Good start for Mamedyarov at President's Cup
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov started with two wins today at the President's Cup in Baku. The rapid tournament in memory of Azerbaijan's great leader Haydar Aliyev also has Azeri's Teimour Radjabov, Rauf Mamedov and Gadir Guseinov, and Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Gata Kamsky (USA), Emil Sutovsky (Israel) and Judit Polgar (Hungary).Last year's President's Cup was a Scheveningen match between four players (actually five, but every round a team of four played) from Azerbijan and a Rest of the World team. This year there are again four Azeri players and for foreigners, but it's simply a single round-robin of seven rounds. The 'foreigners' this year are Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Gata Kamsky (USA), Emil Sutovsky (Israel) and Judit Polgar (Hungary). The players in the Azerbijan 'team' are Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Teimour Radjabov, Rauf Mamedov and Gadir Guseinov. The invitation policy of the Azerbaijan Chess Federation is often hard to guess and this time Vugar Gashimov has become victim of it - why he was left out of the team remains unclear. According to 1news a journalist asked about this at a press conference, and Vice President Faik Gasanov answered: "This is not a team tournament, and so he's not necessarily invited here."The event started today with the first two rounds. Tomorrow three more rounds are played and on Saturday the last two. On Sunday there's a blitz tournament. If you'd like to follow the games live, the schedule looks like this:
29 April 2010 - round 1 16:00 CET, round 2 17:15.
30 April 2010 - round 3 15:00 CET, round 4 16:15 CET.
1 May 2010 - round 6 09:00 CET, round 7 10:15 CET.
2 May 2010 - blitz tournament.After two rounds only Shakhryiar Mamedyarov still has a 100% score. It must said he played with the white pieces twice, but he used them well and defeated both Polgar and Kramnik. Share second are Kamsky and Sutovsky, a team that has been known as 'player-second' as well (for instance in February 2009 in Sofia!) but now they're both in the tournament a as participants.
Games rounds 1-2
Game viewer by ChessTempo
The stage with the players, and the late Heydar Aliyev in the background
Photos © Azerbaijan Chess Federation, more here
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Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.
Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.
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