2009 World Cup: Round #2
Key matchups are on tap for the FIDE World Cup. While most of the top seeds moved on, they will face stiffer tests in round two. Judit Polgar will start her first match today against Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu of Romania. This tournament may see the rise by a number of young players.
By contrast, players like Teimour Radjabov and Ruslan Ponomariov seem like veterans compared to some of the participants. One such player to watch is the unheralded 15-year old Yu Yangyi of China (right). Yu has slipped under the radar since being elevated from an untitled straight to the GM title. He has done so by quietly scoring good results since 2004.
Photo by Galina Popova courtesy of FIDE. Gallery link, ugra-chess.ru.
Results: https://cup2009.fide.com/results.php
Games (PGN): (all)
Nisipeanu is a wild player and Polgar is no better. That match up should bring some exciting chess.
Younger player are certainly getting stronger faster. Too fast for rating inflation to have a say. Chess software has revolutionised junior chess.
I have been a victim of a take-back myself (against a top ugandan player). It’s an unnatural feeling to experience.
Read that olympiad takeback article. Looks like this ‘Tommy Takeback’ fellow must have insisted he did nothing wrong. Sometimes team mates should own up if their guy did a mistake. There is nothing much one can do when this happens.
So far the Polgar-Nisipeanu match up has proved to be a boring-fest with openings like Caro-Kann and petroff being essayed and add to that some play-safe technique. Hopefully the faster time controls bring out their true on-board personalities.
The super gm’s who got eliminated just go to prove why Kasparov in his day avoided these knock-outs like the plague. Imagine the embarrasment of losing to someone hundreds of elo point lower than you! It’s russian roulette, maybe not good for chess in the long term but certainly very good for the spectators!
Asian chess continue to produce the prodigies…Wesley So now taking his ‘long awaited’ sper-gm scalp.
It’s fascinating to watch how some people fumble on the chessninja forum crying foul over the disappearance of their favourite ‘western’ Super GM’s. They are blaming the knock out format and are not fully appreciating that the Wesley So’s and Yu Yangyi’s may already be playing 2700+ chess. Is this deliberate blindness?
It is similar to the soviet chess machine’s failure in the 60’s and 70’s to acknowledge the reason their best GM’s were losing to Fischer had nothing to do with anything else but Fischer’s complete superiority in the chess moves department.
I think these Super GM knockouts are a sign of things to come in the World’s top 30 over the next 5 – 10 years i.e mass infestation of these spots by Chinese, Indian and other Asian GM’s.
Asia was a untapped chess potential…the next revolution has logically got to come from Africa…Africa is the next large untapped chess resource.
I think the North American and European folks don’t seem to realise the huge extent to which technology aka computers aka fritz has penetrated into Indian and Chinese societies. It’s a no brainer that Indians and chinese middle class are far more computer literate then their western counter parts. I even know of slum areas in Mumbai where families have computers and internet connection! Plus Anand’s home province is a technology hot spot.
I think there is a direct and clear correlation between computer literacy and chess strength from middle class income groups upwards and this is something western players overlook. The Indians and Chinese are computer addicts. It kills off the gap created by ‘chess culture’ that western players so much rely on to claim their superiority over the rest of the world in chess.
ahahah…looks like Wesley So has forced Ivanchuk into retirement!!
Wesley So sends another Super GM into panic mode….