The world's leading Women's Chess Blog, hosted by the Grandmaster
and Chess Queen™, Reigning 12th World Chess Champion, Alexandra Kosteniuk.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Magnus Carlsen and the Touch-Move Rule
Hello everybody!
I am finishing my new DVD project "CHESS BLITZ FEVER", which is in part a video course with advice on how to play better blitz and partly a collection of some of my best wins from the 2009 World Blitz Championship, including wins against World Champion Vishy Anand, World #1 rated Magnus Carlsen, and Super-GM's Levon Aronian, Alexander Morozevich, Vugar Gashimov, Alexander Grischuk, Judith Polgar, and Arkady Naiditsch. I posted some of them on TubeChess but without comments, and the DVD versions are professionally produced with proper video intros and full commented games with both 2D boards and live blitz in parallel.
The YouTube video above is a sample of this DVD. This game Carlsen - Kosteniuk is a memorable game for me since I was able to beat the World #1 rated player Magnus Carlsen, 2801 ELO at the time, while I only had 2517 ELO.
It also illustrates the Touch-Move rule in chess at its best. There is a lively discussion in the YouTube comments to my video, so feel free to join in if you have a YouTube nickname. If not, you can comment on this blog and also on my Facebook Fan page.
I will be posting some more samples on my YouTube channel in the days ahead, but hope that you will support me by buying my DVD (preorders taken right now), that helps me produce more free videos for you to enjoy.
Leonard Barden, in this week's Guardian article, titled "Magnus Carlsen's star continues to rise in Norway", talks about the World Blitz Championship, where I was able to beat him in one of our direct encounters. I post my game against Magnus below. Magnus resigned after he played 43. R3e2, since he saw that I can win a Rook by simply playing 43...Qxf2+.
Here is the text of his article. Go to the original page to see a nice position from the game Kramnik-Aronian.
Magnus Carlsen's World Blitz victory in Moscow has made the 19-year-old the darling of the Norwegian media. Carlsen scored 31/42 in the double-round event against the elite, with a rating performance close to 2900. He finished three points clear of world champion Vishy Anand, and six ahead of Sergey Karjakin in third.
Despite this impressive performance, it was one of Carlsen's few defeats which really put him on the front pages and raised his fame quotient in Oslo to a par with Bobby Fischer. In an early round he lost to the world woman champion Alexandra Kosteniuk after blundering a rook, briefly attempting to substitute another move, and resigning without shaking hands. Kosteniuk's other career is as a model, and it was her glamorous poses which accompanied the banner headlines. In fact she also beat Anand and Levon Aronian, full points against three of the world top five men.
Carlsen's recent training with Garry Kasparov included blitz sessions, after which he revealed that they had finished about even and that neither liked to lose 'especially him'. The Moscow event was the strongest ever official world blitz contest, and the only superior achievement was Fischer's famous win in the unofficial contest at Herceg Novi, Yugoslavia, in 1970. Bobby there scored 19/22, won by 4.5 points ahead of Mikhail Tal, and reportedly never took more than two and a half minutes of his allotted five for any game. He wiped out the Soviet contingent of three world champions and two challengers 8.5-1.5.
So Fischer rates best, but Carlsen has yet to peak. You can watch him in action against England's top GMs led by Nigel Short and Michael Adams between 7-15 December in the London Classic at Olympia which includes GM running commentaries and side events for spectators.
I'm sorry for not updating my blog for a few days. Now I'm back since the World Blitz Chess Championship that took place on November 16-18, 2009 in Moscow has come to its end.
Magnus Carlsen won this event with a fantastic result - 31 out of 42! That's 3 points ahead of Viswanathan Anand who took the silver medal of the championship!
In the last 4 days I played 59 blitz-games! Since just before the world blitz championship, on November 15, I took part in another strong GM's tournament in Moscow. So I had a very long blitz marathon.
I did have some spectacular wins over very strong GM, for example two days ago I beat the world #1 rated Magnus Carlsen (who later went on to win the tournament). I am especially happy about yesterday's (17th of November) where out of 14 blitz games in the super strong world blitz championship I took 7 out of 14, beating Grandmasters Anand (who is the current Men's World Champion, Aronian, Judith Polgar, Tkachiev, Grischuk and Morozevich! In total I scored a respectable 12.5 points, which corresponds to 10 wins and 5 draws, against players on average 200 ELO points above me. It was a great experience, and I am so happy to have been able to play and beat such world renowned players. I will soon prepare for you some of my best games with comments and some in video.
Already tomorrow I will be flying to Khanty-Mansiisk where I will take place in the World Cup and will face in the first round GM Shakhriar Mamedyarov. But I can promise you that as soon as I have time I will tell you in details about the World Blitz Championship as well as about many interesting events that took place while I was away from blogging.
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Best chess wishes to you! Alexandra Kosteniuk
Women's World Chess Champion
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