Recap

Today’s round was a truly insane.  Krush and Kosteniuk drew an unclear game where both had chances, and the games Gunina-Paehtz, Dronavalli-Abdumalik, and Dzagnidze-Zatonskih all had many changes in evaluation throughout the game.  Watching it live was a real edge-of-your-seat experience!

The 5th round certainly didn’t lack excitement, and the three leaders continued to show their fine form by extending their respective leads.  Valentina Gunina won a spectacular game, Irina Krush won an efficient one, and Kosteniuk won after an absolutely crazy battle. Anna Zatonskih recovered from a terrible pawn blunder, leaving Harika with a 5th draw in a row.

Similar to the opening round, round four saw four decisive results, with most of the victories coming with Black.  Kosteniuk extended her lead by defeating GM Marie Sebag, but Gunina and Krush also won, so her lead is only by half a point.  It was a dramatic day, with lots of pressure and more blunders than normal, but there was also lots of strong play.

The third round had both of the extremes:  Two games ended peacefully in short order, while the other three were quite complex.  Former Women’s World Champion Alexandra Kosteniuk showed her class with a nice victory over young IM Zhansaya Abdumalik, pulling ahead of her rivals with a score of 2.5/3.  IM Anna Zatonskih and GM Nana Dzagnidze also picked up their first wins.

Today’s round was far less bloody than the first round, but it was certainly not short of interesting games.  There were time scrambles, advantages passed back and forth, and plenty of other action. In the end, only GM Khotenashvili was able to break through and score a victory, thus bouncing back from her loss on day one. 

At the opening ceremony of the Cairns Cup Tuesday evening, the players promised to do all they could to play fighting chess.  They certainly didn’t disappoint. The first round of the Cairns Cup was a bloody affair, with most of the players taking lots of risk and playing aggressive chess.  There was only one draw, and black had a good day, scoring three wins to white’s one. Here are the results of the round, along with a summary of what went down in each game.  

With 8 blitz games left to play in final day of the Champions Showdown, chess fans got to witness countless entertaining and heart wrenching battles. Due to the nature of blitz and Chess960, a plethora of blunders and time scrambles were seen across all of the matches.

Day 3 of the Champions Showdown showed clear leaders emerging from all of the matches, with some extending their leads quite far. Upon the selection of another random position, the players delved into their usual analysis.

Day 2 of the Champions Showdown was filled with blunders and brilliancies as players battled it out from a fresh starting position. At 12 PM, players huddled around the laptop as Tony Rich revealed the initial setup that would be played for the next 4 games.

The first day of the Champions Showdown kicked off with intrigue and excitement as ten of the world’s top players faced off in Chess 960. The day began at 12 PM as Chess Club Executive Director, Tony Rich used the random position generator from chessgames.com to determine the starting position for the day.