Day off

Not a day goes by without a quick look at chessbase.com . This invariably cheers me up. Has done for I don't know how many years.

The competence, dedication, sense of humour and sheer goodness of nature of the entire team radiates through their pages.

Thank you all, both for your products and the website.

And please, Nadja Woisin, forgive me for stealing this picture. It gave such pleasure to see the relationship between these two so aptly summed up in one shot.



"The child is father of the man."
Wordsworth.

Carlsen versus Topalov

Today's game started off as a Four Knights English and rapidly turned into an upside down Boleslavsky.
This favoured Carlsen who helped himself to an extra tempo.
Below left today's game at move 10. To the right the Boleslavsky showing the mirror image with Colours reversed.


By move ten Topalov realized what was happening and put a stop to White's march of the a-pawn. In order to achieve that he had to allow Carlsen the Sicilian's fantasy of an early -d4-.

White had to pay for this with a rather holey Queenside and he had to forego -b3-.

Black needed to stay in touch with the =d5= square and had to play c6 to keep a close watch on it.

All this Sicilian flavour promised an exciting game, but it came to an abrupt end when Topalov blundered in not-too-great a Zeitnot.