There's a new sheriff in town...

Veselin Topalov, local hero and now the winner of the Mtel Masters, closed out the tournament with another win today, this time against Kramnik. Comments are already being made that this has been the most exciting and interesting tournament in 5 years perhaps, mostly due to the "no draw" rules. Let's hope this type of tournament is the beginning of a new trend.

Congratulations and thanks to all the players for making this tournament something special. My sentimental favorite Judit Polgar held her own against the men with 1 win, 1 loss, and 8 draws...finishing tied for 3rd. And thanks to www.mtelmasters.com for providing the "live board feeds"...I'm sure many chess lovers were glued to their computers for 5-6 hours every day, anticipating each move, even trying to refute some positions against Fritz.

The site www.chessbase.com has provided some great pictures if you haven't seen them yet, and the "Daily Dirt" message boards at www.chessninja.com are always lively with discussion.
Thanks Mig for keeping that going!

I don't know about the rest of you...but I am definitely fired up and ready to play in a tournament!

Chess anyone? ;)

The hotel in Sofia where the top "artists" are residing... 

M-Tel Masters Tournament takes center stage in Sofia

Wow! An average Elo rating of 2744...easily the strongest tournament of the year is taking place right now in Sofia, Bulgaria. Among the contestants are Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Vladimir Kramnik, Michael Adams, Judit Polgar and Ruslan Ponomariov.

Of course my sentimental favorite to come out on top will be Judit Polgar, although I spent the better of this morning "trying" to refute her draw against Michael Adams yesterday, I was (past tense;) , convinced through a possible "Fischeresque" combination he may could have won.

As soon as Judit castled kingside, Michael pushed his pawn to f6, to which she replied g6. And suddenly a hopeless romantic like myself is thinking..."surely there is a way to get the queen to g7!!!" So at 4 am I woke Fritz up to prove my possible theory, but beware waking up a sleeping "cat", as he ripped me up and down and all around with every possible variation I could throw at him.

Three things dawned on me (no pun intended) as I played this Round 1 game out...
White (Adams) had a lone pawn on e4, which happened to share the diagonal with a pair of bishops AND his own king. Number two, the fianchetto had left white's king vulnerable to the entire black arsenal...and three...the black queen stayed put near the a3-f8 diagonal, which would thwart any checkmate ideas white may have on g7. A draw was reached in 74 moves in the actual game.

In the 2nd round today Anand held Kramnik off by playing the Petroff Defence. And although I've yet to analyze this game, it may be very beneficial to give it some attention, as very few players can outright defeat it.

This tournament is a double round robin which runs through Sunday, May 22. Two great websites to check out the results and much more are www.chessbase.com and www.mtelmasters.com .