Now that we are passed the referendum and post-referundum turbulences, allow me to bring to your attention a major chess tournament that’s taking place in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia. It has a prize sack of $1.5 mil… not only it is a major tournament in and of itself [it began with the world’s top 128 players], it is also to produce the contender of the World Championship against Mr. Topalov (the current FIDE world champion).

Armenians began the tournament with 5 players (ELO rating): Levon Aronian (2724), Vladimir Akopian (2707), Karen Asrian (2645), Rafael Vaganian (2614), Artashes Minasian (2581). For some unknown reasons Vladimir Akopian didn’t even begin the tournament, but the others did. This is a knock-out tournament, which means after each round half of the players are eliminated. So after the first round all but Levon Aronian were “knocked-out”. Note that Levon Aronian is in the top 10 of the strongest players in the world, so naturally he’s considered a favorite.

Now in the third round, Mr. Aronian is still going strong (5.5 out of 6 points) and there are only 18 players left. You can follow the tournament at http://www.worldchesscup2005.com/main.asp, you can also watch the games live at the site (as far as I am able to understand the games begin around 5am EST).