CBM 122

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Three top tournaments and the death of Robert James Fischer – these are the main stories as ChessBase Magazine produces its first issue of 2008. The top tournaments are the Tal Memorial, the FIDE World Cup and the Corus Tournament.  And there appear to be ages between the first highlight which was mentioned and which took place in November 2007 in Moscow with its uncontested winner in the shape of Vladimir Kramnik, and the Corus Tournament which has only just come to an end in Wijk an Zee.

In Wijk it was above all the young star Magnus Carlsen who was struggling to win the tournament right up to the last minute, when the happy Norwegian had to share the spoils with Levon Aronian. At the same time, things were hard for the magnificent Kramnik in the second half of the tournament. Firstly he suffered a painful defeat at the hands of Veselin Topalov and in the last but one round he went down with the white pieces in his game against Magnus Carlsen.

Right in the middle of the tournament, on 17.01.2008, the news broke about the death of Robert James Fischer, to whom we pay tribute in this issue in the form of an obituary and an extra collection of games.

Between the Tal Memorial and Wijk there was the FIDE World Cup, which was played in Russia in Khanty-Mansiysk in knockout mode. With his win in the final against Alexei Shirov, Gata Kamsky finally took his place amongst the world élite and can once more take a tilt at the chess throne in his forthcoming WCh Candidates quarter-final match against Topalov.