Articles in this series

  • Birth of a Supernova: Vasiliev reports from Wijk aan Zee

6 responses to “Birth of a Supernova: Vasiliev reports from Wijk aan Zee”

  1. Thanks again for this wonderful coverage!

  2. Personally I was missing Karjakin more than Topalov (or Ivanchuk), basically because the last two already got plenty of invitations. So I would have expected Vasiliev to also ask about Karjakin. Instead, in the part of the interview which you didn’t translate [no problem at all, you did once again a great job and had to be selective] he asks about Radjabov, Mamedyarov and Gashimov “who have many supporters on Chesspro”. (van den Berg’s answer was straightforward: Radjabov and Mamedyarov were invited in the past, Gashimov was considered this time but finally they preferred others, there was no “discrimination”).

    My questions: Do the Azeris really have many more fans on Chesspro than Karjakin, or at least “louder” ones? Or maybe the reason(s) for Karjakin’s absence are well-known in Russian chess circles, but not in the western world?

  3. Do you maybe hava all PGN from TATA Steel 2011 with english translation of Shipov’s analysis?

  4. “It’s hard to play a tournament like this if you don’t have an element of luck. I can’t recall a single situation in which I got lucky”

    I don’t know if it counts as luck, but in all the three games he won his opponents chose to play on when they just could have signed the draw on the scoresheet instead…

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