Amber Blindfold and Rapid tournament 2011

The 20th and final traditional TopGM’s blindfold and rapid tournament in Nice, France will be held from March 11th to 25th.
Players: Viswanathan Anand (India), Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Alexander Grischuk (Russia), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Sergey Karjakin (Russia), Boris Gelfand (Israel), Hikaru Nakamura (United States), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan) and Anish Giri (Netherlands)

NOTABLE GAMES: Mark Paragua

Mark Callano Paragua (born March 29, 1984) is a Filipino chess Grandmaster. He was born in the Philippines to Flordeliza Callano and Ricardo Paragua, who is also his coach. The father and son travel around the world to participate in international tournaments.
At the 1998 Disney World Rapid Chess Championship for Kids, held November 15–17 at the EuroDisney theme park in Paris, Paragua and Bu Xiangzhi each finished first with 7½ points in Boys 14 and under section, with Paragua taking the gold medal on tiebreak points.
He was the youngest Filipino master ever, at 9 years of age. He also became the youngest Filipino GM ever at 20 (until GM Wesley So erased it), beating out Eugenio Torre's record by about two years.
He qualified for the 2004 World Championship in Tripoli, Libya. Paragua was eliminated by Super GM Viktor Bologan of Moldova in the first round 1-3. He also qualified for World Cup Chess 2005 (qualifying tournament for world championship). He upset Super GM Sergei Movsesian; formerly of Armenia now playing for Slovakia in the first round before narrowly losing in the tie breaker against an even stronger opponent in Alexey Dreev of Russia in the second round (Paragua drew both his games against Dreev in the regulation)
Paragua become the first super Grandmaster (to reach 2600 mark) in Philippine history after he placed second in the Asian Zonal 3.3 Chess Championships that ended Friday at the Stanford Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Paragua finished the 9-round Swiss system event with 7.0 points after being forced to a draw by Singapore’s GM Wu Shaobin (Elo 2510), who handled the black pieces. The Filipino earned enough Elo points from the tournament to take his 2596 Elo rating to over the 2600 norm for super GMs, according to International Arbiter Gene Poliarco. Although there is some dispute as to the definition of super GM;(for example: Eugenio Torre was considered as among the elite grandmasters back in the early and mid 80s yet his rating never breached the 2600 mark). In January 2006 FIDE listed Paragua with a rating of 2618 enough to get him in the top 100, but his rating has dropped to 2521 since his marriage.

Piece Sacrifice for Two Pawns

However, not all attempts in Piece Sacrifice for Two Pawns are succesful:

Piece Sacrifice for Two Pawns

Bobby Fischer (March 9, 1943 - Jan-17-2008) Greatest GM of all time

Bobby Fischer (March 9, 1943 - Jan-17-2008 United States of America
Fischer was a chess legend who, at the age of 15, became the youngest grandmaster in history at that time. In 1970 and 1971, he won an unprecedented 20 straight games to qualify to challenge Boris Spassky for the world championship. He then beat Spassky, becoming the only American world titlist and winning the lion's share of the $250,000 prize fund that was then the largest purse offered in any sport outside boxing. The Game of the Century usually refers to a chess game played between Donald Byrne and the 13-year old Bobby Fischer in the Rosenwald Memorial Tournament in New York City on October 17, 1956. It was nicknamed "The Game of the Century" by Hans Kmoch in Chess Review. The following game, a stunning masterpiece of combination play performed by a boy of 13 against a formidable opponent, matches the finest on record in the history of chess prodigies.

Piece Sacrifice for Two Pawns

The intuitive destruction of the opponent's center occurs extremely often in the French Defence.

NOTABLE GAMES: Rosendo Carreon Balinas, Jr.

ROSENDO CARREON BALINAS, JR.
(born Sep-10-1941, died Sep-24-1998) Philippines

Rosendo Carreon Balinas, Jr. was born on the 10th of September 1941 in Manila, The Philippines. He learnt to play at age 7 but did not take up the game seriously until he was 15. Balinas earned the IM title in 1975 and he became a GM in 1976.
He won the Philippine Open Championship 6 times and played for the Philippines Olympiad team from 1964-76.

He was 1st= with Svetozar Gligoric at the Manila Open in 1968, 3rd= in the zonal tournament in Melbourne 1975, 4th= at Dortmund 1976 and 1st at Odessa 1976. This last tourney, 1976 Moscow Central Chess Club International Tournament, Odessa, USSR marked the first time since Capablanca in 1936 that a foreign master won an international tournament in the USSR. For his feat, IM Balinas was awarded the Grandmaster title. It was the Russian Chess Federation and several of their strongest GMs who recommended that his Grandmaster title be awarded. He was a lawyer by profession and passed away in Antipolo City in 1998.

Piece Sacrifice for Two Pawns