Armenia with the gold medal, silver for Israel, bronze for USA Tie break 1: Match points (2 for win, 1 for Draw, 0 for Loss) Tie break 2: Olympiad tiebreak (read more here) Olympiad standings 1 Armenia 19 400.5 2 Israel 18 377.5 3 United States of America 17 362 4 Ukraine 17 348.5 5 [...]

Produced and Directed by Vijay Kumar, who has covered all the WCC Matches since 2000, this 30 minutes documentary includes footage about Anand’s coveted titles in all three formats of the game: at Teheran (knockout), Mexico City (round robin) and Bonn (match play), as well as World Chess Trophy at Prague, his victories at Linares, Corus and Leon…

Vesela Lecheva, Chairman of the State Agency for Youth and Sports, supported the bid of the Bulgarian Chess Federation to organize the semifinal match for the world championship title between Veselin Topalov and Gata Kamsky, Radio Gong reported.

“The Bulgarian Chess Federation will be re-awarded with the event if it accepts in written form, by 14 November 2008, to hold the match with a prize fund of 250,000 USD plus 50,000 USD as contribution to FIDE and all organising expenses covered. In this case, the dates of the match Topalov – Kamsky remain as already announced and I intend to nominate FIDE Vice President Mr William Kelleher of USA as the FIDE Supervisor of the Organising Committee”

If the amount of 935,000 USD is not transferred to the bank account of FIDE by Wednesday 5 November 2008, FIDE will re-open negotiations with the Bulgarian Chess Federation, the original organiser awarded to hold this match. According to Mr Zhivko Ginchev, the match will most probably take place in the second half of January 2009 and with different prize fund.

“It might sound a bit surprising, but Peter Svidler didn’t play the Superfinal in, for him, best possible shape. He started well, but then his play became ineffective. But being young, he consolidated and managed to win the crucial final game against Evgeny Alekseev, and then proceed on winning a tie-breaker. Peter is playing well for the national team…”

Veselin Topalov rejected the invitation to participate at the next Corus Chess Tournament that is starting on January, newspaper “168 Casa” reported. For many years he was regularly attending in Wijk an Zee, but his team has decided that this tournament is in collision with the training schedule for 2009, whose ultimate goal is the return of world championship title.

In 2008 alone, seven world titles have come India’s way. Clearly, the revolution started by Viswanathan Anand in 1987 is churning out world champions like in no other sport. In Does Anand believe that he triggered off a revolution? “I really don’t know,” says Anand as he pauses to deal with a direct question and continues, “Perhaps, I did things that many did not expect at that time. Now looking back, it does appear like the starting point.”

Vladimir Kramnik compared the recently finished World Chess Championship match with a football game: “This match, perhaps, can be compared with the situation that occurs in football, when a team concedes two goals in the first 15 minutes, then the aftergame is very difficult.”