Up, Chuk!

Over the past decade Vassily Ivanchuk has spent very little time out of the top ten. He once made it to number two in the world and has more Linares titles than Anand and Kramnik combined. There is no doubting his class, so what is he doing at the number twelve spot on the rating list?

Consistency has never been Ivanchuk's strong suit and usually a few brilliant results compensated for his flameouts. Now the great results have been harder to come by and new talents like Leko and Ponomariov are taking up space in the top ten.

The rise of his young countryman Ponomariov, who defeated Ivanchuk in the FIDE world championship final last year, has been particularly tough for Ivanchuk to deal with.

Ivanchuk doesn't often play in events like the Sigeman & Co tournament and you couldn't be sure how his infamous nerves would do when he was the clear favorite in a very combative field. He passed the test with flying colors, leading most of the way and taking clear first by a full point with a +5 score.

Official site / Game selection replay and download

Peter Heine Nielsen was the only player to put any pressure on Ivanchuk. The Dane has taken over the national number one spot from Curt Hansen and here he had a very solid +3 undefeated score for clear second. Nielsen didn't play the tactical fireworks his fellow northerners are famous for and didn't avoid short draws. He finished second last year behind Nigel Short. Maybe first next year?

England's Luke McShane had a fine tournament with many interesting games but it would have been much better if he hadn't lost a spectacular game to Curt Hansen in the final round. McShane has been playing an incredible number of games lately to take advantage of his break from school. His results here and in Iceland will be enough to push him over the 2600 mark.

The other notable results were failures. Second seed Emil Sutovsky of Israel lost two of his last three games to drop to a disappointing even score. He was a last-minute replacement for Zhong Zhang when the Chinese was forced to stay at home due to the SARS outbreak. Sutovsky was bamboozled by Ivanchuk in a knight ending in round seven and then he lost horribly to Timman with white.

That was one of the few bright spots for Timman. The Dutchman has taken a few months off after his career-worst result in Wijk aan Zee in January. Whatever is wrong, time away from the board didn't solve it. Lindberg was completely outclassed and nothing worked for him. He didn't get his half point until the 7th round.

Hillarp Persson, Hector, and the Hansens were as entertaining as ever at the board and you will have a lot of fun with the games on the replay/download page. A few samples:

Photos by John Henderson, all rights reserved