File this one under, “It's my blog and I'll post what I want to post!” Late last year world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik got married in Paris. Some photos of the wedding have now been posted at Kramnik's website. No real news here, but one of the pictures includes former world number one Boris Spassky, who is apparently close friends with Kramnik. Spassky, of course, was the fellow who lost the world championship, in pretty humiliating style, to Bobby Fischer in 1972.
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It would be a serious dereliction of my bloggily duties if I did not comment on the big Candidates Tournament, recently concluded in London.
My comment is this: Wowee wow wow! What a great tournament!
Two games down in the big World Chess Championship and two wins for Kramnik. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
Vladimir Kramnik won the four game, rapid chess, tie-break match this morning. It was a real nail-biter of an event! Game one was a blunder-filled draw. Kramnik won game two in his usual style, grinding Topalov down in a difficult, technical endgame.
After a quick draw in game four of the big chess match, Anand and Kramnik got back to business today. Kramnik went into the same line of the Meran as on Friday, surely having some improvement ready over Friday's game. What he had in mind we'll never know, since Anand varied first:
These photos were from the church ceremony held on February 4th. The civil ceremony took place on Dec 30 (or 31st, depending on the source). Some photos of the civil ceremony. They had a cake with the final position from his Elista win on it. Pretty cool.
P.S.: Looks like he may have to tangle with Topalov again in the next world championship cycle. If he wins Mexico City, then he has to play Topalov. If he does not win Mexico, he then plays the winner of Mexico, which may be Topalov.
Ilyumzhinov has spoken!
Dave S.-
Thanks for the clarifications. Things were a little confusing over at Karmnik's site.
Topalov isn't doing so well in Linares right now. And neither is Leko, who also lost to Kramnik in a match. Topalov is so uneven, brilliant one day fishy the next, that I wouldn't bet a lot of money on him winning Mexico City.