Saturday, August 20, 2005

Games from the Continental Open

The Continental Open Chess Championship (August 5-16) recently concluded in Buenos Aires, where Cuban champion GM Gaston Bruzon took clear first (8.5/11) with a number of players tied second, including American Super-GM Gata Kamsky. You can find several good reports online in Spanish, including this one from the Spanish-language version of ChessBase. There is also a good Engish translation of the official site from Ajdrez Argentina.

The tournament has drawn some U.S. and world press because of an apparently false report from ChessBase that a group of GMs conspired to deny 15-year-old Gaston Needleman a chance to qualify for the world championship cycle. Here are the two stories at ChessBase:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2587
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2586

You can download all games in zipped PGN from ChessBase or in PGN direct from The Week in Chess.

There are three annotatd games at the excellent Inforchess site (which I intend to visit often during the upcoming World Championship tournament).

Hungaski-Felgaer, Benos Aires 2005 (Pirc)
http://www.inforchess.com/notas/continental01.htm
1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 c6 4.f4

Kamsky-Granda, Buenos Aires 2005 (Sicilian)
http://www.inforchess.com/notas/continental03.htm
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.a4 g6 7.Be2 Bg7 8.0-0 0-0 9.Be3 Nc6 10.Qd2

Onischuk-Gulko, Buenos Aires 2005 (Queen's Indian)
http://www.inforchess.com/notas/continental04.htm
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.g3 Bb7 5.Bg2 Be7 6.Nc3 0-0 7.Qc2 Na6

I cannot help noting the difference between the non-existent coverage of the nearly concurrent U.S. Open and the extensive coverage that the Continental Open received both online and in the Spanish-language press. The most important lesson in all this is simple: you need a website with news and information about your tournament, and you need to publish the games in a timely manner if you are even going to get mentioned in the news. I still have not found U.S. Open games anywhere, except for a few amateur games that have made it onto blogs:
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/
http://maverickphilosopher.powerblogs.com/chess/

I am tempted to speculate that the USCF purposely withheld publishing the games in order to preserve their news value when published in Chess Life a month from now. I only suggest this idea because it is the only one I can think of where the USCF would actually have a rationale for not getting more news out about the event....

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