With a Round to Spare

New British Champion, David Howell (photo: Chessbase)

The British Championship is done and dusted, with David Howell taken the title with a round still to play. In the second week Howell started with a draw against GM Hebden, and has then beaten GM Williams, GM Gormally, and IM Ghasi to put himself on an unbeatable 9/10. Tonight the top 2 seeds meet in what will probably be a tame affair. I am guessing that Gawain Jones will not want to be pushing himself too hard, as he starts the World Cup in Norway the day after. Jones sits in second, along with Hebden, 1.5 points behind Howell. There are then 8 players a further half point back playing for the minor places.

Round 1 of the World Cup actually doesn't start until Sunday, though the opening ceremony and players meeting are tomorrow. The tournament runs through to Monday September 2nd, with the 3rd being available for play offs. It's going to be amazing, with loads of thrills and spills. I have heard that one player will be unable to make the opening round, Egyptian player Adly has travel problems, and as far as I know will not play. This should give a win to Adly's opponent Moiseenko who was one of the players involved in the fair play incident from the last World Cup, when David Navara accidentally touched a piece but Moiseenko didn't worry about the touch move rule saying it was obvious what Navara wanted to do.

Finally, it was very sad to hear of another chess player dying in a road accident. Russian GM, 28 year old Igor Kurnosov was killed in a road traffic accident in the early hours of yesterday morning.