Results of Recent International Tournaments
The first major tournament of 2000 was won comfortably by Garry Kasparov. The Corus Chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee ran 14th-30th January 2000 in the De Moriaan Community Centre and was just shy of Category 19. Kasparov's play was just a little short of his best, but all his games were of interest and he was ruthlessly efficient when chances were presented to him (perhaps only Anand was allowed to escape).
Kasparov won the most games (6) and finished undefeated. In joint second place were Anand, Kramnik and Leko, again all were undefeated scoring +3 =10. They all struggled to get going with at least one (Anand) suffering from flu like symptoms. These four players will be joined by Khalifman and Shirov in Linares February 28th - March 10th 2000. In 5th place was the crowd's favourite Alexander Morozevich. I watched Morozevich destroy the last Lloyds Bank tournament with 10/11 and his progress to the top ten isn't that bigger surprise. However he is the loostist player at the top level in a very, very long time. He likes to complicate and frequently comes close to losing. Its entertaining chess but often unsound, Kasparov was annoyed he didn't get more spectator prizes but people like to see players get away with enterprising (perhaps even over-enterprising) chess. Its a lot of years since Kasparov had the reputation of being exciting but slightly unsound but it was one of the reasons people liked his early play. However Morozevich's style does not look suited to a Linares style tournament.
The Dutch (and Corus in particular) are to be congratulated in putting together an excellent event and its to be hoped that a few more top events can be organised this year. There are certainly plenty of gaps in the calendar and a number of excellent GMs about (I asked Peter Svidler what his plans for this year were and he answered do you have any suggestions? He is not alone in this problem.).
This above news report was taken from TWIC website. Do check it out.
The games can be downloaded in .pgn format.
The Perenyi Memorial took place in Gyula (Hungary) in the Hotal Agro 24th Jan-3rd Feb 2000. The Chinese IM Zhang Pengxiang won the event and scored a GM morm. Ni Hua who finished in second is a Chinese FM and scored two points more than required for an IM norm.
Final standings:
1. Zhang Pengxiang m CHN 2562 9.5; 2. Ni Hua f CHN 2390 8.5; 3. Volzhin, Alexander g RUS 2548 8.0; 4. Horvath, Csaba g HUN 2519 8.0; 5. Ruck, Robert m HUN 2472 7.5; 6. Yu Shaoteng m CHN 2535 7.0; 7. Wang Rui m CHN 2496 6.5; 8. Li Wenliang m CHN 2444 6.5; 9. Lauber, Arnd m GER 2416 5.5; 10. Burnett, Ronald m USA 2437 5.5; 11. Groszpeter, Attila g HUN 2470 5.5; 12. Danner, Georg m AUT 2443 5.0; 13. Vajda, Levente m ROM 2459 4.5; 14. Dittmar, Peter f GER 2308 3.5;
This above news report was taken from TWIC website. Do check it out.