Here's something I'm looking forward to watching!

World Blitz Chess Championship 2008 (Sasikiran and Kamsky join)
7-8 November 2008, Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan
The World Blitz Chess Championship will take part 7-8 November 2008 in Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan. The games of the tournament will be played with a classical time control of 5 minutes for the whole game for each opponent, without increment.

The tournament will be a round robin of 16 players. The first five players of the World Blitz Championships in 2006 and 2007, as well as the continental blitz champions for 2008 receive the right to be seeded automatically. Right of participation is also granted to the 15th Asian Games champion and the nominee of the Organizing committee.


Participants
Alexander Morozevich (Russia)
Leinier Domiguez Perez (Cuba)
Rafael Vaganian (Armenia)
Sergey Rublevsky (Russia)
Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan)
Vladislav Tkachiev (France)
Peter Svidler (Russia)
Alexander Grischuk (Russia)
Boris Gelfand (Israel)
Judith Polgar (Hungary)
Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine)
Murtas Kazhgaleev (Kazakhstan)

Update: 2 more players to join the competition have been announced and these are

Krishnan Sasikiran
Gata Kamsky

The total number of players is 16, the last two will be announced these days.

Prize fund
This year's World Blitz Championship has a very high prize fund - 350, 000 Swiss Francs. 80% of them (280, 000 Swiss Francs) are for the participants, and the rest is for FIDE. All players will receive prizes. The champion will receive 80 000 Swiss Francs and the 16th place is awarded 5000 Swiss Francs.

Official website: worldblitz2008.kz

Courtesy of Chessdom.Com

GM Mamedov checkmates TransWarp

After a 340 game no loss streak, muisback (GM Rauf Mamedov) checkmated TransWarp! TransWarp had just gotten into the 3700's but was bumped back into the high 3600's after this loss. It had had a 94 (if I remember right) no loss or draw streak just prior, but Charodej (GM Igor Smirnov) broke that streak. When GM Mamedov won, TW was at 3709, but the 31 pts it lost took it to 3678, GM Mamedov played 2 more games, giving back 4 pts, to where TW sits now at 3682, waiting for that slow climb back into 3700 territory :) Congrats to GM Mamedov! Only 4th Checkmate on TransWarp in over 1000 games, joining GM Maxim Dlugy, Rahmaninov (anonymous GM)& GM Vladimir Malakhov (Akademik). There were also 3 flag losses to Goldmund(2) & Charodej(1), one of which was an opening lock-up where JimmyS(C) a bot that monitors computer accounts, noticed it had locked up and norated it. The 2 other times, TransWarp had bad internet connections (it happens, no excuse) and when it would log back on, lose 15 seconds as a penalty. Just one of those things.. But I count the 4 checkmates as downright spankings! :D Congrats again to those GM's who did it!

muisback vs TransWarp



Nice job by GM Rauf Mamedov!

Rauf Mamedov gives it another go

GM Rauf Mamedov (ICC Handle GeneraLisimus, he has several) gave TransWarp a go this morning. Thanks to him for playing, it's been pretty quiet lately, I think that sadly, Rahmaninov fell below 700pts below TransWarp, I hope he gains some pts soon, I enjoy his play.

GeneraLisimus vs TransWarp

Never Talk about a No Loss or Draw Streak!

Right after the previous post, GM Rahmaninov (his ICC handle, he's anonymous) http://www.chessclub.com/activities/finger.php?handle=Rahmaninov, went on a tear, achieving 3 draws in a row right away and a total of 6 in his last 62 games. He seems to have good moments, achieving draws that lowers TW's rating (TW gives up 15 rating pts for a draw vs him as it's set to accept challenges up to 700 pts below it's rating). I could raise the level to 500 like some have, assuring at least 2pts per win to offset those draws, but then that wouldn't be fun, would it? Some computers do this. I think I saw one set only to 250 pts below it's rating, seems to me that would restrict a lot of play.

Latest Draw vs TransWarp

TransWarp seems to be doing quite well lately, since I've made some adjustments to the opening books. ChessPartner is very limited in what you can do with your books...use the ones they have on their site or make your own. I was trying the ones from their site, but decided to have at making my own custom books again. I had held off of this due to the fact that if you don't make them right, Rybka will tend to crash. They have done well without crashing on me, however there was 1 crash when my computer did an autoupdate of Norton and restarted. Luckily JimmyS was there to save me from more than 1 loss. Here is the latest draw, TransWarp as of this morning hasn't given up a loss or draw in 58 games.

GM "Rahmaninov" (anonymous) vs TransWarp



I'm sure someone will pull off a draw soon, it's just a matter of time, Rahmaninov is quite determined to spank TransWarp! I wish him luck, I DO root for the humans! It takes quite an ability to be able to think that fast and beat or draw with Deep Rybka 3.0 "Human" 64-bit. I wish I had a tenth of their ability! Kudos to all that try!