Just a few minutes ago the game #4 finished in Sofia. The current world champion Vishy Anand won it and takes lead in the match 2,5:1,5. Here is the game:

Yesterday it was the day D. The long-time awaited match between the current world champion Vishy Anand and his challenger Veselin Topalov started in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The first game was very attractive. Topalov sacrified a pawn for initiative. And later even knight. It seems that Anand’s first own move (out of his home prepration) was 23…. Kf7 and after this move Topalov’s attack just became unstoppable. Topalov won the game in a great style!

The second game will be played today at 12.00 of UTC time. Will Anand stike back in his first game as white?

As I wrote two days ago in the post Will the World Championship Match Anand-Topalov be Delayed over Volcanic Cloud?,  Wishy Anand had problems to get in Sofia, Bulgaria (where the match will be held) in time and he asked for 3 days postponement of the beginning of the match.

It was expected that the Bulgarian Chess Federarion will not be inclinable to the request. And indeed, the Anand’s request was refused yesterday.

So the match should really start on Friday 23rd.

Anand is on his way to Sofia by car now. The only possible way as old trains are sold out.

How do you see this situation? Is it a fault of Anand? Or do the Bulgarians do everything for Topalov? Or is it a force majeure? Tell your opinion in the comments section below!

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As you – readers of this blog – know, one of a weekend days is dedicated to regular weekend tactic puzzle. Usually it is Saturday. But as weekend consists of two free days for most of us, I was thinking about publishing a more or less regular post also on Sunday. And as a theme for these posts I chose weekly selection of links from chess blog I read regularly.

OK, let’s start with the first edition now!

Chess master of bust published three nice videos of the simul of former chess world champion Garry Kasparov which was held in Antwerp this October. It is interesting to see Kasparov in action again and if you want to improve your chess ending skills, then you should watch these videos carefully.

The latest experience of Rolling Pawn with the Moscow variant of Sicilan (1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bb5) has been described in his post about the last round of the tournament organized by his club.

Chessex started to try KIA opening as white. He posted two games of him, so if you are interested in gaining some experiences about this particular opening you can read A KIA game played yesterday and Another game using KIA posts on his blog.

Have you read anything interesting on chess blogs last week? You can share the links in the comments section below.

A few weeks ago I wrote here about Ruy Lopez with 6.Qe2 and Marshall-like antidote line. At the end of the article I mentioned the thematic tournament of chess engines in this variant.

I have “organized” and I would like to share its results and games played in the tournament with you now. I hope you could find them interesting for your own chess evolution if you play Ruy Lopez.

In fact there were two tournaments. Each of them with a bit different “participants” – chess engines. Both tournaments were blitz ones. It could distort the results of some games at their last stage, but the purpose of the tournaments were to find whether black’s idea is viable. And it seems like it is, because…

The final score of two tournaments was +35, =10, -41!

Here are the tables:

Here you can download the games from these tournaments in pgn format:
Ruy Lopez 6.Qe2 – tournament 1
Ruy Lopez 6.Qe2 – tournament 2