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1st October, 2002
ONE of the top performers for newly-crowned European Club Champions Bosna
Sarajevo was second board Alexei Shirov, whose unbeaten score of 5/7 (71.4%)
in Kallinthea, Greece, was one of the highlights of a superb team performance.
The week also ended on a double high for Shirov, with the publication
of the latest FIDE Rapid Rating List that showed the former Latvian leapfrogging
bitter enemy Garry Kasparov to head the new list. Although Shirov, Kasparov
and Michael Adams are all tied at the top on a rating of 279, Shirov nominally
takes the No.1 spot due to having played more Rapid games.
Since the start of the year, Shirov has scored 33/49 in rapid games in
strong events, such as Monaco, Dubai, Prague, Dortmund (tie-breaks), Villarrobledo
and Russia vs. ROW in Moscow; against an average opposition of 2654 for
a 2782 performance. And, were it not for the fact that the organisers
in Villarrbledo ñ ironically his best result of all in his new
homeland ñ had omitted to send in the results of the popular Spanish
tournament, Shirov would have had outright first on his own.
In stark contrast, Kasparov lost 9 points on the new list mainly due to
his uncharacteristically poor performance at the recent Russia vs. Rest
of the World match, which turned out to be one of his worst results ever
in the game.
Top ten Rapid list: 1 A Shirov (Spain) 279; 2 G Kasparov (Russia) 279;
3 M Adams (England) 279; 4 V Anand (India) 278; 5 V Topalov (Bulgaria)
277; 6 B Gelfand (Israel) 277; 7 P Leko (Hungary) 275; 8 A Morozevich
(Russia) 274; 9 V Ivanchuk (Ukraine) 274; 10 V Tkachiev (France) 273.
A Shirov ñ A Volokitin
European Club Ch., (2)
Pirc Defence
1 e4 g6 2 d4 Bg7 3 Nc3 d6 4 f4 Nf6 5 Nf3 0-0 6 Bd3 Nc6 7 e5 dxe5 8 fxe5
Nh5 9 Be3 Bg4 10 Be2 f6 11 exf6 exf6 12 0-0 Qd7 13 d5 Ne7 14 Ne5 fxe5
15 Rxf8+ Rxf8 16 Bxg4 Qe8 17 Bxa7 Nc8 18 Bc5 Nd6 19 Bxh5 gxh5 20 Bxd6
cxd6 21 Ne4 Rf4 22 Qd3 Qg6 23 Re1 h4 24 h3 Bh6 25 c4 b6 26 b4 Rf7 27 a4
Bf4 28 a5 bxa5 29 bxa5 Ra7 30 Qb3 Ra8 31 a6 Rf8 32 a7 Qf7 33 Qb8 Bg3 34
Ra1 1-0
JOHN B HENDERSON
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