London Classic R2: Nakamura beats Aronian, Carlsen escapes McShane

London Chess Classic 2011

The 2011 London Chess Classic is taking place in the Olympia Conference Centre from Saturday, December 3rd until Monday, December 12th, starting at 14:00h London time each day (final round 12:00h). Time controls are classical forty moves in two hours, then twenty moves in one hour and thirty minutes for the rest of the game. A win is counted as three points, a draw as one, and a loss zero. Tiebreaks: 1) number of wins, 2) number of wins with black, 3) result of the individual game between the tied players. In the unlikely event that there is still a tie then: 4) 2 x 15'+2" games, and if necessary 5) Armageddon game: 6'+2" vs 5'+2" with draw odds for black. If there is a tie involving more than two players then the Rapid games will be conducted as a double round all play all. The total prize fund is €160,000 before tax.

Round two

The first move in McShane-Carlsen is made by Samir Samadov, 9 (see below)

Round two of the London Chess Classic 2011 under way

What are the others playing? At the start everyone keeps checking on the big displays

Photos by Ray Morris-Hill and John Saunders

Impressions from the VIP room

By Frederic Friedel

...and her brother Liam the rules of the game

The two above are twins and learnt the moves of the game during round one. Now the have persuaded their father to keep bringing them to the Chess Festival to get more of the same – chess enthusiasm in its purest form.

Family chess lessons for UCL Professor of Electical Engineering Polina Bayvel and her son Peter. Polina specialises in fibre optics and is, in her own words, "trying to redefine the Shannon Limit and maximise bandwidth in data transmission". In the interest of HD videos on the Internet we wish her all success.

Playing against his father, Anatoly Zayats, professor of physics at Kings

The kids watch the big boy play: IM Ali Mortasavi vs Vishy Anand

Giving Ali a tough time... Samir Samadov plays one-minute bullet against the IM

Samir Samadov is nine years old, was born in Baku, started playing chess club in the "Kasparov Chess Club" in Baku. The family moved to Atherton in Greater Manchester, where Samir went to the St. Philips Church of England Primary School, the same that Nigel Short attended when he was a child. Now Samir goes to Richmond Junior Chess Club in London and plays chess at the Wallace Chess Club and in Holland Park. He speaks English as his first language, and Russian "not very well." Samir has had to oversome some very serious health problems and is one of the bravest, most spirited youngsters we have encountered in a long while.

GM Michael Stean, Robert Skidelsky and Nigel Short

Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky is a British economic historian of Russian origin. He is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, England and the author of an award-winning major three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes. We got an extremely valuable (an illuminating) lecture on the current world economic situation from this leading expert in his field. You should read some of his articles here.

Schedule and results

All games start at 2 p.m. or 14:00h British time = 15:00h CET, 17:00h Moscow, 7:30 p.m. Chennai, 22:00h Beijing, 01:00 a.m. Melbourne, 03:00 a.m. Auckland (sorry Murray!), 6 a.m. San José, 9 a.m. New York. You can check your location here. Naturally the games will be covered live on the official web site (below) and on Playchess. Stand by for further details on Saturday. The games of the final round start two hours earlier.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN All ChessBase reports on the Chess Classic 2011 (+ 2010 and 2009) The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client and get immediate access. Or you can get our latest Fritz 13 program, which includes six months free premium membership to Playchess.

Links

• Official tournament site
• All ChessBase reports on the Chess Classic 2011
• All ChessBase reports from 2010 and from 2009