Motylev Tops in Poikovsky; Shirov Last

The Karpov tournament (named after former World Chess Champion Anatoly Karpov) was recently held for the 10th time in Poikovsky, Russia. As always, the tournament drew a strong field -- not to the level of one of the super-tournaments like Linares or Corus, but a 10 GM field with an average rating of 2694 is nothing to sneeze at. In the end, Russia's Alexander Motylev took first place with an impressive 7/9 score.

However, the story of the tournament was Alexei Shirov's poor performance. Fresh off winning the Mtel Masters in Sofia, Shirov started with four losses en route to a 2/9 score, which placed him last. Shirov settled down towards the end of the tournament, drawing four of his final five games, but finished without a single win. It's a tough result for Shirov, who looked like he was in top form at Mtel. Hopefully he'll be able to put in some more impressive results in upcoming tournaments; his aggressive attacking style often results in entertaining games, win or lose.

In other news, ChessBase recently linked to a study being conducted by economists at the University of Kassel in Germany, for which they need chess players to participate. It's unclear exactly what's being tested; the "experiment" is a rather simple game (although the correct strategy for winning is not simple at all), with prizes being awarded by ChessBase for the participants who win. All you have to do is pick a number between 0-100, and have your number be as close as possible to two-thirds of the average of all numbers picked. Good luck!