Corus 2008 comes to an end.

The annual Super Tournament in Wijk aan Zee has come to an end. This year was very exciting with some novelties, especially by Veselin Topalov in his winning game against Vladimir Kramnik, and outstanding results from 17 year old Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen and Armenian Levon Aronian led the tournament with 8/13 in the "A" group. Also noteworthy was the clear first in the "C" group by Italian/American Fabiano Caruana.

There is plenty of information available on the tournament at the official website. Games scores and annotations can be found at The Week in Chess (TWIC), Mig Greengard's Daily Dirt, the Internet Chess Club and other sites on the web. ChessVibes is also worth checking out for some great interviews and commentary by the players on their own games.

The professional and amateur chess events were only part of the story, however. The official site notes that:

Yochanan Afek: Amongst the special events celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Corus Chess Tournament, stands out the International composing tourney for endgame studies. A turnout of 151 entries submitted by 90 composers from 29 countries, makes it one of the biggest composing events ever. Especially successful was Yuri Bazlov from Vladivostok who shared the top honours and won the third prize too.

Here is the winning endgame composition:



White to play and win.
Yuri Bazlov

A 19 page .pdf file listing all the winning entries, with the solutions, can be found at the official site and at TWIC. There is also a .pgn file of all the winning compositions at TWIC.