance of 2249.

Marienbad IM All-play-all B2 2010 Czech Republic
http://www.czechtour.net/marienbad-open ... and-games/
http://chess-results.com/tnr29377.aspx? ... ag=30&m=-1

Anya Corke is playing in the IM B2 all-play-all event where she has an average opponent of 2292 and therefore requires 6.5/9 for an IM norm. She is currently on 1/3.

Liberty Bell Open Philadelphia USA
http://www.chesstour.com/lbo10.htm

Kanwal Bhatia played in the FIDE rated weekend open drawing against MacKenzie Molner 2393 and Effim Treger 2253 and losing to FM Paul MacIntyre 2273 and IM Jay Bonin 2346.

In addition to the individual websites the latest international chess news can be found at the following link: http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic793.html

Lawrence Cooper
Director of International Chess
English Chess Federation 19/01/10

[Leonard Barden]

Hunt v Arakhamia-Grant: have Britain's top two women ever played before? A six-game match between them would be interesting. And Anya Corke looks a good addition to the 2010 Olympiad team.

[Jonathan Rogers]

"Qualification is open to the three highest placed teams from England who wish to take up the place provided they finish in the top half of the league".

Has that rule been recently re-introduced? My imnpression is that it was dropped a few years ago, though quietly. But I'd be surprised if it has come back.

This was the first Hunt v Arakhamia game in the 4NCL. Hardly surprising because they have mostly played for the same team (Wood Green) in the past, though Harriet has had three years of first division chess with other teams since leaving Wood Green.

[LozCooper]

"Qualification is open to the three highest placed teams from England who wish to take up the place provided they finish in the top half of the league".

Has that rule been recently re-introduced? My imnpression is that it was dropped a few years ago, though quietly. But I'd be surprised if it has come back.

This was the first Hunt v Arakhamia game in the 4NCL. Hardly surprising because they have mostly played for the same team (Wood Green) in the past, though Harriet has had three years of first division chess with other teams since leaving Wood Green.

Jonathan, I'm a bit out of touch with 4ncl rules so I may be out of date. I hope there are still qualification places available although under the new format I'm not sure if top half is top 8 or top 16! Or is it now only open to the top three?

[Mike Truran]

Lawrence/Jonathan

The qualification rule is an ECU rule for the European Club Cup. It's the ECF as the national federation which nominates the teams (again an ECU requirement), and it's chosen the 4NCL as its national team championship.

Two teams may enter, or three if twenty players with FIDE ratings higher than 2600 have played in the national team championship in the year prior to the European Club Cup in question.

[Jonathan Rogers]

Yes, we are talking about the ECU rules here. I didn't know the latest version, but felt sure that Lawrence was thinking of the rules as they were about five years ago.

I think that Mike had probably paraphrased the rules too - unless they have changed recently, then national federations could nominate three teams if 20 or more GMs had participated in their national team competition. Note, 20 GMs, not 20 players over 2600, which probably only Germany and Russia could hope to satisfy.

Max and I (thinking from the Barbican perspective) have often kept an eye on whether 20 GMs have, or are expected to participate in each 4NCL season. So far as I can recall, there always have been 20+, though often only just. The same is true this year, I think, notwithstanding the relative collapse of Guildford. (It helps that Haslinger, Williams and Arakhamia-Grant recently became GMs).

[Mike Truran]

No, the ECU rules specifically refer to 20 GMs and/or players over 2600. What I paraphrased was taken from the latest set of rules on the ECU website.