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 »

By Hikaru on 10/15/2008 12:47 PM

Greetings from Seattle! Tonight I will be playing in the US Chess League for the last time during the regular season. So far it has been a great run and I've enjoyed it immensely. Since I have not commented on last week, I will make some brief comments. Unlike last year when I lost to Bhat, (largely because I wasn't paying attention) this year was simply that I made a very stupid blunder in a much better position. However, despite my misfortune, our board 3 Readey also missed plenty of wins in his game so it wasn't solely my fault. Another note which I'd like to comment on is that I recently noticed GM Wolff annotated the game Esserman-Lian and said the Smith-Morra is a bad opening. I do not believe someone like Wolff who has been retired from chess for so many years and would rather make money at a hedge fund than play chess has any right to comment on the current state of chess theory. I would also straight up say that in a 10 game match in the Smith-Morra, Wolff would lose to Esserman if he played black. & ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 10/3/2008 11:42 AM

Hello again. Sorry if I have not been blogging much lately, but between the US Chess League and some rather unfortunate computer issues I have been quite busy. I will start off with the US Chess League. So far, so good as I am now 3/3 having beaten GMs Benjamin, Mitkov and Fedorowicz. Although I was not particularly crazy about the first 2 wins against Benjamin and Mitkov, my performance was good enough. However against GM Fedorowicz I played a double edged variation of the Kan and got a reasonable position out of the opening. In the middlegame, I think he missed some chances when he decided to play 24.Bxh7 instead of the sharp 24.Nd4 which would have led to a complicated tactical melee. In the ensuing endgame, Fed just got a bad position and lost without putting up much of a fight. Fortunately, Andy May won a very nice game on board 4 while Vancouverite Marcel Milat had a miracle save on board 3 which was enough for us to win the match. As of right now, pretty much everyone (Greg,Arun,etc) seems to have abso ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 9/14/2008 12:26 PM

Hello, this will be a rather brief blog as I am about to head off to Balcarra National Park in a short while. I now have the list of questions from all the members, and I would like to thank them. All of the questions look interesting, so I hope that after the interview everyone will be pleased with the answers.

Hikaru

By Hikaru on 9/11/2008 4:08 PM

Greetings to everyone from sunny Vancouver! Last night I played my first game for the Seattle Sluggers in the US Chess League. When I played last year for the New York Knights, I must admit that it did not go particularly well as I started out with a loss against GM-elect Vinay Bhat. After that traumatic loss in my first round, I never really was able to get on track as I only won 1 game against IM Eli Vovsha and drew the rest. One of the major issues which I found at the time was that playing on a computer made it much more difficult to focus and I tended to treat the games less seriously. Therefore, I made a conscious decision to not play solely on the computer this year. Fortunately, Seattle has DGT boards which allow players to make moves on a normal board while being relayed to ICC.

In the first game of the season for me, I was paired against GM Joel Benjamin with White. I started off with 1.g3 and we reached a relatively standard position after about 7 moves. The game then took a ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 9/5/2008 11:55 AM

Hello again! Once again, I find myself apologizing for not keeping up with the blog during the tournament, but I was quite busy. The last time I blogged was after I drew against GM Charbonneau in round 4 of the tournament. At that point I was doing quite well, tied for the lead with GMs Charbonneau and Shulman. Unfortunately, in round 5 I proceeded to play very badly. Against IM Zugic, I played quite a bit too aggressively instead of being content with a draw. Somewhere around here, I realized that I was off form. Unfortunately, the rest day did little good for me as I proceeded to play a highly dubious Rauzer setup against GM Nataf and was close to losing if not lost in the final position. After this, I played against GM Mark Bluvshtein whom I have known since we played way back in the World Youths in 2001. The game was quite balanced, although I obtained a small initiative out of the opening. This eventually led to an endgame where I was a pawn up, but due both to feeling slightly sick (more on that later) ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 8/28/2008 10:31 AM

Hello again everyone! I did not have a chance to post a blog yesterday as I was out exploring Montreal for the first time since I arrived on Sunday. I spent much of the morning walking along various paths of the Mont Royal which has some great  natural beauty and spectacular views. After going up the Mont Royal, I went to Old Montreal and walked along some of the nice streets and shops which are quite crowded with tourists. One of the interesting things I find about Montreal is that it very much reminds me of France with both the language as well as the whole atmosphere and culture. This is why despite absolutely loving Montreal, I doubt I could ever live here as it is just too reminiscent of Europe. Considering that I almost exclusively play in Europe these days, it is nice to not be in the same sort of area as that in which my profession is spent. This is probably why I will end up staying in Vancouver, BC instead of coming back to the east coast.

Onto the rounds! In ro ... Read More »

By Hikaru on 8/26/2008 12:43 PM

Before, I get right into this post, I'd like to start off by offering my apologies for posting blogs the day after the round. Unfortunately, after the round ends, I am usually quite tired, so I come back to the house, eat dinner and then spend the rest of the evening playing pool or just listening to some great people speak some excellent French. Therefore, it is unlikely I will be posting after rounds end.

Yesterday, I was paired against American GM Varuzhan Akobian. I first remember seeing Akobian pop up on the American chess scene around 2001-2002. It was during this time that he emigrated from Armenia to the US and chose to live in Los Angeles. Akobian stalled somewhat after his big run during that time, but due to some good results (Gibraltar,Australia) he has improved his rating significantly to the 2600+ mark. During these past years, we have had many matchups with the overall score being +1 for him from 5 games. The lone decisive game was in the Imre Konig Memorial way back in ... Read More »