Monday 17 August 2009

"World Championship" starts soon

I've been caught completely unaware of the fact the the "World Championship" is due to start in Las Vegas on December 1. The "World Championship", for a purse of $6,000,000, is between GM Varuzhan Akobian and Stan Vaughan.
Canberran's are well aware of who Akobian is (as he won the 2008 O2C Doeberl Cup), but Stan Vaughan may be more of a mystery. According to his CV (which was actually longer than Akobian's in the press release) he is 29 time US Champion (of the American Chess Association), as well as being World Correspondence Chess Champion (of the WCCF) from 1995 to 2007. He is also the current World Champion (of the World Chess Federation).
According to my research (which you can replicate by typing his name into google and is totally worth doing) he had a USCF rating of 2200 (which according to the USCF ratings system, can't fall any lower), but does not have a FIDE rating. His actual strength is difficult to verify, as chessbase only has 4 or 5 games of his in their database. Interestingly one of those games was a CC game against well known Australia weekend chess warrior David Lovejoy.
But for those of you who think that this match somehow lack credibility, I received a follow up press release that breathlessly announced that GM Raymond Keene will be the Master of Ceremonies for the event. And you can't get more "credibility" than that.

Lovejoy,David W - Vaughan,Stan (USA) [C18]
Endzelins Mem. Prel.7 corr ICCF, 1987

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 0-0 8.Bg5 Qa5 9.Ne2 Nbc6 10.h4 Nxd4 11.Bxe7 Nxc2+ 12.Kd1 Nxa1(D)
13.Bf6 g6 14.Qf4 Qxa3 15.Qh6 Qb3+ 16.Ke1 Qb1+ 17.Nc1 Qe4+ 18.Be2 Nc2+ 19.Kf1 1-0

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a lot of crap!

TrueFiendish said...

Who will cough up the green stuff, i wonder?

Robinson said...

I too find it hard to believe that anyone would cough up $6 million to see a 2600 beat up on a 2200. I haven't been able to find anything about this match anywhere else in the Internet (please post a link to the match site).... What "world" is this the championship of, Ray Keene's bizzarro world? Is this some sort of joke that I'm missing the point of?

Shaun Press said...

The best link at the moment is
http://www.americanchessassociation.org/

Click on the link for titleholders for more evidence of "Is this REALLY a joke?" (For the record, they are serious, but that still doesn't stop it being a joke, just an intentional joke)

Anonymous said...

An out-of-date April Fool's joke, I think. $6 million? Yeah, right...

Anonymous said...

www.americanchessassociation.org

Insider said...

To give everyone an update on the World Chess Championship tournament being held in Las Vegas! Yes it really is happening at the Riviera Hotel as I write this post(!) However, the only people who have turned up to this event are Las Vegas locals, the majority of which are complete crap!
The first event is a qualifier for the 2nd and then that is a qualifier for the final 3rd event when there will be play-off matches. I cannot see this happening as there is less than 20 players in the 1st round and no further entries pending....I foresee this event crashing and burning with the organiser GM Stan Vaughan (LOL) losing a considerable amount of money from hiring the venue for 2 months(!)

For your info, GM Raymond Keene did NOT turn up, and I suspect never intended to. Also, no-one has actually paid an entry fee to this event and there are as far as I know there is no guarantee of any prize money at any stage. I will keep people posted on further developments - Regards a Vegas resident :>)