Carlsen and Ivanchuk won today. Current leader Anand easily drew with number 2 Aronian. Carlsen beat Shirov. Shirov looked like he will escape a bad position and severe time trouble to hold a draw, but he made a terrible blunder. Poor Leko seems to be out of form. He lost with white against Ivanchuk. Topalov and Radjabov had a fighting draw.
Chessbase has given a new official site address which is only in Spanish. They have a link for live games. I did not check the site while the games were going on today. But they have today’s completed games. It is also a java based one instead of the flash based one used in Morelia.
This was another exciting round. There were 3 decisive games. Anand beat Shirov finally with white, Carlsen beat Ivanchuk and Aronian beat Topalov. Radjabov and Leko had a fighting draw. With the win Anand now has a full point lead. There were no live games from the official site. I followed the 3 decisive games using chessdom and chesspro.
The second half of Morelia-Linares tournament is going to start tomorrow in Linares, Spain. The games start at 15.30 local time which is 14.30 UTC or 9.30 EST. The pairings for round 8 along with the current points are
- Anand (4.5) – Shirov (4.0)
- Ivanchuk (3.0) – Carlsen (3.5)
- Radjabov (3.0) – Leko (2.5)
- Aronian (3.5) – Topalov (4.0)
I am not sure whether the live games will continue to be available from the same place. Currently it has links only up to round 7. Hopefully it will be updated by tomorrow.
Three decisive games today to compensate for 3 draws yesterday. Carlsen beat Aronian, Shirov beat Radjabov and Topalov finally came back with a win against Leko. Anand and Ivanchuk drew. Leko threw away a very promising position. He is very unlucky in this tournament. At the end of the first half at Morelia, Anand is leading with 4.5 points and Shirov and Topalov are second with 4.0 points. The Linares part starts next on February 28th.
Radjabov got his frst win of the tournament against Carlsen. Leko took more than an hour for his 9th move g5. I don’t know how he manged to complete the first time control. May be he calculated everything on that move. For the first time this round had more than 2 draws. But as usual they were all fighting draws. Anand remains as leader with 4 points and Aronian is second with 3.5 points.
Two black wins today. Anand escaped with a victory after Leko missed it probably because of time trouble. Carlsen nicely converted an extra pawn against Topalov to a win. With that Anand is in the lead with 3.5 points and Aronian is in second place with 3 points. Up to now there had been at least two decisive games in each round.
Tomorrow is rest day. Next two rounds are on Friday and Saturday and then they will transfer to Linares, Spain.
In round 4, Aronian once again won from black side of Ruy Lopez. Shirov who was winless beat Topalov who was lossless until now. In only 4 rounds, everyone has suffered at least one loss. This tournament is exciting with lots of fighting chess. After round 4 Topalov, Anand and Aronian are leading with 2.5 points each.
The live relay was good without interruptions. I wish chesspro and chessdom picked two different games to analyze every day so that I can follow all the games. Even though I don’t understand Russian I could get most of what is being said at chesspro using Google language tools.
This video has lots of funny scenes from football games. The last one is the best.
After round 3, Topalov is leading with 2.5 points. Anand is next with 2.0 points. Finally the live games were available from the official website. There were a few minutes during live transmission when the website gave errors. But then it was back online again before the games were over. Currently Topalov is the only undefeated player and every body else has suffered exactly one loss. Tomorrow is rest day. The games resume on Tuesday.
This year’s second strongest tournament has started with 8 top players Anand, Topalov, Shirov, Leko, Ivanchuk, Radjabov, Aronian and Carlsen. The first round got over today. Anand beat Shirov, Leko beat Radjabov, Topalov beat Aronian while Carlsen and Ivanchuk drew. You can view the results at chessbase. I was never able to connect to the official website. It is annoying not to be able to watch the games live. The official site is totally down with a 403 Forbidden error message. Is it not possible to give alternate colors to everybody in an 8-player round robin? Some players seem to be getting two whites in a row or two blacks in a row. I hope the website is up atleast from tomorrow onwards. Meanwhile chessdom gives live annotation of two games per round. Chesspro also annotates two games live in Russian.