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Friday, November 12, 2010
21min Milano Conference (November 18-20)
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Chessdom SPICE Cup wrap up
SPICE Cup 2010
GM Alexander Onischuk takes the trophy in the main A-group
The 2010 SPICE Cup was held from October 28th to November 7th at the beautiful campus of Texas Tech University in Lubbock. This was the highest rated international invitational tournament in U.S. history to date.
The format of the A group was a six-player double round robin (category 16) event. The average FIDE rating of the A group was 2631, which is equal with the 2009 SPICE Cup A. The B group was a 10-player (category 10) round robin event, and SPICE Cup FIDE Rated Open was played over 6-round Swiss on 5-7th November.
To make the tournament a lot more exciting, the SPICE Cup committee has unanimously voted to adapt the following new rules for the A group:- No draw offer allowed prior to move 30- A win = 3 points, a draw = 1 point, and loss = 0 point.
The main event saw an interesting chase between the former US Champion Alexander Onischuk and German talent Georg Meier. Meier enjoyed a one point advantage prior to the final act, but he couldn't make more than a draw in the last round, while a crucial victory against the future star Ray Robson propelled Onischuk to the clear first place in the 2010 SPICE Cup GMA.
Final standings:
1. Alexander Onischuk - 18 points
2. Georg Meier - 17
3-4. Wesley So and Zoltan Almasi - 14
5-6. Ray Robson and Eugene Perelshtein - 7
GM Anatoly Bykhovsky and IM Gergely Antal shared the first place in SPICE Cup GMB with 6.0 points each. This tournament was a 10-player round robin.
GM Georgi Kacheishvili (Georgia) won the 2010 SPICE Cup FIDE Open with the score of 5.5 / 6.
More information on the official website. Over 1.100 photos from the SPICE Cup 2010 are available from this list.
Susan Polgar kindly provided the event summary for Chessdom
I am very happy with the fighting spirit at this year's SPICE Cup. With the 3 point for a win scoring system and no draw offer allowed before move 30 in the A group, the intensity on all three boards was very high as anything could still happen in the final round. The outcome was only decided in the final game of the tournament. I am proud to be able to provide excellent playing opportunities for many players. The SPICE Cup will get stronger and better each year. The A group next year will be at least category 17.
Texas Tech University and the Susan Polgar Foundation are proud to support this important annual event. I believe that it is essential to build a solid chess culture in America. Since November 2007, the SPICE Cup has established itself as one of the most important and prestigious round robin annual events in U.S. history. I am confident that this will inspire more top level round robin events in the U.S. in the future.
The Texas Tech Knight Raiders also have the biggest success to date in the SPICE Cup, with GM Anatoly Bykhovsky (1st year student at Texas Tech) and GM-elect Gergely Antal (just graduated from Texas Tech) winning the B group. I am a strong advocate for chess and education. I realize that it is not easy for everyone to establish strong security as professional players. It is also not easy to receive proper chess training to maximize one’s chess ability and potential.
This is why I jumped at the opportunity of establishing SPICE (Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) at a major university like Texas Tech in 2007. Because of SPICE, we are able to offer players a fantastic college education while getting the chance to improve their chess with serious coaching. Last year, members of the Texas Tech University Knight Raiders chess team gained on an average 90 rating points per player while maintaining a 3.28 / 4 grade point average.
Last but not least, I would like to thank all our sponsors and supporters for making the SPICE Cup a success.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Texas Tech Knight Raiders shine at 2010 SPICE Cup
Texas Tech Knight Raiders shine at 2010 SPICE Cup event
Posted: November 5, 2010 - 11:14pm
Current, past and future members of the Texas Tech Knight Raiders chess team are shining at the 2010 SPICE Cup. After seven rounds, Tech freshman grandmaster Anatoly Bykhovsky is leading the SPICE Cup B group with 5 points. In addition to trying to win the tournament, his goal is to court a 4.0 average this semester.
Tied for second with two rounds to go are Tech economics graduate grandmaster Gergely Antal and Tech graduate student grandmaster Davorin Kuljasevic.
