Candidate Champion !

Singapore-International chess superstar Grandmaster Benjamin Tan swipt the board at last weekend's Linares Queenstown International Super-Tournament. The child-prodigy took 2nd place (out of 143 players) to finish as the Candidate Champion.

Out of the 7 games he played he managed to win 5, draw 2 and lost NONE !!. Of the 7 games he played 3 were against top-5 seeded players in the tournament. This successful outing has marked a different course in his chess career, the positionally gifted master has choosen chess as his permanent career and is one more step away from confirming his choice.

Beside winning the Candidate Champion, the young master also took home two more brilliancy prizes, the game of the tournament award - both positional (game 4) and attacking variation (game 6). However he created an uproar at the last round when he 'cowardly' accepted an early draw offer offered by his Indonesian opponent.
(his games would be posted up soon)

Final match ended in tears for IM Ricnesh

GM Benjamin Karpov 12 IM Ricnesh 1

The worst has finally came ! There is no disputed in who is king, the result speaks for itself. The final confrontation between the two ended in tragedy with only one man walking away alive, the other guy was ripped apart - 12 to 1 !

The final score is confirmed - Out of the 105 games they played GM Ben Karpov won 72, drew 13 and lost 20.

Ben crushed Sean

GM Benjamin 'Benny' Karpov is crowned the 2009 RCI Cup Classical Champion after demolishing fellow finalist Sean Benedict Guttenson 13-0. The match is originally designed to host 24 games, but was cut down to 13 when Ben won all his games.

I can't celebrate yet, Ben explained "there is still the Undisputed Championship Match with GM Darren Chan next month.