Blog Trekking, December 2007

Blog Trekking, December 2007

When we last left the chess blogs at the end of November, round three of the FIDE World Cup was underway. Gata Kamsky of the USA, one of 32 players who had survived the first two rounds of the grueling elimination event, eventually emerged as the winner after seven rounds. At the end of 2000, India's Viswanathan Anand won the FIDE World Championship, also structured as a knockout event. We remember how the Indian mainstream press followed his triumphant progress through the seventh and final round, when he pulverized Alexei Shirov 3.5-0.5 in a six game match. In 2007 by contrast, the American press largely ignored Kamsky. Thanks to the American chess blogs, there was ample expert testimony to witness Kamsky's exploits. We'll start the December blog trek with round five

Elsewhere on the Web : Ratings Predict a Close Championship Match

If you try to predict the outcome of the next World Championship match based on the players' current ratings, the latest FIDE rating list won't be much help. The two players, World Champion Viswanathan Anand and his challenger GM Vladimir Kramnik, tied for the top spot on the January 2008 FIDE Rating List. Kramnik is listed as no.1 because he played more games in the three month period covered by the list. The tie could easily change on the three FIDE rating lists -- April, July, and October 2008 -- that will appear before the match is played in October. Although Kramnik lost the title to Anand in the 2007 World Championship tournament, he has gone on record to say that he has every expectation of winning it back in October. Third on the January FIDE list is GM Veselin Topalov, the man Kramnik defeated in the 2006 World Championship Unification Match. Shortly after the Anand - Kramnik match, Topalov will be playing GM Gata Kamsky for the right to challenge the World Champion in a 2009 match. Kamsky, who earned his spot when he won the recent 2007 FIDE World Cup, only weighs in at no.15 on the current rating list, but he's climbing steadily in his comeback attempt to return to the form that made him the FIDE World Championsip challenger in 1996. After losing that match to GM Anatoly Karpov, he retired from chess to concentrate on his studies. What kind of a match can we expect between Anand and Kramnik? According to one long time observer, Leonard Barden of The Guardian, 'logic suggests the match strategy will be to score a white point with a novelty, then shut up shop'. See his column Barden on chess (December 29, 2007) for more about match strategy.