The tournament was, for most of the part, a race between Yuri Solodovnichenko, Sergei Ovesejevitsch, and Kassa Korely. I stayed at the same place as Kassa, and I know he was less than happy with his play in the beginning, but in the end he collected a few good wins. In the 6:th round he won a game against the Indian youngster Aarav Dengla in such a simple fashion that I just had to go through the game to understand what happened:
Category Archives: chess
Smuk GM Skanderborg
I had an experimental summer, playing five tournaments in less than 2 months, and two days after arriving from Chennai I went to the idyllic town of Skanderborg to participate in a closed GM-tournament. I was perhaps not in my most inspired mood, and I tried to make the best of circumstances by studying new stuff and expanding my repertoire. We played at Skanderborg Kulturhus, a lovely venue overlooking the lake. During the one and a half month before I had only had a few hours at home with my piano, and I was starting to suffer from something close to abstinence. I am thankful that the organizer put in a good word for me so that I was allowed to practice on the Steinway (once owned by Mercer Ellington) that was sitting in the concert hall.
I spent hours at the piano, and got back some of my inspiration, although my attention to detail and focus never quite caught up. My game against Nicolai Vaesterbaek Pedersen was symptomatic for my tournament as a whole:
Summing up the Olympiad in Chennai
As you might have noticed I am not aspiring to be a news outlet, and a week after the Olympiad finished I have recuperated well enough to have the energy to write a last post on the subject; so with the news all out there, it is enough to say that we (the Swedish team in the open section) gave it our all, but it did not get us as far as we had wished. The Women’s team fared better, and Pia Cramling scored a Gold medal on board one, for the second time! Her overall score of 8,5/10 was well deserved, and I could not find a game where she was really in trouble. On the day that she played the game below I had a day off, and helped Deniz Arman to comment on the games for the Sweidish audience. As you will see, I got some things wrong:
I am currently playing a tournament in Skanderborg, Denmark. I will write more about that next time.
Olympiad Round 8.
So what happened to round 7? Well, I was tired and there was a free day and a friend of mine invited me to go on a sightseeing tour, so… they cancelled round 7. Also, Sweden had the greatest go success ever when Fredrik Blomback took the bronze at the European Go Congress in Vatra Dornei, Romania. On the road to the 3rd place he won against three professionals, so I had to celebrate it properly, by going through his games. I would have posted links to them here, if it was not for the annoying fact that the games were not properly reported; that some moves were wrong, and that I do not want you to think that Fredrik played any less great than he actually did. The ever entertaining Benjamin Drean-Guenaizia won the title by winning against Artem Kachanovskyi in the final. Through the link you can watch both the bronze match and the final.
So, Olympiad, Chennai, today. In the open, Sweden managed to win against Zambia, which was kind of expected although Zambia has performed very well so far in the tournament. The Swedish women were up against the higher rated Israelis, and although Pia Cramling were the one to finish the match in Swedens favour, it was Inna’s game that was most impressive: