President's Cup Baku (AZE) 2010

Hola darlings.  I am not long for the world this evening.  I thought I was getting better since the fever passed on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, but today several new symptoms presented themselves.  So now I thing that while the strep throat is passing, I have a really nasty severe cold and the bronchitis (a separate issue) will take a good 10 days to resolve itself.  Antibiotics do NOT help, and I'm sick and tired (pun!) of people telling me to go see my doctor.  Well, frigging duh, why?  She can't do a damn thing for me except what I'm already doing for myself.

Today saw the introduction of masive amounts of green-yellow gunk coming out of my left eye late this afternoon (earlier it was watering and twitching, poor eye), and lesser amounts of the same gunk coming out of my right eye (which is not watering).  Oh yeah, that really does a number on the eye make-up, let me tell ya.  In addition to the chest congestion which, despite my panic on Tuesday evening, is actually loose and I'm coughing up stuff and able to breathe okay, although it does hurt (ouch!) with each hack, now my sinuses have got involved in the action and more gunk is draining down the back of my throat, and also running like periodic Niagra Falls out of my nostrils.  Yep - just when I thought it was safe to ditch the cold capsules. 

I recently emerged from a 90 minute very hot, very steamy bath, and temporarily at least, I feel better and I'm hungry, so I've got to eat something like - NOW -

So I'm doing a few news stories tonights on chess because I haven't covered much of anything lately.  I hope this makes sense cuz my head feels like a balloon about to burst despite breathing in massive amounts of hot moist steamy air over 90 minutes just a bit ago, and the cough has loosened up more (which is a good thing, despite the gunk). 

Oh yeah - the President's Cup.  It says at The Week in Chess that Polgar is playing on one of the teams, but as far I know GM Susan Polgar is still in Texas so the report must mean her younger sister, GM Judit Polgar:

President's Cup Baku 2010 (2)
Mark Crowther (Thu Apr 29 15:44:00 2010)
The President's Cup takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan 29th April - 2nd May 2010.

The event is a single round robin rapid tournament (last year was a Scheveningen team event) with half the players from Azerbaijan and half from abroad.The time control may be 25 minutes per player per game. There is also a blitz tournament on the final day.

Oh - after reading this over - I should tell you that Mark Crowther did NOT write the following.  This is my stuff:  The President of Azerbaijan is Ilham Aliyev. [As far as I can tell, Mr. Aliyev likes riding big fat horses, or at least he likes to pose for massive bronze statutes as if he is riding big fat horses but he doesn't really do it because he is too busy running the Republic.  He has jad these gigantic bronze sculptures of himself on a fat horse (classically posed) strategically placed around the Republic.]

Players: Azerbaijan: Mamedyarov, Radjabov, Mamedov and Guseinov. Rest of the World: Kramnik, Kamsky, Polgar and Sutovsky.

So, I think I am a little loopy from all the meds I have poured into this poor body of mine in an attempt to at least temporarily halt some of the more aggregious symptoms of gross illness long enough to get four or five hours of sleep.  Is that asking too much?  Anyway, I visited the "official website" of the President's Cup but it's just the official site of the AZE Chess Federation which has a lot of other stuff on it too.  At the time I am writing these words I have no idea what the current score is, although since the following mentioned that Judit Polar lost her R1 game and I know she had a draw today, she must have 0.5 points.  Ta dah!  In R2 Judit played GM Teimour Radjabov, who is something of a schmuck but is really cute, so I kind of forgive him every now and then for being a schmuck but then remember the next day and get over it.  Oooooh, here is a picture of them in today's action from the official website!

Obviously I am missing something - who is the dude pictured with the sacred symbols of Venus and Ishtar in the background?  I figure he's dead - he looks like a movie actor from the 1940's. 

Here's what today's news report says:

The second round of the "President Cup", dedicated to the nationwide leader Haydar Aliyev went on with a game of Judit Polgar (Hungary), who lost to Shahriyar Mammadyarov in the first round, and Teymur Rajabov. Even though, the member of our national team Teymur Rajabov started with one of unique versions of Sicilian defence, game came to dynamic draw at the 25th move. Both of the players did not risk the game and agreed with draw. In the game between Rauf Mammadov and Gadir Huseynov white figures had a little superiority over black at the start of the game. But at the end of the game, with precise moves of hard figures, it came to draw. The third game between Emil Sutovski and Gata Kamski, also ended with draw. The last and the most important match between Shahriyar Mammadyarov and Vladimir Kramnik came to clarity at the 48th move. Shakh became the only leader of the table after defeating Kramnik.


Judit Polgar 0.5-0.5 Teymur Rajabov
Emil Sutovski 0.5-0.5 Kamski Gata
Rauf Mammadov 0.5-0.5 Gadir Huseynov
Shahriyar Mammadyarov 1-0 Vladimir Kramnik

Hmmm, 8 players, a single round-robin, that means 7 games total.  They already played 2 so there are 5 left.  Come on Judit, kick some butt!  Why do they have Gata Kamsky's name written backwards?  Is that like a curse or something???