BACK TO THE REAL WORLD…

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It has been a rather uneventful weekend chess-wise as the World Cup begins to take centre stage.  The Norway super-tournament, which ended  Friday in a brilliant victory by Ukranian born Russian grandmaster Sergei Karjakin, saw its participants travel to Dubai for the World Rapid and Blitz Championships, where they will be joined by dozens of other hopefuls, including Canadian grandmaster Eric Hansen. The event begins today.

 

Karjakin was not very pleased with his travel to Dubai, first his luggage was lost and then he found the hotel conditions less than satisfactory, as can be seen by two of his tweets yesterday evening:

 

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ASSHOLES versus ARSEHOLES?

It seems that English superstar Nigel Short  did not much enjoy his weekend either, the first free hours that he has had since the commentary job for Norway finished,  complaining about the declining ethics of players in online chess:

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Must be a British thing: in most of the civilized world we use the term ‘ASSHOLE’, but the British–for some odd reason–prefer to use the term ‘ARSEHOLE’?  The UrbanDictionary does not even have an entry for the latter, while the former exists:

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Is this an ASS or an ARSE?

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IRELAND GOES FOR KASPAROV!

 

But not everbody had a bad weekend.  News came in yesterday that the Ireland will support Kasparov’s candidacy for the upcoming presidential election in FIDE later in August.

 

Good news indeed for the embattled Kasparov!  And the rumor is that Ireland came cheap: it was not necessary for Kasparov’s team to bully, pressure  or bribe Ireland for their vote!  Nor were there any gifts involved!   Might have been a bit unespected by the KCF, but then again, the IRISH are an honest lot!  No doubt Bono has something to do with this…

 

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ANDREI KHARLOV  RIP

November 20, 1968  to  June 15, 2014

 

Sad and unexpected news yesterday evening that GM Andrei Kharlov passed away at age 45. I played against Andrei many years ago in Paris soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember he was a real gentleman…not many details of his death, but I will keep the readers informed later this week.

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CONGRATS TO NI HUA!

For winning brilliantly on Saturday the Porto Mannu tournament with an amazing (and deserved) score of 8/9!!  I suggest the readers take a look at his games from this event….they are GREAT!