Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
NICK BARNETT CHESS
WHERE IS the last place you would expect to find a photograph of a chess player? The bizarre surprise is: on a body pillow! A body pillow? you ask. For the uninitiated, a body pillow is a large, elongated pillow used to support the body especially during sleep There also are body pillows for side sleepers so they can place part of the pillow between their legs and better align their spine.
This particular one (tweeted by @AntonSquaredMe), boasts a full length image of Hikaru! Most odd!
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BUT TO the serious stuff: Magnus Carlsen won the Gashimov Memorial (Shamkir Chess) and garnered some lavish praise (mostly celestially inspired): ‘From another planet!’ tweeted @kevingohwm and Antonio Pereira from Chessbase. com was gushing: ‘A third consecutive win in Shamkir meant Magnus Carlsen finished on 7 out of 9, two points ahead of his closer pursuers, with an out-of-this-world rating performance of 2988.’ And further along: ‘A stellar performance!’ ‘Stratospheric!’
Magnus is clearly STAR! Tarjei J. Svensen keeps close track of his performance and drew up this impressive list:
3002: Nanjing ‘09 (8 out of 10)
2994: London ‘12 (6½/8)
2988: Shamkir ‘19 (7/9)
2981: Shamkir ‘15 (7/9)
2930: Wijk aan Zee ‘13 (10/13)
2918: Bazna ‘10 (7½/10)
Perhaps more importantly, Magnus enjoyed the tournament ‘It’s one of the best tournaments I’ve ever played, both in terms of performance and also the quality of the games!’ with a rare smile.
Final Rankings: 1. Magnus Carlsen, 2. Liren Ding, 3. Sergey Karjakin 4. Alexander Grischuk, 5 Viswanathan Anand 6. Teimour Radjabov 7. Veselin Topalov 8. David Navara 9. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 10. Anish Giri
The next tournament for Magnus is the GRENKE Chess Classic starting on 20th April. In an interview with the Norwegian portal VG.no, he said he is glad that 2845
(and not his unofficial 2860 live rating) will be used at the upcoming tournament, where a more widespread list of participants means he will need a better score to ‘defend’ his stratospheric rating.
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THE CAPE TOWN Chess Club meets every Tuesday at
7.45pm at the Western Province Bridge Centre, Sea Point, Cape Town (parking and entrance adjacent to M6 Helen Suzman Boulevard). New members are welcome. Annual subscriptions are R240 for adults and R120 for juniors and pensioners. Aside from the club events, the club covers team entrance fees for Chess WP events such as the WP League and WP Team Blitz events.
On the 23rd of April there is Annual Blitz Championship. To book email David Gluckman: dogman@cybersmart.co.za. Space is limited to 60 entrants so you need to enter soon to ensure your participation.
Write to thechessnik@gmail.com to send me your news or comments.