Carlsen wins Tal Memorial

Carlsen wins Tal Memorial The 7th Tal Memorial is a ten-player round robin event taking place from June 8-18 in Moscow, Russia. The players are Magnus Carlsen (2835,Norway),Levon Aronian (2825 ,Armenia),Vladimir Kramnik (2801,Russia),Teimour Radjabov(2784,Azerbaijan),Hikaru Nakamura(2775,USA),Fabiano Caruana(2770,Italy),Alexander Morozevich(2769,Russia) ,Alexander Grischuk (2761,Russia),Evgeny Tomashevsky (2738,Russia) and Luke McShane (2706,England) This is the strongest tournament of the year and 8 of the top 11 players of the world are competing. Time control: 100 minutes for the first 40 moves, 50 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with an increment of 30 seconds per move starting from move one. Draw offers are not allowed until after the first time control. The prize fund is 100,000 Euros. After so many dramatic twists and turns, there were 5 different solo leaders which is probably a first in a 10 player GM round robin . This was Carlsen's tenth tournament in a row with a performance well above 2800. It pushes him to a new all-time rating high at 2837 on the July FIDE list. He did get a little help from Levon Aronian who won against Fabiano Caruana, the penultimate leader in the 8th round preventing the Italian star from achieving probably the biggest success of his career. Caruana needed only a draw in the last round to secure at least the shared first place and be declared the tournament winner on the account of first tie-break rule – the greater number of games played with black pieces. Both Carlsen and Radjabov, the only players in position to catch Caruana, had more games with white. Has such a winning streak above 2800 ever been recorded before? In the last two years and nine months Carlsen has won eleven tournaments: Nanjing 2009, London 2009, Wijk 2010, Bazna 2010, Nanjing 2010, London 2010, Bazna 2011, Biel 2011, Grand Slam final 2011, Tal Memorial 2011, Tal Memorial 2012. Deep Blue Here is our kiddie journalist,KC Morala,report: “Eden Diano and Ronald Ganzon finished in dead heat of 6pts in the 7-round DeepBlue Open Chess Tournament held in SM last June 16-17, 2012. Diano carried out an impressive show of ambushing his five remaining opponents after a disappointing loss on round 2 to Bonn Tibod. A better tiebreak score had Diano to be recognized as the tournament’s victor, having defeated Ronald Ganzon on 6th round. Meanwhile, 5.5-pointer Richard Natividad squashed Erwin Ababat to secure his post as solo 3rd placer. NM Merben Roque’s performance wasn’t as classic as the onlookers had hoped to be, but last month’s tournament champ managed to get himself a slot in a 5-way tie with Rommel Ganzon, Cyril Ortega, Felix Shaun Balbona and Alfer Fernandez for 4th to 8th places. Jessa Balbona soldiered on to nick the top lady player award as she outclassed Belinda Baguio on last round. The latter and Laila Nadera came second to Jessa Balbona. The rest of the top 14 consisted of those who managed to score 4.5 points, namely: Leonardo Alidani, Erwin Ababat, Carlos Moreno III, Venancio Loyola, Yuri Cauba, and Marq Balbona.” Cepca. Our monthly tournament for June will be held tomorrow Saturday SM City Deep Blue starting at 1pm. Format is 5 rounds Swiss with different time controls depending on the class of the player. Basic time control is 15 minutes . Cash prizes will be awarded to the top 5 players and the monthly winner will snare a trophy donated by our president ,Jojo Muralla. The top 2 finishers will qualify to the grand finals in December where the champion will take home a 5 ft signature trophy among other prizes. boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com