Wang Yue qualifies for Amber 2009

By drawing Evgeny Bareev in just nine moves, GM Wang Yue from China won the competition among the Rising Stars about an hour ago, qualifying for the prestigious Amber tournament to be held in March 2009.

This was going to be a report on the penultimate, 9th round of the NH Chess Tournament, but Wang Yue and Bareev had finished their last-round game so fast, that we might as well include it! It concluded a great one-man show in a match that was never going to be the main story. Instead, the Chinese grandmaster higlights the news, all the more since he's now virtually entered the world's top ten.

Wang Yue's gold medal on board four for China two years ago at the Olympiad in Turin was a prelude to even bigger successes. There he stayed undefeated and scored 10/12, and until the NH Chess Tournament this was actually Wang's main asset: he very rarely loses. Adding seven wins and three draws in Amsterdam, he's now undefeated for an incredible 55 games in a row (his last loss was against Thorfinsson at the Reykjavik Open on March 3 this year) - isn't that a record?

But we shouldn't let today's news overtake what happened yesterday, because in the 9th round, the Experience team managed to score their first victory in a minimatch against the Rising Stars: 3-2, thanks to Ljubojevic's first victory, against Caruana. Congrats to the legends - they deserved it! Ljubojevic speaks in my video on yesterday's round, down this post.

Rising Stars
1.	Wang Yue	g	CHN	2704	8
2.	Cheparinov, Ivan	g	BUL	2687	7
3.	Caruana, Fabiano	g	ITA	2630	5?Ǭ?
4.	L'Ami, Erwin	g	NED	2610	5
5.	Stellwagen, Dani?ɬ´l	g	NED	2616	4?Ǭ?
Total					30
Experience
1.	Agdestein, Simen	g	NOR	2583	4
3.	Bareev, Evgeny	g	RUS	2655	3?Ǭ?
3.	Ljubojevic, Ljubomir	g	SRB	2555	3
4.	Korchnoi, Viktor	g	SUI	2602	2?Ǭ?
5.	Jussupow, Artur	g	GER	2587	2
Total					15

Here are the games of the ninth round:






Links:

• Official website
• Games in PGN