In A group, the current leader after six rounds is grandmaster Georg Meier, the No. 2 overall player in Germany. Meier has a full point lead over the field with four rounds to go. He plans to attend Tech next year. This is equivalent to recruiting a superstar of the caliber of the Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki to the Knight Raiders.
In second place is grandmaster Alex Onischuk, former U.S. No. 1 and U.S. champion, as well as multiple Olympiad medalist. Onischuk is also the co-champion of SPICE Cup 2008.
Tied for third are grandmaster Almasi, Hungary’s top player and 2010 Chess Olympiad Silver medalist, and 16-year-old grandmaster Wesley So, the Philippines’ top player. So is the top talent in Asia one of the best in the world. So has also expressed interest in attending Tech.
The SPICE Cup Chess Festival concludes today at the Matador room in the Student Union Building. Admission is free. Activities will start at 9 a.m. and the closing ceremony will be at 6 pm. This is your final chance to meet and greet some of the world’s biggest chess superstars.
Source: Avalanche Journal
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Texas Tech Attracts Top Players to SPICE Cup
November 2, 2010, 7:00 pm
Texas Tech Attracts Top Players to SPICE Cup
By DYLAN LOEB MCCLAIN
New York Times
When Texas Tech University in Lubbock started the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, known as Spice, in 2007, one of the program’s goals was to organize and promote tournaments, particularly for top-level players.
The program has been very successful in that regard.
The first Spice Cup in November 2007 had six grandmasters, but the best, Kamil Miton of Poland, was only ranked around No. 100 in the world. There have been three Spice Cups and three Spring Invitationals since then, and the quality of the players has improved over the years. The Spice Cup has also expanded to include two sections.
This year’s competition began Thursday with a strong field in the A section, including Zoltan Almasi of Hungary, ranked No. 25 in the world; Alexander Onischuk of the United States, No. 53; Wesley So of the Philippines, No. 73; Georg Meier of Germany, No. 89; Ray Robson of the United States, No. 499; and Eugene Perelshteyn of the United States, No. 514.
The B section has 10 players, including four grandmasters, five international masters and a master, Darwin Yang of the United States, whose rating, the system used to rank players, is the level of an international master.
The A section is a double round robin, meaning that each competitor plays the others twice. After five rounds — the halfway mark — Meier is leading with 11 points (using a scoring system in which a win is 3 points and a draw is 1); followed by So and Onischuk with 8 each; Almasi, 7; and Perelshteyn and Robson, with 2 each.
In the B section , Anatoly Bykhovsky, an Israeli grandmaster, leads with 4.5 points, followed by Gergely Antal, a Hungarian grandmaster, and Davorin Kuljasevic, a Croatian grandmaster, who each have 3.5 points.
Tuesday, Bykhovsky beat Bryan Smith, an American international master, in a game with an amazing final position, while Kuljasevic beat Yang, who is having a good tournament nonetheless.
The A section was idle on Tuesday, but on Monday, Meier beat Perelshteyn after a long endgame and Onischuk beat Robson who, at 16 years old, is the youngest player in the field.
Source: NY Times
Here is the link to 178 pictures from the 2010 SPICE Cup Blitz Championship at the SUB.
Here is the link to over 430 pictures from the SPICE Cup 2010 at the SUB.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
It's impressive
International chess tourney draws highly ranked players
Posted: Monday, November 1, 2010 10:49 pm
Hallie Davis
Staff Writer
Staff Writer
Daily Toreador
This Saturday Jones AT&T Stadium could hold up to 60,454 fans. While most of Lubbock will await the results of what happens on the field, between 30 million and 40 million people will be awaiting the results of what is going on in the Student Union Building.
The Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence is hosting its fourth annual SPICE Cup, a chess tournament that draws the biggest names in chess worldwide and will be going on all this week.
Brett James, a sophomore geosciences major from Richmond, Va., broadcasts the games online to FIDE, the World Chess Federation, which Paul Truong, the SPICE director of marketing and public relations, said is only second to FIFA, soccer’s governing body, in number of countries involved.
