Chess Masters Grand Slam begins in Shanghai

Levon Aronian: Off to a winning start

Hello Everyone,

The Grand Slam Chess Masters began in Shanghai on September 3. It includes four top grandmasters - Armenia's Levon Aronian, China's Wang Hao, Russia's Vladimir Kramnik and Spain's Alexei Shirov.

Top two winners from the Shanghai event will participate in the Grand Slam Final Tournament to take place in Bilbao, Spain, from October 9-15, 2010. The winners will join the already seeded players - Viswanathan Anand (India) and Magnus Carlsen (Norway) - in Bilbao. Here is the official website.

In the first round, Aronian beat Wang Hao while Kramnik and Shirov drew their game.

Here is the nice Hao-Aronian game. You can run it in our pgnplayer or watch in flash below.

PGN: 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. g3 Bb4+ 5. Bd2 Be7 6. Bg2 c6 7. Qc2 O-O 8. O-O b6 9. Bf4 Ba6 10. Nbd2 Nbd7 11. Rfe1 Nh5 12. Ne5 Nxe5 13. Bxe5 f6 14. Bf4 Nxf4 15. gxf4 Bb4 16. Red1 Qd6 17. Nf1 dxc4 18. a3 Ba5 19. f5 Kh8 20. Ne3 b5 21. Qe4 Bb7 22. Qxe6 Qc7 23. Qe4 Rae8 24. Qg4 Bb6 25. Nf1 Bc8 26. Ng3 g6 27. e3 gxf5 28. Nxf5 Qd7 29. e4 Qf7 30. Qf3 Bxf5 31. Qxf5 Rg8 32. Kh1 Rg5 33. Qf3 Qg6 34. d5 Rg8 35. Bh3 Bxf2 0-1

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com