Kramnik - Anand: World Championship

The world chess championship between Kramnik and Anand is about to start. The games can be followed live from several sites (one of them being chessgames)

The European champion and my first game against an IM

This last saturday, the beautiful city of Vale de Cambra hosted the XIX open tournament called Memorial Pedro Parcerias.

Me and some folks from Alverca decided to travel more than 500Km and play some chess. The tournament was very very strong mainly because of tow reasons: the prize money (1st prize was 650 euros plus a libra in gold) and the presence of the strong GM Sergei Tiviakov. GM Tiviakov has a FIDE rating of 2686 and is the European champion. Since its not every time that we, common mortals, have a chance to see such a strong GM live, it contributed to increase the number of participants in the tournament - 172 players. Mr Tiviakov seemed a very relaxed person, a bit reserved, and was always nice and available for some photos. He also gaved 9 free chess lessons (the number of rounds in the tournament :) ) to whoever Swiss Manager decided to put against him. Of course that, after all the games were over and the dust cleared, he was the one taking the first prize :) (results).

I was able to score 5 points out of 9. Not bad, considering the strong nature of the tournament. The most memorable round was the first one, when I went against the IM Mauricio Vassalo (and, of course, I went down in flames).

MI Mauricio Vassalo(White) - Sérgio Lopes(Black)

GM Sergei Tiviakov (left) and Ernesto Loureiro from Alverca (right)

Vacations and Chess

Here I am… back from a 2 week vacations.

It was cool since it gave me time to sleep a lot - and I badly needed it because work consumed most of my awakened hours of the last weeks, and a lot of hours when I should be sleeping - and to play in a chess tournament in Amadora (linky).

The tournament was cool. I ended up in 11th, with the same points of the guy that ended up in 7th. It wasn't bad at all for me - I actually wasn't expecting to have so many points. My ELO rating is around 1807 right now, but I'm going to have a big fall on the next list. This is mostly due to some really bad games I played in the last epoch. Since my rating is quite recent (1807 is my first international rating) each defeat costs me a lot of points.

Anyway, having a good ELO is cool because it kind of serves as a comparison between players, but playing chess just for the sake of ELO is not my objective. I believe that if you really are good at it, sooner or later, your ELO will follow you. Too bad I'm not really good at it right now :(. Unfortunately, some players seem to take it the other way around: they get obsessed with their ELO and they start playing for the sake of it. Now, where's the fun in that? I don't think they actually enjoy much of the game when they get to that condition. And if you aren't having fun playing chess, why should you bother playing it at all?

White Wolf

A while back I mentioned David Gemmell's Troy trilogy. That reminded me of the first David Gemmell's book I've read years ago: White Wolf. On White Wolf, we follow the story of Skilgannon, a warrior who gained the nickname of "the damned". I've read this book in Portuguese (I actually like the Portuguese cover better than the original one) and it's one the few non-technical books that I've read several times. Gemmell tells an adventurous tale of both a passionate and tormented warrior. Within the story, Skilgannon meets Druss (one of the first heroes created by David Gemmell) and the two warriors join forces in a suicidal journey. Besides the detailed combat scenes and the twists in the story, it is the complexity of the characters that I find appealing in this book. Some of Skilgannon reactions even reminded me of myself - no wonder I felt something personal when I've read this book. Also interesting is the constant tons of grey that are recurrent in the story. No one is always 100% bad or 100% good. Sometimes, everyone crosses the frontier between good and bad… and it is indeed a very grey and not strictly defined area. It reminds me of a famous phrase: No one is as bad as he thinks he is, nor as good as others think he is. A book I recommend to those who like fantasy books.

John Carmack keynote

QuakeCon, the largest free LAN party in the world, just finished a few days ago. Now, I'm not much of a deathmatch player myself, but this is an event I tend to follow (on-line :D) from a few years back. Why? Because every year John Carmack gives a keynote providing bits of information about his opinions, interests and projects.
To those who never heard of Mr. Carmack (shame, shame on you), he is also known as Engine John and is the ID guy who was always one step ahead of competition and developed revolutionary engines for games such as Commander Keep, Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom3. Right now, they are working on a new version of Wolfenstein and a new game called Rage.


Here's the link to this year's keynote and last year's as well. Youtube videos for the new Wolfenstein and Rage are bellow:

David Gemmell's last books

I have just finish reading the last books from David Gemmell about the legend of troy: Lord of the Silver Bow, Shield of Thunder and Fall of Kings . David Gemmell was one of Britain's top hero fantasy writers and died in the 28th of July 2006. When he died, he had only finished two of the Troy books and the last one was co-authored by his wife Stella Gemmell who finished the book.


This trilogy provides a more "human" (as in non-goddish) look over the legend of Troy where the giants of the pass such as Hector, Odysseus and Akhiles are non-linear characters accompany the whole story - despite the fact that the main story floats around two characters named Helikaon and Andromache. I've found these three books to be very (very) good. Despite the fact that the story of troy is well known, David and Stella Gemmell are able to introduce a different and surprising look over the old story with some unexpected twists. Excellent.

Speed Chess

wow....can these guys play! Chess is one of my hobies... too bad I don't have much free time to dedicate to it. In order to improve at chess, it requires study, patience, more study, a lot of motivation and time to spend.