“It’s a matter of awareness,” said Susan Polgar, founder of the tournament and four-time world champion, of being known worldwide but receiving almost no recognition on campus. “I’m quite positive it’s only a matter of time before everybody in town knows about us.”
Polgar began the tournament and the institute in 2007 and has been able to build it up to its current state — the ‘A’ group of the tournament is the highest-rated international chess tournament in U.S. history — in just three years.
“She used her charm, and her fame managed to get people here,” said Hal Karlsson, one of the founders of SPICE. “They figure if a world champion is putting this on, she knows what she’s doing.”
When foreign players first heard about it, Karlsson said, he was forced to nearly beg them to come. This year, chess champions from around the world are already asking if they can be invited for next year’s tournament.
However, not everything happens outside of the U.S., or even Texas. Some of Tech’s success is very close to home.
“Look at our football game against UT-Austin every year,” Truong said. “When we beat them, it’s big news, but (the chess team) crushed them four to zero and no one really heard about it. We got revenge for our football team.”
As Tech becomes a bigger name in the chess world due to SPICE, the Knight Raiders are becoming stronger as well.
“I’ve had students from Princeton and other schools come up to me and say ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Texas Tech, look out,’” said tournament director and sophomore Spanish major Zach Haskin. “When it’s something intelligence related, Texas Tech is not predicted to be higher than Princeton, Yale, Stanford.”
But it is; Haskin, from Wichita Falls, said the team beat all three of the schools he mentioned by a wide margin.
Truong said SPICE is helping to make it clear that Tech is not a “jock” school. With the chess team’s GPA averaging at 3.28, he sees the tournament as just another way to recruit quality students to the university.
“The kind of students we attract, these are the kind of students any university would love to have,” Truong said.
The SPICE Cup is in its fifth of ten rounds, with players from around the world here to compete. Many will be staying for the next weekend as a part of SPICE’s first FIDE-rated open, which will feature a top team from Norway.
Competing now are 16 players from everywhere from Germany to Brazil.
Ray Robson, who has had two games end in a draw this tournament, may not be from anywhere terribly exotic, but he does hold the title of Grandmaster and was the youngest in U.S. history to earn the title when he did it at 14, Karlsson said.
“There aren’t so many really strong events in the U.S.,” Robson said, “so it’s great for people in the U.S. to play in such a great event.”
Robson, from Clearwater, Fla., attested to the quality of the tournament, saying it is probably the strongest tournament he’s been in.
Polgar said spectators are welcome to watch the games in the Matador Room in the SUB; they will start every day at 2 p.m. until Nov. 7. The only rule is that anyone who watches must be very quiet.
“The difference is we don’t have 60,000 people screaming in the stands,” Truong said. “So it kind of gets lost somewhere; people don’t realize how big this is. If you talk pure numbers, it’s impressive.”
Source: http://www.dailytoreador.com
Monday, November 1, 2010
SPICE Cup Update
Standings after 4 rounds:
Group A (W = 3 points, D = 1 point, L = 0 point)
1. Meier 8.0
2. So 7.0
3. Almasi, 6.0
4. Onischuk 5.0
5-6. Robson, Perelshteyn 2.0
Group B
1. Bykhovsky 3.0
2-5. Antal, Diamant, Ippolito, Smith 2.5
6-7. Kuljasevic, Yang 2.0
8-10. Finegold, Krush, Rensch 1.0
Here is the link to over 290 pictures from the SPICE Cup 2010.
Round by round pairings: http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/10/spice-cup-pairings.html
LIVE games are being broadcast on Chesdom.com, Chessbomb.com, MonRoi.com (http://monroi.com/watch/?tnm_id=1443), playchess.com, TWIC, chess.com, etc.
Round time: 2 pm (Lubbock time)
Time control: 40 moves in 90 minutes + 30 second increment, after 40 moves, players will have an additional 30 minutes + 30 second increment
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