Web Watch

10 September 2003

by GM Mikhail Golubev

In his Telegraph chess column, Nigel Short speaks about the cancellation of the Ponomariov-Kasparov match. The funniest observation in Short's interesting article is, probably, the following: "It is curious that of the last six FIDE World Champions, three of them — Fischer, Kasparov and now Ponomariov — have been defaulted. Whether that says more about the size of the individual egos or the incompetence of FIDE, I do not know."

On 6th September, Russian newspaper Sport-Express, published an article in Russian by Yuri Vasilyev, who claims that Anatoly Karpov is one person who benefits from the cancelled Ponomariov-Kasparov match. The article is based on rumours that Ponomariov might play a friendly match against Karpov in Yalta...

The Ponomariov-Kasparov saga had one positive consequence in Ukraine, where the national chess federation finally launched its website. The page in English is available.

In the Washington Post chess column, GM Lubomir Kavalek examines the Fischer-Sozin Attack games from the American Continental championships. Nikolai Vlassov's notes to Kudrin-Morovic game were published in CT-1024; Kavalek's article contains more details. In short, 6.Bc4 wins! :-)

Lubomir Kavalek will be the next guest of the Chess & Books with Fred Wilson Live Radio Show on 10th of September, at 21:00 EST. Replay of the show will be at 23:05 EST on the same day. Further details are available at the Chess.fm site. An nice photo report from the Moscow Blitz Championship by Anna Dergatscheva is published at the Chess Base website. There is Andor Lilienthal with David Bronstein, and many other excellent pictures. Lately, the Worldchessrating.com site has been actively developing its new column, The Game of the Week. And our CT colleague IM Maxim Notkin is the main man behind this idea! The surreal Onischuk—Romanishin game, annotated by Igor Glek, is especially recommended. Alexander Onischuk praised Glek's annotations, and also told your CT correspondent that instead of the key move 15.Qd3!, he initially planned to make a much weaker move (15.Qb3?). He changed his mind only after Romanishin made his 14th move. Maybe this is the way to play a great game - to calculate just one move ahead!

Luiz Roberto Da Costa sent us a few links concerning Chess on Stamps: www.tri.org.au/chess; www.trussel.com/f_stamps.htm Themes include: Chess in Yugoslavia, The Turk on stamps, Chess Positions on stamps. GM Dorian Rogozenko, CT reader and contributor (see Chess Today 521!), opened his own web page. Among biographical materials, there are games of his shuffle chess variation match vs. Chess Tiger 15 in Jena, 2003.