Mikhail Botvinnik 100th Anniversary
Today is the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik (1911-1995), the sixth World Chess Champion, and one of greatest chess players of the 20th Century.
Botvinnik was a patriarch of modern Soviet chess, and in addition to holding the title for most of the years from 1948-1963, he founded a very successful chess school which tutored many great players including future world champions Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.
Botvinnik adopted a very serious and scientific approach to his chess studies, despite maintaining a successful career as an electrical engineer in the Soviet Union.
The Russian Chess Federation is marking the occasion with a series of events, including a rapid double round-robin competition from 2-3 September in Moscow between Vishy Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Lev Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik.
But before then, today's anniversary is being marked by a veterans round robin rapid tournament featuring Viktor Korchnoi as top seed.
The standings after 6 rounds:
| Name | Elo | Nat | Pts |
| Korchnoi, Viktor | 2553 | SUI | 5.0 |
| Portisch, Lajos | 2523 | HUN | 3.5 |
| Vasiukov, Evgeni | 2455 | RUS | 3.5 |
| Nikitin, Aleksander S | 2430 | RUS | 3.5 |
| Chernikov, Oleg L | 2402 | RUS | 2.5 |
| Uhlmann, Wolfgang | 2379 | GER | 2.5 |
| Ivkov, Borislav | 2416 | SRB | 2.5 |
| Zaitsev, Igor A | 2408 | RUS | 2.5 |
| Bykhovsky, Anatoly A | 2354 | RUS | 2.5 |
| Taimanov, Mark E | 2386 | RUS | 2.0 |
The official website with more information (in Russian) is here.
