Tal Memorial

Tal Memorial 2012 Finish

Leave a Comment / Luke McShane, Magnus Carlsen, Ruy Lopez, Tal Memorial /
The Tal Memorial has come to an end for another year. The tournament finished a few days ago with Magnus Carlsen taking out first place after beating McShane in the final round. Caruana, who was looking good for the top spot, lost to Aronian in the final round. Nakamura and Radjabov drew their game quickly and that left Magnus out in front by half a point on 5.5 out of 9. It was a great finish for a great tournament!
The following game is the final round game between Carlsen and McShane.
The opening is the Ruy Lopez – delayed exchange variation.

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Tal Memorial 2012

Leave a Comment / Levon Aronian, Luke McShane, Queens Gambit - Slav, Tal Memorial /
This years Tal Memorial has been a really interesting tournament to follow, and with only two rounds left, and 5 leaders on 4/7 I am sure it is going to be an exciting finish! The tournament layout has been great, with 9 rounds, 10 super strong players and a blitz tournament to begin the tournament, and determine colours.

There have been plenty of interesting games, with quite a few upsets, especially McShane, the lowest seeded player in the tournament gaining wins over both Kramnik and Aronian.
Live coverage has been excellent, with numerous websites taking part. One website I have been using is whychess.org The site has a live chess viewer and analysis by houdini.
The only downfall is that the games air in Australia as I am getting ready for bed, I suppose I cant blame the tournament organisers for that.

The following game is McShane’s win over Aronian in the third round. This game was a very exciting game, with an exchange sacrifice early in the opening that gave McShane a splendid attack!
 

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Tal Memorial 2011

Leave a Comment / Mikhail Tal, Tal Memorial /
The Tal Memorial is once again getting under way. The Tal Memorial is a 10 player round robin held in Moscow named after the chess great Mikhail Tal. The following players will be participating in this years tournament.
 
Magnus Carlsen – 2826
Viswanathan Anand – 2811
Levon Aronian – 2802
Vladimir Kramnik – 2800
Vassily Ivanchuk – 2775
Sergey Karjakin – 2763
Hikaru Nakamura – 2758
Peter Svidler – 2755
Boris Gelfand – 2744
Ian Nepomniachtchi – 2730

 

I am definitely looking forward to viewing the games and following the results of the tournament with such a strong field involved. The tournament has also motivated me to view some of the games Mikhail Tal played during his career. I found the following game quite interesting. Mikhail Tal plays white against Pal Benko in 1959. The opening is the Sicilian defense with the interesting hyper-accelerated variation, one that is not very familiar to me.

 

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