By Hikaru on 11/18/2008 3:56 PM

Good day to everyone out there. In typical fashion, I do not blog directly on days when I am playing anymore as it distracts me from the massive amounts of work which everyone is starting to put into their preparation. Repeating my standard form from the last olympiad, I chose to sit out the first round when we played Iceland. The team scraped by with a 2.5-1.5 victory as Yury Shulman got himself into time pressure and blundered badly against GM Danielsen. However, due to the change in format from game points to match points, this does not particularly matter. It is worth noting that if the format was match points last olympiad we would have won silver not bronze. In round two, we played a very solid Greek team which had Papaioannou,Kotronias,Halkias,Mastrovasilios. This match was definitely a huge disappoint for us as Gata missed a win on board 1 while I blew a huge advantage on board 2. Alex solidly won on board 3, but Var was unable to hold with Black on board 4 so the match resulted in a 2-2 tie instead o ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 11/3/2008 2:04 AM

Since I was in a rush to finish the prior blog as I had to rush off to the airport, I will attempt to add a little bit more about the event. Looking back on the event now that I've had a day of rest&relaxation, I'd like to point out to everyone (primarily Mig) that Ivanchuk did in fact offer me a draw before I went Rc2 in the second rapid game. What I have noticed is that most people have failed to recognize is that once we reached that endgame, I was not playing for a draw and blitz tiebreaks. That was obviously my original gameplan, however the situation was very much of a low risk high reward case where I would have had to make a disastrous blunder in order to lose. So the comments I have which suggest that somehow Ivanchuk was only drifting towards blitz are quite erroneous. Another story which I must comment on are the appauling remarks which Anatoly Karpov made in an interview on the last day in Cap D'Agde. Although I have a great deal of respect for Karpov and his chess abilities, I think that perh ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 11/2/2008 1:30 AM

Hello to everyone! Although I had many opportunities to blog throughout the event here in Cap D'Agde, for the most part I was focused on playing my best chess which is why I did not blog. So without further ado, I will try and recap all the great moments throughout the tournament for me this year.

Qualfiiers:
In the qualifiers, I was put in the group with Carlsen, Radjabov, Karpov, Kosteniuk, Hou, Feller and Skripchenko. Originally I thought that being in this group was rather unfavourable as I had to face both Carlsen and Radjabov as opposed to simply Ivanchuk had I been in the other group. In the first round I was paired against GM Radjabov. In the past he has made some rather disparaging remarks about Armenians, as well as other grandmasters. It is rather interesting to note that when I acted in this manner on ICC in years past, people would get really upset whereas it seems when Radjabov just does it publicly, it is ok? Is there a double standard here...anyone? In our g ... Read More »