By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/28/2008 5:10 PM

Since I have neither been on ICC or blogging much lately, I am sure people are wondering where I have vanished off to. Matter of fact, I've been spending time in the lovely Pacific Northwest. This past week I was staying in absolutely beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. After that I returned to Washington State for a mere two days to do a simul at the Washington Elementary Championships in Redmond, WA. Now, I am back in Vancouver for the next two weeks before I try and remember how to play chess amidst all the calm and beauty. Till next time, keep it classy Chess World! (Takeoff on Ron Burgundy for those who didn't see Anchorman).

By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/14/2008 3:07 AM

So, yesterday I played GM Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu with white in the last round of this 2nd leg of the French Top 16 Team Championship. Nisipeanu first became famous way back in 1999 when he had a magical run in the Fide World Cup at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas by beating GMs Ivanchuk and Shirov along the way before losing in the semi finals. Since then, he has consistently performed at a very high level and is considering an extremely solid player. Surprisingly despite having played in several of the same tournaments, this was the first time I ever played him. The game was rather short by my standards as it was a 14 move draw in a Nimzo Indian. Playing morning rounds is always difficult and I was quite tired and played a very dull line which led to a very drawish position. Unfortunately, while I put up another solid performance scoring 3/4 my team suffered. We only scored 1 win out of our 4 matches with 3 losses. Nevetheless, despite these two rather disappointing performances the players on my team seem to have...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/12/2008 4:15 PM

So today I played a rather dull game against GM Kasimdzhanov. The opening was a Meran Slav with 6.Qc2 followed by 7.Bd3. Shortly afterwards queens came off and I held a draw with relative ease. Nothing special, but its hard to complain about draws with black. Tomorrow my team Antibes will face the extremely strong Clichy club (Nisipeanu,Fressinet,Pelletier,Tregubov top 4) and hopefully we can find a way to survive.  I do not yet know who  I will play, but due to the fact that it is a 10 AM game (11:15 PM here now) I probably should go and get some sleep. Till next time, au revior!

By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/12/2008 3:47 AM

Hello again! So I beat a 2377 French IM with black yesterday to remain perfect with 2/2. Today, I will probably be black against GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov who I beat in the finals of the Corsica Rapid tournament. About the previous post, I attempted to copy and paste the game against Bauer with annotations but unfortunately it did not work. For everyone who is interested, here is a link to the French website with results. http://www.echecs.asso.fr/Equipes.aspx To find the results go to the right tab which shows "selectionnaire une competition" and select "Interclub Adultes" followed by "Top 16" On selectionner division tab. In case this does not work I will post the results from the website thus far.

 

 

Compétitions

Imprimer 

Par équipes ...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/11/2008 12:13 AM

HTML>HEAD>script type="text/javascript">var loaded=0;//-->script>meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">TITLE>TITLE>META name="GENERATOR" content="ChessBase HTML Publisher 3.0">META name="KEYWORDS" content="chess, schach, cb80pub, schachpartie, chessgame, ChessBase">META name="ROBOTS" content="noindex">HEAD>FRAMESET cols="342,*" >FRAME src="frenchleagueb.htm" name="LeftSide">FRAME src="frenchleagueg0.htm" name="RightSide">NOFRAMES>This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.

NOFRAMES> FRAMESET>HTML>...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 4/10/2008 5:53 PM

Since it is going on 1 AM here in France, I will make this blog brief. Today in the first of four rounds, I beat French GM Christian Bauer with white in an English. This is the second of three legs of the French League Championship and we'll see how it ends. Thus far my team Antibes has not performed extremely well but there is plenty of time. I will blog more in-depth soon, but I am totally exhausted due to my four and a half hour game and several of my teammates having six hour games! Till tomorrow adieu.

By Hikaru Nakamura on 3/26/2008 6:13 PM

Hello everyone, I have been rather swamped with work (when I am not playing 1-min games on ICC) so I won't be posting any of my games just yet. However, I played rather mediocre chess in the French League on the whole. In the first game I drew Etienne Bacrot with white. The 2nd game I swindled Vladimir Baklan with black in an Alekhine and drew. And in the 3rd game I beat French GM Andrei Sokolov with white. At some point tomorrow I will probably post a game or two from the event with annotations. Au Revior, et au bientot!

By Hikaru Nakamura on 3/21/2008 7:41 PM

I have now been in Nice, France for the past two days. Oddly enough, this happens to be the first trip abroad that I have made alone which makes for an interesting and new experience. Originally, I thought I would be staying in Monaco and would have gone and gambled away my life's savings at the Grand Casino in Monte Carlo; however, as it turned out I ended up in Nice instead. The area itself is quite pleasant with a nice ocean breeze and plenty of scenery. Yesterday, I actually ended up walking over to the playing site for the Melody Amber tournament and spoke briefly with some of the players and journalists. Nothing really shocking happened, although it appeared that the game Karjakin-Van Wely was more or less losing from the start according to Topalov and Leko.

Today, I decided to relax and went out and took a few pictures. Other than that, I didn't really do much besides preparing for my game against Bacrot tomorrow. In a few hours I will catch a train to Marseille and will attempt to blog from there....

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 3/17/2008 12:25 PM

So, nothing much to really report on since my last post. I have pretty much been going about life as usual studying chess and playing transwarp in preparation for France. Yesterday, I actually noticed a rather amusing drawing of myself on a website. 

http://czharina.deviantart.com/art/Hikaru-Nakamura-80128083



©2008 *Czharina

I must say that I do rather like this drawing although the hair white piece of hair makes me look rather old! Nevertheless, it is still a nice drawing and for anyone who is interested just finger czharina on ICC to find out more information.

That is all for right now, but I will probably write another blog before I leave for France on Wednesday evening. Ciao.

 



...

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By Hikaru Nakamura on 3/11/2008 6:49 AM

 

This past Sunday on March 9, 2008, I attended a commemoration event for what would have been Bobby Fischer's 65th birthday. The event took place at the Marshall Chess Club from 1 PM till about 5 PM. Much of the first several hours was spent with famous talk show host Dick Cavett recollecting his memories about Fischer as well as some very good footage from the three different times during which Fischer appeared on the show. While watching these clips, I couldn't help but notice how normal Fischer seemed during these interviews during 1972-73. However, I also found it very striking that Fischer did not seem to have any other hobbies which he had interest in. If there is one thing I've noticed about chess players nowadays as compared to then is that most have other interests besides chess, I suspect this is why there haven't been any top grandmasters who have gone rather insane in the past 10 years. Other notable people who spoke about Fischer were FM Asa Hoffman, Dr. Frank Brady, and Shernaz Kennedy. All...

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