By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Grandmaster Magnus Carlsen of Norway qualified for a match for the world chess championship Monday, narrowly winning the candidates tournament featuring eight of the world's best players in London. The 22-year-old chess superstar, the highest-rated player in the world, will take on reigning champ Viswanathan Anand of India in a one-on-one match later this year.
'Tis the season to roll up the board, pack up the pieces and put some fresh batteries in the old chess clock: The 39th annual Eastern Open, a four-day extravaganza, kicks off Dec. 27 at its longtime home at the Westin Washington D.C. City Center hotel at 1400 M St. NW.
Norway’s Magnus Carlsen presents something of a problem for a humble chess columnist. His best wins tend to be slow, sadistic positional squeezes, anacondalike asphyxiations in which Carlsen will happily nurse the tiniest of endgame advantages — or sometimes no advantage at all — before forcing his exhausted opponent to concede on Move 79. It gets the job done, but doesn’t leave much for the annotator to remark on or for the reader to enjoy.
Congratulations to the U.S. Chess Center and its founder, David Mehler, who will be honored for their work with area youths at the U.S. Chess Federation 2012 annual awards next month in Vancouver, Wash.
Indian world chess champion Viswanathan Anand successfully defended his crown Wednesday, winning a four-game playoff in Moscow over challenger Boris Gelfand, who was seeking to become the first Israeli grandmaster ever to hold the title.
Two ex-champions are back atop the heap in American chess and we finally got a little action in the world title match as well, in what proved to be an exceptionally eventful week for the game.
Champions may be most vulnerable right before they defend their titles. Deep into the preparation for his 12-game match against challenger GM Boris Gelfand of Israel starting May 11 in Moscow, titleholder Viswanathan Anand of India took a little timeout this month to hold down first board for the Baden-Baden team in final rounds of the powerful German chess Bundesliga.
It's the most wonderful time of the year, time for that special event that lifts us out of the winter doldrums. Yes, the 38th annual Eastern Open kicks off Dec. 27, a four-section, seven-round Swiss event that regularly attracts one of the largest and strongest fields for a regional event.
It's been the best of chess and the worst of chess at the Tata Steel Tournament, the traditional elite event held each January at the Dutch seaside town of Wijk aan Zee.
Anand later said he prepared this Nimzo-Indian Samisch line for his successful title match against Russian Vladimir Kramnik in 2008, down to the piece sacrifice after 15.
