Corus Chess 2010

Corus Chess is one of the most special of chess tournaments in the international chess calendar held in the Dutch town of Wijk aan See (pronounced why kahn say) and one of the longest with 13 rounds. It is also one of the 4 tournaments which make up the Grand Slam of chess tournaments (the others currently being Linares, MTel and Nanjing) with the Final held at Bilbao. The 2010 edition began with spectacular fireworks from Mr "Fire On Board"***, GM Alexei Shirov. Shirov began with 5/5 and then 5.5/6 but is now 6.5/10 (+5 =3 -2). Admittedly Shirov's 5/5 has been mainly against the 2600s GMs (with the exception of GM Peter Leko).

The official website is here filled with goodies (see especially the Reports and Game Analysis).

One of the most interesting match-up was between the World No 1, 19 year old Magnus Carlsen of Norway and the former World Champion, Vladimir Kramnik. Earlier in December in the London Chess Classic 2009, Kramnik lost to Carlsen. Here Kramnik had his revenge in Rd 9. Kramnik has been showing good form in recent months, moving away from his drawish reputation ("Drawnik") to an attacking style reminiscence of his earlier years before he became World Champion, leading some to dub him "Kramnik 2.0".

ChessVibes in conjunction with the organisers have been filming post-mortem press conferences. Here is Kramnik explaining his win over Carlsen:



Here is the Game Analysis: click here.

Here is another of Vladimir Kramnik's post-mortem Press Conference explaining his win over USA's Hikaru Nakamura in Rd 8. Kramnik showed top form crushing Nakamura's Dutch Leningrad Defence.



I also recommend heading over to ICC's ChessFM for their GOTD analysis. It is free for the moment. Get there before they locked it up and you need to become a member in order to view the video analysis.





*** That is the title of his book of collected games in two volumes which has been recommended as a must read.

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